The FM Kingsbury Water Park Fish-In, June 2007THE FRIDAY MORNING of the 1st of June was an early one, although we hadn’t really got that far to travel, Dicky and I were up with the larks. A combination of excitement and the fact that Dicky cannot leave the house without at least a gallon of tea inside him first demanded an early start. A swift check of tackle followed before the ‘Krypton Factor’ style task of packing it all in my car and away we went.
We arrived on the campsite (www.myccc.co.uk) at about 1.30pm and were followed minutes later by Steve (D.B), Wendi and Joel Spiller. Trev Matthews and Clive Pennington had already set up shop. Clive had arrived on the Thursday and had feared the worst weather-wise as his caravan began to gradually sink into the site’s sodden ground. However despite all the nasty weather warnings earlier in the week and Clive’s well-founded concerns, we were treated to three days worth of near Mediterranean style sun, as my very reddened scalp paid testament to, although it has dulled to a nice golden brown now!. In the blink of an eye we were erect… Trev was the first to identify us as we struggled with our tent (I had borrowed it from a mate and had no time for a practice go at home before we left). He proved a dab hand and in the blink of an eye we were erect (Steady on! ;o) I meant the tent was up!). Clive also located us shortly after and we all decided it was an afternoon not to be wasted and that we should head for the lakes as soon as possible. Clive spent the afternoon on Causeway Pool whilst Trev, Dicky and me headed for the adjacent Bodymoor Heath Water. By all accounts Clive had a rather unproductive afternoon and reported that he, and everyone he had spoken to, had struggled on a usually rewarding pool. The carp, tench, bream and other residents were obviously not treating the sunshine as a good excuse to feed. I spoke to one chap as I was moving swims who’d given up and decided to have a walk in the sun instead, he said he’d never known it so hard in all the years he’d fished there and very kindly gave me his left-over maggots, casters and pinkies. Trev opted for a feeder attack on Bodymoor Heath and fished the end next to Causeway while Dicky and I cracked open our lure boxes and tried for some pike and perch.
As soon as we got out of the car Dicky spotted a nice looking swim which was plenty big enough for the two of us to set up, before I went wandering the bank with my lure rod. We gazed out over what is a very picturesque landscape; the keepers or wardens of Kingsbury are to be congratulated on maintaining a large area of lakes to a very high standard. I saw very little litter anywhere and the lakes have not been stripped bare of their bushes and trees to make more room. Reeds and lilly pads flourish giving you a feature packed collection of waters to appeal to almost every angler and at day tickets from around £ 2.00 you have to concede it’s a winning formula. (http://www.fisheries.co.uk/kingsbury/). …And soon there was a jack on Having set up my rod with a medium sized spinner I began moving from swim to swim and within half an hour or so I had made contact with a fish. It revealed itself as a jack of around 5 pounds although I didn’t bother weighing the little chap. To be honest, I thought at first he was another dead tree branch like the other fifteen ‘scrappers’ I had landed. He only decided to put up a fight as he neared the bank and suddenly turned tail and pulled a few yards off the reel. He arrived at the bank lightly hooked in the scissors and was back in the water in no time. As I wandered back round to Dicky’s swim to boast about my angling prowess, two of the park’s wardens arrived in a truck and declared ‘You can’t fish that lake mate!’ In our excitement to get fishing we had not read the map properly and instead of Bodymoor we were actually on the lake next-door, which is reserved for water sports enthusiasts. Something I suppose the near-soaking I’d got as a jet-ski roared through my swim earlier should have alerted me to…doh! The wardens were very friendly and we obviously moved on as soon as they highlighted our genuine mistake. It does mean however that the first fish of the Fish-In was in fact the result of poaching. Oops!
