Intro
My previous trio had been quite slow on the float until I introduced chopped worm so decided to try that from the off and see if I could keep the Ide feeding all day.
I had decided to try peg 21 because it had a nice clear area behind for using the pole for feeding and, having setup a top kit, I was also expecting to use the pole for fishing the sort line instead of a second float rod.
Upon arrival, peg 21 was taken by the only other angler on the pond so I decided on peg 20 that also had a clear area behind it. As peg 21 is an end peg, I was hoping to fish the feeder to a tree that is around the corner and just before peg 22. As peg 20 only has clear water in front of it, I decided to forget about the feeder and concentrate on waggler for the 12M line and pole for a 7M line.
The angler in peg 21 was catching quite consistently as I was setting up. It took me a long time because I was using by Octbox bait bag as a poor-mans pole pole roller and wanted to get setup properly. I introduced plenty of groundbait laced with chopped worm and fished the close in line whilst letting the waggler line settle for 15 minutes or so.
Fish from the off
The waggler line proved very consistent. I was fishing with half a worm tailed with a dead maggot to prevent it wiggling off the barbless hook. I had my float shotted right down and was getting bites whenever I managed to cast over the groundbait. A was missing an awful lot of bites when striking immediately the float went under. I then started to count to 2 before striking as the float often bobbed back up in that time. I found that waited resulted in a hook up almost every time. The other I was doing was casting at the far end of the area that I had fed and then counted to 30 seconds before twitching the float/bait a very small amount and effectively covering the baited area in a few minutes. The twitches seemed to invoke a bite but, very interestingly, mainly when I seemed to have come closer in than the baited area. It was as if the line from the float to the bait was at an angle so that the float appeared closer than the bait. Was this just a fluke or a repeatable pattern.
I managed to catch fairly consistently on the waggler line and also managed a few on the shorter pole line.
I had also been putting in a few grains of corn into the groundbait and was feeding approx once every 60 – 90 minutes. So, I decided to try corn on the hook and caught Ide straight away. This was interesting as I tried corn when bites dried up on the worm. It wasn’t long before I was back on worm and getting bites until they slowed up again. So I tried dead red maggots on the hook and also picked up Ide almost immediately so it looked like a bait switch was the answer when things slowed a bit.
I also caught a small Mirror carp on corn which was a nice change. I did try hook-able Robin Red pellets and got a few tentative twitches on the float but nothing definite.
Had I cracked it?
I had high hopes that I had hit on a method that would work consistently on the lake and could be tweaked over time as I learned more. I ended up with 20lb of mainly Ide with the odd Roach.
