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No More Rain

Posted: 17th Aug 2014

What can I say that I haven't already said this season? you guessed it more bloody rain, I'm not one to moan, far from it, but this season has been terrible to say the least. The fishing over the last 7 weeks has been far from great, with every previous season by August time the big hits have started. Mark, Neil, Keith & Kyle are regular chaps who know ourselves and the fishery well, but they had to battle through a tough week of constant rain making the fishing patchy and almost feeling like like Autumn.

The fish did prove me wrong once again with all the takes coming through the night/ early hours, with the daylight hours being very quiet. The peak of the full moon was Tuesday night with the lads showing me they are the only anglers I know who seem to catch well on a full moon. I have been reducing the weed each week and its now opening areas up that have not seen a bait over June/July. On the Saturday change-over it was Peg 2 that we tackled, removing the huge beds of weed that have been resident over the last month and giving the fish too much room to hide. Neil dropped into Peg 2 with the fish returning soon after the work I carried out, seeming to capatilize on the naturals, I presume had come out of the weed, resulting in him having 4 pick-ups on the Sunday night after the lads arrived late and deciding not to fish the Saturday night. He lost 3 fish due to hook pulls and landed a 30lb+ mirror, but after a rig tweek it reduced the loses cocidreable. Tuesday night was  a clear sky again and the lads landed 5 fish and a couple of loses, resulting in them all landing a 37lb+ fish each. We were all thinking this is more like it and the feeding has started, but the rain moved in and killed the fishing. I have seen this before many times regardless of the time of the year, with the rain turning the fishing off completely. We are blessed normally with the most perfect of summers in this part of the world, but not this season I'm afraid!! Wednesday night was a deludge with over 60mm of rain falling in 12 hours, now that might not sound like much but it put over 2 million gallons of water into the 15 acre lake, flooding over the dam, forcing me to open the sluice gates to try and rid the excess water. Pegs flooded out and Keith bailing water it was exteme to say the least. The rain was also cold so the lake temp plummeted and oxygen readings dropping rapidly because of the cold rain hitting the warm lake water, the fish just shut up shop. Neil took another 34lb mirror from Peg 2 but for the next few days it was very quiet. Lots of fish crashing throughout the night and mainly once the moon had started to drop, but it was until Friday we had to wait for the rain to break, resulting in the last night being a clear sky once again. I was hoping the lads might have a couple on the last night but was not feeling confident because of the huge temp decrease, but they did manage another 3 fish, with Keith taking a 28lb fish, kyle fishing alongside Keith had his first 30lb fish of 32lb, and Neil had the best of the week at 43lb 10oz from Peg 2.

10 fish landed, a good 8 lost mostly due to hookpulls in the weed, best 43lb+, 7 x 30lb+ (including35lb,2x 37lb, 38lb) 2 x 28lb. also a couple of stunning stockies not included in the tally.

Nutrabaits Bigfish and pellet used this week. Neil took a couple of fish on single baits which is very unusual here, on the contrary Keith had his fish over a couple of kilo spread over the 3 rods each night, but no set pattern to be honest due to the weather. What the last night confirmed for myself was the weather was the direct link to the feeding this week and with more settled weather set for this week coming I'm hoping a few more fish will see the bank.

Something else of interest this season is how the weather has had an effect on all things breeding ( apart from myself and the good lady,Ha,Ha). The weed has been full of young fish, and far more than I have noticed in previous seasons. Young Tench, Carp, Roach, Perch coming out with each pile of weed. The coots have had at least 3 broods this season which has not been the case of losing a clutch so they have repeated another, they are hatching, raising the young then starting another as soon as the last clutch has fledged. This has been across the board with most of the animals this year, strange hey!!!

The 15 acre lake has made slow progress this year, hitting a brick wall with paperwork issues and draining the lake, but to be honest with the amount of rainfall this year I would have never been able to get on the lake bed with the machines either way. This is slowing us down once again but we are still hoping if all goes to plan that we will start taking bookings late next year for the 2016 season, fingers crossed.

On the wildlife front, plenty of Purple Heron feeding along the lake margins late dusk, also I have seen my first Waterail after not seeing or hearing from them for 12 months. I think it is a groundnesting bird that suffers in France due to predation from the muskrat, but hopefully with myself keeping numbers low as possible we might see an increase again in the Waterails numbers. We had a fascinating incident with a juvanile Goshawk this week, but I will save that for the blog this week.

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