Wednesday 28 September 2011

Outcome of using particles so far.....

The outcome is actually very good news, using particles for three sessions now & I am really surprised at the outcome, they are a superb fish attractor "when used correctly"
On the club venue I fish there is quite a healthy stock of bream which if you are targeting bream using particles as an attractor is superb!
For my own personal goal I'm currently targeting the carp on my club venue & at the moment using particles as an attractor seems to be drawing in the bream rather than the carp, the bream are also quite happily taking my 15mm hook baits, even bream of only one pound!!! but they were really on the feed"

As I say above, when they are used correctly, I mean this in the sense of using a little watercraft, feeding from very small amounts & building what go's in if the fish are responding or taking feeding very small amounts until "hopefully" the fish switch onto the feed, now my own gut feeling is I am not putting enough particles in to bring the carp onto the feed, what I mean is that if I put in a larger "initial" amount, hopefully the bream will have their fill of food & move on!

in my three session of using particles all I have been catching is bream using boilies when the intention was for carp!

I have also been having a little experiment with pva mesh, & I can honestly say for the type of fishing I do they are superb, they give a small target area of feed around the hook bait, very simple to use, what I will try to do is draw a diagram of the two rigs I use & try to show how I use pva mesh bags, these can have an amazing amount of  uses for many different species-never assume a method for one species wont work on others, its worth experimenting by up scaling or downscaling your terminal tackle!

Thursday 22 September 2011

Time to give particles a go for carp

Well, just a quick update before a planned fishing trip tomorrow!
Today I was put in the direction of a an outlet that sells particle baits which I will start using a little more often in a few area's of my fishing, many species like to feed on particles as its a fairly natural food source for many types of fish, but for tomorrows planned fishing trip, my target species is going to be Carp!

Now if all go's to plan & the gods of angling (& possibly Richard Walker) are looking upon me kindly & the Carp are willing to feed on my baits & go absolutely mental for my particle mix then it will be a good session so fingers crossed  confidence is high!

The actual particles I bought today consisted of various types of seeds and pulses, known in the carp fraternity as party blend!  I bought two 20kg sacks so that should last me a while.
Particle baits have to be prepared before using them. My personal method for preparing any nuts, seeds, dried particles is to put them in the largest saucepan I can find in the kitchen cupboard, cover them with water & have around an inch of water above the particles, bring them to the boil, simmer on a very low heat for five minutes whilst I go & find my bait bucket, turn off the gas & chuck the whole lot in my bait bucket, leave them to cool.

I find this method makes a lot of the starches & oils in the particles leech out & form a very stodgy, sticky & jelly like substance, once all the particles are nice & cool & give them a really vigorous stir, now is the time that I add some samples of my hook baits to the mix, also any flavours & attractors can be bunged in but personally, it should be left as is!

If you are going to add any flavours or attractors prepare the particles as outlined above then follow up by adding you chosen flavours an/or attractors, put your particles in a bag or a number of bags & put them in the freezer, when the particles are frozen the flavours an/or attractors are drawn into the seeds & any water content, when they defrost a good percentage of your flavours and/or attractors will remain in the particles. I'm no expert as you can probably, blatantly tell!!! but, these are just some of the things I try in my own angling as that's what its all about, trying various methods, baits, techniques to fool those fish.

For my session tomorrow I have prepared 2kg of party blend + 1kg of sweetcorn added to the mix, a slight confession, to this mix I have added 250grams of molasses sugar, this is a sugar that has that black syrup type colour & smell, I will update in my next blog with more details of my methods & baits used in my fishing trip




My 3kg Party blend with sweetcorn added
 Lets hope for some Carp tomorrow eh!

Friday 16 September 2011

August/September 2011

Well here we go, my first ever attempt at a blog, first of all, please excuse my lack of punctuation skill, spelling mistakes etc. etc. All my updates will basically revolve around my angling exploits & any fishing related goings on.

I'll try my best to update my blog spot at least monthly:
Explain my venue
Species
Tactics & bait I use
Things I learn about fishing
A personal & un-biased view of products I buy & use
My attempts at boilie making at home with hopefully positive results
& probably a few photo's of my catches and maybe the odd video.

