Bogey Waters

[S-Kippy]

Do you have one...or more ? The waters where no matter what you do you never seem to catch....much or at all. I'm not talking here of the rock hard waters where you expect things to be tough, I'm speaking of the ones that send you home bewildered and that have you half beaten before you've even unloaded your gear.

There was a trite water I used to fish like that. No matter what I did I just couldn't catch....even when others did. I can think of a stretch of the Wey that Big Dave introduced me to that I just cannot seem to catch on despite using identical rigs and the same bait as him. They crawl up his rod but not mine.

Do you have one and if so is it all in your head ?

 

[sam vimes]

A mate of mine had a little day ticket fishery for quite a few years. I rarely fished it but when I did I would often be underwhelmed. I know it was capable of catches far better than I ever achieved, but it just never happened for me. It's not the kind of water I tend to frequent at all these days, but I might have visited a bit more over the years if I'd ever done well on it.

 

[mikench]

I have several and ,perhaps foolishly, I keep going back. They are picturesque, in wonderful locations, supposedly full of fish but they invariably disappoint. I try different baits and tactics and hear the voices of older club members who wax lyrical about its virtues, and that they only joined the club because of this water.

I have had some very good days on one in particular. I recall going there one warm Saturday morning and setting up opposite 5 guys on the other side of the lake fishing the pole. They had been there at least an hour before me and were biteless.

I tried black peas( maple peas) on a hair and on a pellet waggler. I had 3 fish in successive casts on the drop and all over 10 lbs.

I think I enjoyed the comments, profanities and sheer incredulity as much as catching the fish. I had at least 10 to their none. I haven't even come close in the intervening 3 years and nothing on black'peas.

 

[Aknib]

A large, local reservoir springs to mind.

As a kid I used to watch the regulars catching huge nets of quality Roach at a certain time of the year and try as I might I could never get a bite!

Not to be outdone I did return through my intervening years to enjoy some good catches but again, the most recent result was a trip with Kev where we both ground our way through a biteless day.

If there's one person I'd back to catch a fish when I can't it's Kev but we were both stumped on this one, fishing into the wind in the deepest part of the res and not a sniff.

It didn't help matters when a fella sponsored by a bait company arrived and proceeded to spend the next two and a half hours spodding out bait at around a hundred yards, only to disappear before no doubt repeating the exercise the following day in preparation for a session God knows when.

Bloody vermin!

 

[nottskev]

I remember that one, Steve. Just looking at the pic, you can see we didn't really catch it right for bream, especially when you add on the biting wind and the clear water. After the spod dude had gone, another guy came along and said, bream? you want bream?. He pointed over our shoulders to another water hidden from view about 150m away. There's thousands of them in there, he said.




As for waters I couldn't catch on, where to begin. As a teenager who'd done a bit of canal fishing, I went on a family holiday near the Stour, and couldn't catch anything on Throop. I was completely thrown off by the facts that a) the water moved b) you could see the bottom six feet down.

My first holiday to Ireland resulted in a few perch and roach. The lakes had huge shoals of fish, but always somewhere else and I didn't know about pre-baiting.

I'm also adept at not catching much on commercials. It's some kind of karma for all the things I say about them.

 

[flightliner]

There's a drain, one that's famous for pike that runs into the Witham that I fished extensively back in the eighties.
I could sit anywhere along it and watch guys get a 20lb pike every third or so visit but not me.
They were so elusive , I could get fifteen lb ers on a similar number of visits but that was my upper limit.
I wasn't doing anything differant to the other guys but it was just as it was.
On other waters things went ok, but why not there I'll never know???

 

[MountainAsh]

Foss Dyke. Fished a few matches there, blanked every time. Seem to recall winning weights were ounces and drams sort.

 

[flightliner]

Foss dyke, the roman canal that runs from Lincoln into the Tidal Trent at Torksey.
Popular with the Lincoln boys Mountain ash-- did you fish with them?

 

[mikench]

That res looks like Lake Baikal on a nice day.

 

[Philip]

I used to fish a Clay pit down in the South East that held some good Roach but I could never catch them. I caught plenty of other fish but the big ones always eluded me. The water held a big head of small fish so I decided I would just try and wade through the numbers catching as many as I could and hope a big one would slip up but it never did. It was very frustrating as on some days I could have the fish really going, I was spraying maggots and fishing a waggler and catching a fish a cast, sometimes I could even see the big ones zipping through the maggots taking them on the drop but I never managed to get one.

Perhaps I was just unlucky, but more likley I just fished it wrong. With hindsight I perhaps should have tried big baits on the deck after dark but I will never know. I dont think the lakes exist anymore which is sad as they were really nice places tucked away in woodand.

