Last spring I fished through some pretty dreadful conditions during some of my bream fishing sessions over on Ferry, so this year I was a little more cautious and waited until the forecast showed signs of better weather before finalizing my plans for the first trip of this year’s spring campaign.
In fact it turned out that during April we seemed to experience the full transition from winter through to early summer, as the seemingly constant damp dreary conditions quickly gave way to some lovely, sunny weather and both the air and water temperatures ramped up by significant amounts; the countryside responding by suddenly flourishing with masses of fresh new vibrant green vegetation.
Unfortunately, despite some favorable conditions, the Ferry Lagoon bream remained as elusive as ever and my first blank sessions were soon chalked up on the scoreboard.
The first weekend of the month saw me doing a slideshow presentation over in Milton Keynes for the Tenchfishers and it was a great opportunity for me to meet up with a load of friends that I hadn’t seen in ages and to make a few new ones.
The Tenchfishers are clearly a very keen lot and the meeting was very well attended, with the meeting hall pretty well packed to capacity for the official business, prize-giving ceremonies and my presentation.
The group themselves were all very attentive during the two halves of my presentation, which makes the whole experience much easier when you’re the one standing in front of everyone. As well as treating me to a free lunch, Phil Jackson (editor of The Tenchfishers Bulletin and their book) and Paul Thomson (vice chairman) came over and gave me a copy of the Tenchfishers book ‘Tinca Tinca’ as a thank you for the presentation.
This is a fantastic book, with loads of really useful tench fishing related guidance on tackle, tactics, baits and a whole load more, from the traditional to the ultra-modern. And nearly everyone associated with the tench fishing scene has contributed something to the book and it’s definitely a must have for any angler who likes a bit of tench fishing, whether they’re an enthusiastic newcomer to the sport, or a long-term specimen hunter. I can’t imagine anyone not learning something from it.
The following week I was back over to Ferry Lagoon for another session. I was in a different swim, but again the results were predictably typical for any session on the venue as I recorded another blank for my efforts…
I knew the bream fishing at Ferry Lagoon would be slow’ at best, so I had decided to mix up sessions over there with the odd session on the Bluebell Lakes complex near Oundle. So, with the weather forecast predicting a relatively strong wind due to blow onto one of the banks on Mallard Lake that has some deeper water out in front I decided to have a go for the handful of big bream that reside in this particular pit.
Mallard Lake is the largest of the pits on the Bluebell complex and has a healthy stock of carp from low doubles up to 30lb plus, so I knew that if the carp were in the same area I’d have a good chance of a bonus bite or two over the session to help keep things interesting, even if the bream were a no show.
It didn’t take me too long to choose a swim along a deserted stretch of bank that had the stiff breeze rolling some nice choppy waves across the water’s surface and slapping into the bank at my feet. With the possibility of fishing up to four rods if I wanted to, I chose to fish two rods out onto a deeper area at about 45 yards out that I spodded up with a nice mixture of hemp, pellet, scopex flavored corn and chopped Source boilies. I fished a single piece of plastic corn on one rod and a balanced 10mm boilie on the second.
My third rod was fished on a naked chod rig, with a 15mm Source pop-up tied to the hook and a few pouches of 15mm shelf life boilies straight out of the bag catapulted out over the general area. The area itself was out to the right of the swim, where the deeper water started to shallow up a bit and the odd bit of weed was evident on the gentle slope.
The final rod was fished towards the bottom of the margin slope, over to the left hand side of the swim. Hook bait was a 10mm Source boilie sliced in half and fished on the hair with half a 10mm cork ball and everything trimmed just right so that the bait just sank with the weight of the hook. This was fished with a small PVA mesh bag of 10mm boilies chopped in half attached to the hook on each cast and a further couple of handfuls of the 10mm boilies catapulted over the top of the hook bait.
If I was going to have any early action at all, I was probably expecting the margin rod to be the first one to signal some interest. However it wasn’t all that long after finally getting all the rods sorted, followed by setting up the bivvy and the rest of the paraphernalia, when the alarm of one of the rods fished over the spodded area, the one baited with the plastic corn, suddenly burst into life.
A lively scrap followed, but without too much drama a nice carp was eventually scooped up within the folds of the landing net. Weighing in at 23lb 8oz it was a decent carp for Mallard Lake and looked especially good as it was nicely scaled and still retained the lovely colors that many carp tend to take on during the colder months, including some nice pink and orange shades lower down and dark blue-greys and browns above the lateral line. A great start!
More runs were to follow during the night and early morning and by breakfast time I’d had very little sleep, but had accounted for another five carp, with two twenties and three doubles, and I was feeling quite pleased with myself, despite the lack of any bream. Most of the fish had come to the two rods fishing baits over the spodded area, but two of the overnight fish, including a 20lb 6oz common, had come to the bait fished down the left-hand margin. I was actually on the phone chatting to my mate Richard who was also on the water and had had a fish himself earlier in the morning, when my alarms sounded another take to one of the rods fishing the spodded area and soon my seventh fish of the session, an 18lb common, was on the mat.
Strangely, the 18 pounder was the last fish I was to have off the spodded area, as the following evening/night I added a further three double figure carp to my tally, with two of them to the left-hand margin rod and finally one to the chod rig fished over to the right. I didn’t manage to catch any bream on the session, but felt well pleased with a total of ten carp, which did a pretty good job of refuelling my enthusiasm, which would be very welcome for my return trips to Ferry Lagoon.
Typically, the two trips to Ferry that I did manage to squeeze in before the end of the month produced the expected blank, so the action I’d experienced over on Mallard Lake really helped to dull the disappointment of the lack of bites on the big pit.
By the end of the month the temperatures had risen quite significantly and we were experiencing some lovely sunny weather, with the occasional heavy downpour just to keep things interesting. Even when the fishing is slow on Ferry there’s plenty of wildlife to watch and it was clear that all of it was enjoying the spring conditions, with most of the water birds either having a batch of eggs to look after, or a group of chicks to feed.
Staying with wildlife I’ve seen some pretty impressive looking hornets over the years, but on my last trip to Ferry I found what looked to be one of the biggest I’ve ever seen sat on the top of my bivvy. I took a couple of photos from a few feet away, but I really wanted to get something in the shot to give it some perspective and to show just how big it was. Unfortunately, as I was carefully maneuvering myself into position, so I could get my hand alongside the beast and take a shot it decided it had had enough and flew off. Maybe just as well!?
Last month was really busy with fishing related stuff too: I had the launch of the Osprey SG book that you will have read about here on FM to attend, I got stuck into some serious crucian carp fishing and had the first of my Nash Roadshows to attend.
I’ll give you an update of how things went next time.
Until then… happy fishing
