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Dave Coster's Diary- March 2019
It took a while to get bites on the feeder, resulting in a few small perch and roach to begin with. I was feeding casters, chopped worm and micro pellets in a dark groundbait, switching between red maggot, a single caster or small segments of worm on a fine wire size 16 hook. Worm brought too much attention from small perch, while caster produced nothing, so I stuck it out with single dead red maggots in the end. I missed a few tentative bites, so the next time one of these occurred I tried twitching the rig in a few inches. The outcome was a savage pull round on my quivertip and a hefty, ponderous weight put a good bend in my rod. I was only using a 0.12mm hook length but with the water still being cold, everything held and a proper slab-sided bream was soon safely in my landing net.
I enjoyed a good spell on the feeder, catching another couple of decent bream, a smaller skimmer and one good roach - around the one-pound mark. My feeder swim died after that, so I decided to switch to the 12-metre pole line I had been carefully feeding up with small helpings of casters. Because the wind was blowing into the bay, there was quite a strong undertow, requiring a 1g pole float to anchor my rig, due to it being quite deep in this area. It took a while to try and gauge where my loose feed was ending up in the undercurrent, but when I did, the bites started materialising.
The big roach in this lake are not easy to catch. They are shy old fish and unless you get your tackle presentation spot-on, the bites are very hard to hit. In the end I started connecting with the fish by having my rig set a few inches over-depth, finding a single caster on a size 18 hook, tied to 0.10mm rig line best. Even then the bites were fast and I missed a few, but when I did connect the roach were proper elastic stretchers, some going to well over the pound mark. The fish were in pristine condition too. I ended up with a nice net of quality red fins, along with the bream I caught earlier, having put back quite a few small fish along the way.
The last few days of the river season turned into a disaster. The long-awaited rain came and put colour into the running waters in my area, but it didn’t stop! The Trent came up 8 feet and even the smaller rivers were unfishable. I retreated to the Match Lake at Woodland Waters, thinking I would have a proper go for the skimmers there, after catching a few decent bream on the Specimen Lake
next door on my previous visit. I set up a small cage feeder, planning to fish 30 metres out in around 12 feet of water. Once again it would be a dark groundbait mix with a few casters, some chopped worm and a smattering of micro pellets to try and activate some interest.
In case you were wondering why I often use cage feeders during the colder months, as opposed to standard plastic groundbait models, I think cage designs create more interest when the fish are less active. They release lots of tiny particles of groundbait on their way down to the bottom, which take ages to settle. I suspect this draws fish towards the main contents of the feeder, which also release quicker from cage designs, comparted to plastic bodied ones. Added to this, dark coloured cage feeders blend in better when presented over dark silt, which is less likely to spook cagey cold-water fish.
The Match Lake is usually much quicker to produce bites than the larger Specimen water next door, and sure enough, it only took a few casts before my swim came alive. A couple of small skimmers, then perch and roach turned up before the first decent skimmer put in an appearance. After that I experimented with various baits, once again finding dead red maggots pulled the best response. I tend to stay with small baits on this water, finding anything big immediately pulls the carp in.
It turned into a really nice session once I had sorted out what the skimmers wanted. If a bite didn’t result after the rig had settled for a few minutes, twitching the hook bait a few inches often brought a decent response, prompting a proper pull round on my light action quivertip. I stayed with dead reds on the hook, although I kept some chopped worm going in the swim because this seemed to keep the fish interested.
Another angler I had met once before on this lake kindly took the accompanying photograph. We estimated there was a good 25 lbs of skimmers in my keepnet, plus I had put back another 5 lbs of bits. My friend in the next peg had enjoyed a nice day fishing the waggler, catching mostly skimmers and roach by loose feeding maggots. He told me some big perch have been caught from this lake, which gave me an idea for my next visit…
A few days later I returned, armed with plenty of Dendrobaenas, lob worms, casters and a bag of frozen prawns. There are quite a few overhanging bushes on the far side of the lake and I wanted to try for the big perch close to these. I set up in a swim with bushes either side, cupping in good helpings of chopped worms, prawns and casters just off the cover left and right, just where the bottom shelved away. As back up I fed some groundbait, casters and chopped worm straight out in front of me in the deeper water.
I spent the next few hours fishing a strong pole rig close to the bushes left and right, trying lob worms and prawns on a big hook, looking for one of those big perch. I sat for ages with the bait stationary, then tried inducing some movement, but absolutely nothing resulted. I gave up on the perch and had a look on my reserve deep water line, which produced bites immediately on small
segments of worm. No perch here either, but I was pleasantly surprised, saving the day with a big bream and two smaller samples.
Various anglers I have met in Lincolnshire have mentioned Bain Valley Lakes at Tattersall Thorpe, near Horncastle. There are no less than 8 lakes on this complex to explore, some are carp syndicate waters and other available on a day ticket. I discovered that Lake Stirling, which I wanted to fish, suddenly disappears off the day ticket menu on a Friday, so I opted for Hurricane instead. (All the lakes are named after fighter aircraft).
Whereas Stirling is a big 10-acre lake, Hurricane is much smaller, but it looked okay. I asked a regular angler and he said it had plenty of silver fish in it, so I settled in a swim.
After setting up a feeder and a few casts later, I discovered that Hurricane is absolutely heaving with small roach, rudd and hybrids. It’s not that deep and whatever I tried on the hook was getting blitzed on the way down, even pellets. I spent a couple of hours trying to get through the bits, but the carp, bream and tench the water holds didn’t materialise. Probably due to me fishing it all wrong!
While fishing the feeder I had been flicking a few casters out on a comfortable pole line and quickly decided to change tactics. With so many fish about I didn’t even bother with plumbing the depth, instead opting for a shallow, light spread shot rig.
It was crazy fishing from the moment I switched to the pole, getting a bite every put in with a single caster on a size 20 hook. My light number 3 pole elastic was stretching out in all directions as I caught roach, perch and hybrids, along with quite a few rudd.
You can’t use keepnets on this complex, so it was tricky to estimate my catch. Although I had a lot of small fish, towards the end of the session some chunky sized roach and hybrids were turning up and I was catching quickly. I reckon I must have caught 15 lbs in the last two hours, to add to the 5 lbs taken earlier on the feeder. Another interesting venue discovered, but one that requires a lot more work to fathom out.
You need to take the right money for day tickets at Bain Valley by the way. There’s a box you have to post an envelope in with your name, car registration and the exact fee - in a hut by the entrance track. Full day tickets are £7 and £6 for concessionary ones. Definitely worth another visit.