 

[108831]

The Witham for me,god I hate the place with a vengeance,took years for me to admit defeat and stop going to matches on it,had guys asking me to fish nationals on there,they recieved the inexplicable F off,with a very large capital F.

As for your water with the big roach in Philip,ive had a few like that,most beat me,the last one I caught six or seven two's,pellet seems the general way these days,or 10mm boilies...

 

[steve2]

When I first fished Throop I struggled to catch anything worthwhile then one day along came another angler and he said I was fishing the wrong way for this river.
Up till then I had never fished river like this. I thought what does he know that I don’t. He showed me his rigs and setup totally different from mine. He showed me how to fish rolling baits in swims that in my way of fishing were too weedy. I had at least 6 Barbel that day up until than more than I had caught in all my other trips.
From then on Throop was not bogey water, just another river.

 

[MountainAsh]

Foss dyke, the roman canal that runs from Lincoln into the Tidal Trent at Torksey.
Popular with the Lincoln boys Mountain ash-- did you fish with them?

No, club matches from the south Manchester area. Aye, all that travelling to catch nowt.

 

[markcw]

Long island pool on Hampton Springs, as the name suggests it has a long island in it, The best pegs are facing the point of the island, and on the side that is the furthest away from the bank about 30+ yards facing the island, The worse pegs are facing the island about 18 yards from the bank.
Every time I had a match on there , I always managed to draw the narrow section. No depth as such and had to fish for bites, I drew there once , didnt even go to peg, went on another pool

 

[Peter Jacobs]

Mine would definitly be Old Bury Hill lake, the old one long before it was enlarged into a multi-lake commercial. There was just the one lake back then and my father-in-law and I would often fish it as it was relatively local to us both. The bailiff back then was a chap called Graham who always had two magnificent Alsation dogs with him when he came round the lake colecting the ticket money.

My father-in-law seemed to always have good results on there whereas I always struggled; I caught fish, typically tench, but never really got to grips with the venue. In those days we fished it with bottom rods on the float so I have always wondered about going back there again with more modern tackle and methods.

 

[108831]

The main lake is a lovely venue,very picturesque,I had a couple of decent crucians down the far end in the lilies,plus several tench the times I went Peter...

 

[Peter Jacobs]

It used to be Alan.

That swim at the far end by the damn was our favourite back then, as were the few swims to the right of the kiosk in the reeds but mostly there for the bream.

On that end swim we often took curcians but usually it was the tench that we targeted. I've not been back there for well over 40 years I'd guess, but have often thought about it, sadly going back like that usually leads to a disappountment . . . that was definitely the case when I went back to the Longwater at Hampton Court after many years.

Who knows thuogh, maybe one day . . . .

 

[Mark Wintle]

The Witham for me,god I hate the place with a vengeance,took years for me to admit defeat and stop going to matches on it,had guys asking me to fish nationals on there,they recieved the inexplicable F off,with a very large capital F.

I fished the Witham in the late 70s/early 80s in Nationals and practising for the same, usually scraped a pound and a bit but hardly prolific then returned in 1990 to fish a week in practice plus opens and the Div 1. What a change, fish galore, not just eels but roach, dace, skimmers and silver bream, then in the National my first Witham bream plus a load of eels for nearly 10lb.

The Bristol Avon treated me similarly. Fished it the late 70s/early 80s and lucky when I had over a pound, usually a lot less. Returned 10 years later and a whole new ball game. First trip back 15lb of hemp roach in a match and never looked back. Still the odd bad day after that but plenty of good days. Haven't fished it since about 1994 though.

 

[The Runner]

In recent years for me was definitely the Slough Arm of the GUC.
At one point had it pretty well sorted, fished about 10 Winter League matches on it only once coming below second in my section and had a decentish record in opens there against some real top class opposition.
And then the WLs and with them the opens stopped. My club took it over and at about the same time the water went gin clear where it had previously always carried quite a bit of colour; breadpunch (which I've always been rubbish at) pretty much took over where it had once been all blood and joker and my results nosedived.
Must have fished well over 30 club matches on it since and only in top 3 about five times.

Back in the day, even worse one was a gravel pit at Longtown near Carlisle which my club on Tyneside used to fish in a Summer League. Was generally a hard venue but my record there made it look even harder, First two visits resulted in biteless blanks, third produced an eel which for some odd reason didn't count under the league's rules, and on the fourth started , as usual, by throwing a bomb and a big piece of flake to the horizon for one of the lake's semi mythical big chub, which showed straightaway if at all. Put rod in rest, tip flew round 2ft, missed it and blanked again....

 

[S-Kippy]

Lordy....the Slough Arm. That's where I served my very early angling apprentieship catching stunted tench and crucians down the Cowley end. I often wonder if the crucians are still there.

Never fished up t'other end where you're on about. Rock hard doesn't even get close from what I've heard though I've heard that occasionally some very big roach can show.