After moving I took the opportunity to take some pictures and admire the landscape in the warm glow. The sun was now low in the sky casting long rippling shadows, fish surfacing further out in the lake made for a perfect summer evening. Unfortunately no one else caught that evening. Steve, Wendi and Joel were biding their time for fishing until Saturday and spent the afternoon wrestling with their palatial tent (and wishing that Steve had packed the pegs!) and finding a supermarket. That evening I fired up my mini barbeque and burnt the usual selection of kebabs, sausages and chicken for everyone. A few light ales were consumed; we discussed the next day’s agenda and recounted tales from our fishy pasts. Dicky and I retired to bed at about 3am vowing optimistically to be up again by 7. An early rise Surprisingly, I was up by 7.10am and didn’t feel too bad either, I bunged the kettle on and slumped in my chair awaiting the whistle that heralded a fresh cup of tea. I made Dicky a cup too and left it outside the tent, thereby forcing him to get up before it went cold (ha!). Steve and family had been up a short while already; he planned to visit the local tackle shop to get some bait and headed off there by 8.15am only to find that they didn’t open till 9. Clive and Trev both headed straight for the lakes again and Dicky and I met up with Steve outside the tackle shop for 9. A short and focussed browse later, we all parted with some money and got ourselves back to the Water Park quick-smart, there was serious fishing to be done! Trev and Clive had already tackled up and had chosen swims when the rest of us arrived. We decided to have a look around Swann Pool first, after the struggle yesterday a different pool might be fishing better. Unfortunately the margins for a good 15 yards or so out were clogged with weed all the way around. We saw a couple of fish but the prospect of dealing with that thick, green, slimy undergrowth was too much and we turned back. As we walked back toward the cars Wendi noticed some ‘remains’ in the grass obviously from a reasonable sized fish. The bits left over pointed to it having been a carp or bream but there was not much left apart from bones. I took a quick snap on my phone and a brief discussion about ‘otters or poachers?’ followed but really it was impossible to tell, there certainly was no evidence of a fire nearby.
Despite Clive’s disappointment the previous day we all settled on Causeway Pool hoping that the fish would have acclimatised to the warm weather and we’d all get amongst them. Well, talk about tough fishing… Now I’m no master and I don’t normally fish pools like this, but I tried everything I could think of. On one rod I alternately float fished then used the quiver tip; I tried different hook-lengths, hook sizes and baits. I fished on the bottom, just off the bottom, up in the water, in the margins, away from the margins, next to the small island in front of me, in the sun and in the shade all to no avail. The second rod was a simple set up to allow me to focus on my float or quiver. I cast near to the island in a patch of shade with a scaled down, semi fixed bolt rig. I hoped for a nice big carp or tench to discover it, but again, they eluded me. I would have been annoyed except for the gorgeous weather and the fact that I wasn’t the only one having to work hard. Was it a giant eel? Trev also worked at it, fine-tuning his float rigs until he was landing some roach and skimmers fairly close in. He didn’t ‘bag up’ as it were, but at least he was catching! Dicky followed a similar two-line attack to me with a static carp bait coupled with one rod float-fished to the margins on the lift. Initially it looked like he’d struck the jackpot with a screaming take on the lift. He struck into what felt like ‘A bloody big fish’ only to be very confused by the fact that it was reversing away from him. A giant eel it wasn’t unfortunately, but a 5lb plus foul-hooked tench. Fortunately the barbless hook easily bounced out. In the last hour though, he genuinely missed out after striking into thin air (should that be water?) on what seemed like an un-missable bite. A pop-up boilie carefully lowered under an adjacent overhanging bush proved too much for something to resist. The run came only minutes after he’d set the baitrunner but the culprit got clean away and didn’t come back for more. Clive fished the next peg down from me (or rather I fished the next peg down from him as he was there before us) and when we arrived he was using a sidewinder in an attempt to overcome the problem of catkin fluff floating on the surface. His quiver eyes had been getting clogged up the day before, but by using a rod with larger rings coupled with the sidewinder he was onto a winner. Not that the fish rewarded him for his forethought. Clive has not been posting on FM long but I hope he does a lot more; I get the feeling he has a back catalogue of little-known fishing tricks that are worth their weight in gold. He treated the rest of us to his ‘reed rig’, the variations of which are boundless yet its genius lies in its natural simplicity. He has since submitted the Floating Reed Rig to the rigs library on FM so I will not go into too much detail suffice to say it is well worth looking up. Lunging for their rods As the afternoon wore on and my brolly followed the sun in an attempt to stay in some shade, I suddenly caught sight of Joel and Steve lunging for one of their rods. I watched waiting for the decisive moment when you can tell the fish is ‘on’ and quickly reeled my rods in. There was no way I was going to miss out on getting some pictures of this. By this time Trev had packed up and was sitting chatting with Clive so I dropped into his peg and managed to get a shot of Joel playing the fish in the margins. Steve later admitted saying ‘If we land this it’ll be a miracle’, the reel was a closed face model with no clutch and Joel very quickly had to learn the art of back-winding. Not only that but Steve had scaled down to a 2 or 2.5lb hooklength in an attempt to buy a bite. Teeth were gritted and fingers crossed on the Spiller’s peg as Joel showed some reel skill (real skill, reel skill? I’ll get my coat) playing his quarry beautifully and bringing a lovely 5lb 2oz tench over the net.