I'm based in Coventry I'm fishing local venues, I like a bit of variety in where I go fishing & this for me personally is dictated by the seasons of the year & sometimes how successful or unsuccessful my angling is! Plans for 2012 are to visit some "so called" prolific fisheries in other parts of the UK.

My wish list of venues in other areas of the UK include:
The river Teme, Severn or Great Ouse for the barbel
Bluebell Lakes in Oudle for the Carp & to hopefully gain a personal best
The Hampshire Avon where Bob James Caught that amazing catch of specimen roach
Sywell reservoir for the specimen Tench
I'm sure I'll have additions to this list to come & hopefully achieve ticking some of them off the list.

A six year break from fishing has dictated that for the time being I'm keeping my tackle & tactics basic, as in all honesty I feel I have lost my touch a bit. I'm currently a member of the Leamington Angling Association so I'll be fishing the venues that this club book covers plus the privilege of a private pool for the known big Carp that are in residence plus any other local venues I fish or get recommended to "give a go" so there we go, there is a little bit about myself!

At present my comeback to angling is with two pronged approach, general float fishing & ledgering tactics targeting no particular species on a wide variety of baits & Carp fishing. The reason why Carp fishing is the "second prong" of my so called two pronged approach is this is where my previous angling direction was going towards before my fishing tackle was stolen, but as I say, I do like all types of angling & want to improve all areas targeting a wide variety of species, but like most us, we all have one or two favourite species to fish for.

So, my comeback to angling at the start of august 2011, fishing Meadowlands fisheries Warren pool for my first three sessions, I'll keep these first 3 session to a minimum due them being pretty uneventful. Meadowlands is a known local venue, is well match fished & not the hardest venue, so was a good place to get used to setting up, casting, setting up in my peg etc. etc.

Well on my first rod I fished a very simple waggler bulk shot around the float, size 14 hook with a choice of sweetcorn or trout pellet paste on the hook, my second rod was a simple running ledger or ground bait feeder with a 12" long hook link, size 10 hook.

My float rod was fished in the margins, simple tactics of corn on the hook  feeding 4 or 5 free offerings every five minutes, this soon brought the small carp onto the feed, I was off to a running start with a 5lb mirror carp in the net, I went on throughout the session to catch nine small carp and one Tench.
The ledger rod didn't have any luck with as I got in a right old tangle, a proper birds nest around the spool, but, was so happy catching on the float, I just didn't use it!
the next two days were much of a muchness.

My next ten sessions have been on a Leamington Angling Association pool & the private lake for Carp, and so far probably more luck than judgment, I have not had a blank session yet..........
for my first three sessions on the Leamington Angling Association pool, concentrating my efforts on general coarse species with a similar setup as I used at Meadowlands fishery being one float fishing rod and one ledger/feeder fishing rod.

The beginning of august consisted of my first three sessions on this Leamington Angling Association pool, its stocked with all non predatory species commonly found in uk waters with a decent head of carp,  which I constantly find a little tempting to fish for, it has a reported good head of bream to 10.5lbs with possibly some larger!!! chrikey, also some reported large roach are present, so a pleasantly varied venue!
With it being a completely new and venue to me, before fishing I had a walk around the lake, chatted to some pleasant people to get a little info on the pool to give me a starting point.

Three initial sessions in has seen me catch on pretty basic tactics as outlined above, I have caught roach to 1.5lb, bream to 4.5lb, perch, Tench, hybrids & carp to 15.5lb which for me is a PB so I'm absolutely enthused about the venue for the variety, fellow anglers seem willing to help with advice on tactics and bait & also happy to point to particular hotspot swims known for producing specimens of a given species, which is a fantastic in my opinion! I haven't any pictures of my personal bests as I didn't realise my crappy mobile phone has no compatible USB cable to upload them to my laptop-how pointless is the camera on my phone eh? but here is a Roach caught whilst targeting Carp on the private pool I fish using straight running ledger on a double 10mm boilie size 10 hook, in the photo I placed my car keys which has a bottle opener which is 4.5-5" long, so gives a half decent reference as to the size of the fish, I was pretty happy to catch it!



A real silver dollar Roach