Apparently after sitting bite-less for so long Joel had suggested sticking a lump of luncheon meat down the margin and voila, his ‘fishy feeling’ had paid dividends. As the weigh sling settled on the scales Steve remarked that Joel had better not join Wendi in beating his own PB tench as she had already done earlier in the year. He escaped a second ‘drubbing’, but only by a few ounces. The rest of that afternoon was particularly uneventful and one by one we left the pool. Dicky and I were the last to leave (ever hopeful!) and we set off for the Dog & Doublet where Clive had headed earlier. As we crossed the car park Clive was headed straight for us and had been on his way to get us, like an excited school boy he lead us around the side of the pub and presented the local canal. The pub and the canal Now I must say it was very nice (but then most pubs by a river or canal are, especially in summer) but Clive’s real enthusiasm came from a 2lb perch he had seen a young lad catch not half an hour ago just the other side of the lock. We grabbed a pint each and wandered down the bank, after the day we’d had I was tempted to go and get rod from the car there and then but we thought better of it. Outside the pub we settled down and talked fish, as the sun began to dip in the sky the water suddenly came alive with surfacing fish. A couple of lads chucked some bread chunks in and as they were systematically demolished by tiny mouths we decided to try the canal the next day.
After another evening of barbequed food, beer and wine I settled into my slightly damp tent (never leave the door open of an evening) and drifted off dreaming about the monster perch waiting for me down at the canal. Once again despite the evening’s merriment I managed to prise myself out of bed at about 7.30am, the tea ritual began and we slowly de-camped. Surprisingly the car seemed bigger and all our gear went in easily this time. As we made slow progress Trev dismantled his tent in double quick time and was soon ready for the off, he had to get home and so had decided to give the canal a miss (possibly a good idea as you’ll see later). Steve, Wendi and Joel also had decided to not fish today and had a lie in, Clive had been threatening to get to the canal by 6am and so we didn’t know whether he was still fast asleep or already down there. Soon enough we were packed, we said our goodbyes and drove the 400 yards to the canal. We parked in a little lay-by right next to the road bridge over the canal and took just what we needed for a little float fishing with maggots and worms as bait. Clive was nowhere to be seen but Dicky and I settled in and began plumbing the depth. Still up for those perch The fish were not making themselves quite as obvious this morning and again the fishing proved hard. Soon after setting up my phone rang and Clive was on his way, the red wine had seen him sleep in until 10.30am (I always though 6am was very optimistic), but he was still up for those perch.
Clive brought the news that Steve, Wendi and Joel may drop by on their way home just to have look and say goodbye then despite being the last one fishing he was the first to get a bite! He landed several fish during our four or five hour session. Dicky also had a few and I managed one solitary perch of no more than three or four ounces, so much for giants of the deep. The Spillers dropped by as promised for half an hour and in general we spent an enjoyable afternoon in the sunshine. As hunger and tiredness set in we packed away and decided to call it a day, we said goodbye to Clive and he walked back to his car in the pub car park. We headed the opposite way to the bridge, only 30 – 40 yards or so, but apparently this was too far away to hear my car alarm.
‘Where’s all our stuff?’ remarked Dicky peering through the rear window. Broken glass was everywhere and literally anything worth having plus some stuff that wasn’t had been half inched. Clive spotted our forlorn faces as he drove past and stopped to see what had happened, he then very kindly helped Dicky look through the hedges and fields in the immediate vicinity in case things had been stashed while I phoned the police. Unfortunately they found no sign of anything and we were left dejected after a most enjoyable weekend. The drive home was breezy, but luckily the weather remained warm enough for it to not matter and the car was much easier to unpack again I suppose. In summary it was a very enjoyable weekend, great company, not many fish (the heat was against us there) and a lesson in car security well learned. Oh and Steve threatened to arrange a Severn fish-in at some point this coming season so don’t let him forget!
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