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Dave Coster's Fishing Diary - October
Just as I was beginning to think I had cleared the swim of small stuff, allowing my hook bait a chance to be found by something bigger, the wind changed direction and a massive cloud of blue green algae began to drift past me. This went on for hours and the toxic algae actually changed the colour of the main line on my reel to a dark green! No more action after that, so I packed up early.
After another duff day at Denton, I decided I needed to go somewhere that would provide loads of action. I had managed to get hold of some brilliant squatts, a bait that’s hard to come by these days, and which is very good at activating fish as the weather gets colder. I’ve not used squatts for many years, so I thought Poplar lake at Willows Fishery, where I caught well last month, would be ideal place to try them. I was also armed with some decent red and fluoro pinkies, to go alongside my normal bait menu of casters, maggots and pellets.
As an experiment, I started off on the pole feeding a mixture of micro pellets, along with a few larger 4mm pellets and some casters, just like I did a few weeks earlier. But the weather was now much colder, with a chilly wind as well. For the first hour I only got a few tentative bites and a couple of small roach. Time to see if squatts could still work their magic, like when I used to rely on them so many years ago when fishing the London canals.
I dumped a load of squatts and micro pellets in with a pole cup and within minutes it was like someone had flicked a switch! My swim came to life and it was a bite a chuck using pinkies or double squatts on a size 20 hook. Once regular feeding of the tiny white maggots had got the fish moving, I found I could also get bites on casters and big maggots. It was roach to begin with, along with small perch, but it wasn’t long before skimmers started to show. I enjoyed a busy session, mainly loose feeding squatts with a catapult, along with the odd cupful of micro pellets - to keep things ticking over. Towards the end of the session some better sized roach and skimmers showed up too.
I saw a report that big perch were showing on the North Level Drain, so decided to try a new stretch at Black Dyke. A bit tricky to find this venue the way I came in because the road sign was facing the other way! Anyway, I eventually got there, to find comfortable fishing stands and easy access with a track running alongside the waterway. It’s narrower and shallower here compared to the Tydd Gote section I fished previously, so I set up three pole rigs. One for bigger fish with a 0.10mm hook length and two lighter 0.08mm tackles, mainly aimed at roach.
The deepest area I could find when plumbing up was down the middle, so I fed a mixture of chopped worms and casters in dark groundbait in this area, with a plan to top up with loose fed casters over the top. I also decided to regularly feed a trickle of hemp slightly away from this. It took quite a while to get any indications and these were very tentative, just small dips and lifts registering on my delicate pole float tip. But eventually I got a proper bite on single caster and a 4oz roach resulted.
This led me to switch to a lighter hemp rig over where I had been feeding this bait, but absolutely nothing happened there.
Back on my heavier rig, I tried worm on the hook, but nothing on that either. The only way I could get a bite was to anchor a single caster over-depth and sit and wait. A few more “stamp” roach followed but I wasn’t setting the place on fire. The fish seemed lethargic or maybe even spooky and then out of the blue I discovered why. I had changed to double red maggots on the hook and my float suddenly bolted under, followed by my pole elastic stretching right out across the drain. A proper fish at last, and judging by its zigzagging fight, possibly a big perch. It was too. An old battle scarred, hump-backed warrior of a fish. Nice result!
Nothing much happened after that. In total I suppose I had caught around 6 lbs of fish, which left me wondering if I had perhaps missed a trick. But as I was packing up the bailiff dropped by and told me the stretch was fishing hard and that I had done okay.
Having caught that big stripy, I fancied another and a mate had told me the River Glen at Pinchbeck, just outside Spalding was worth a try. The last time I had fished here was 20 years ago, when I remember catching a nice bag of roach. I managed to find a place to park on North Glenside, earmarking an interesting looking swim 100 metres below a bridge. The water was thickly lined with rushes and had a nice tinge of colour.
It took a while to get my gear sorted out as the banks are steep here. I had just started fishing when a load of noise kicked off in the semi derelict looking house opposite. Lots of banging, crashing and drilling. I soon discovered there were builders in there and they must have been having a tea break when I was setting up. Not exactly what I wanted on a small drainlike river! Anyway, I wasn’t going to move now.
I fished the pole again, feeding a mix of chopped worm and caster over towards the far bank, along with groundbait and squatts down the middle, the latter to see if there were any roach or skimmers about. It turned out to be a hard session, with only one tiny roach on the squatt feed line, so I quickly gave up on this. Nothing on worm across, so I tried anchoring a single caster slightly over-depth. My float dipped under straight away and a lot of elastic shot out from the bush at the end of my pole. A similar battle to the one I had enjoyed on the North Level ensued and this just had to be another big perch. It tried everything to try and dart into the far side and near side rushes, but I just managed to keep it out and eventually netted another lump of a fish. After that bit of excitement, I added another perch just under a pound and a couple of smaller “wasps” (as the late, great Frank Barlow used to call them). The racket opposite wasn’t helping with all sorts of building materials being delivered by trucks and vans, so I called it a day.
When visiting the North Level, I had passed over the South Holland Drain a few times and decided to give this interesting looking day ticket venue a try, at a place called Leedsgate Bridge. I discovered a couple of carp anglers fishing near the bridge and they told me there are some fair-sized carp in this drain - up to mid-doubles, but nothing was happening so far on the day in question.
I walked a bit further down the wider looking stretch east of the bridge where there’s a track running alongside. I set a couple of pole rigs up, along with a light running line waggler rig. It turned into a tough session. The wind got up and was really howling down the drain, making presentation very difficult. I tried fishing casters across to the far bank with the waggler, but the drift got too bad to hold the float out there for very long. I gave up on that and fished the pole down the middle, in the end scaling down to double squatts over groundbait to try and get bites.
As is so often the way, when you put your lightest rig into play, that’s when you hook something big! I was suddenly attached to a hefty weight and it was running me all around the swim. With only a number 3 pole elastic and 0.08mm hook length, attached to a fine wire 20 hook, the fish was well in control! But very gradually I managed to get it up off the bottom and its jagged runs were becoming shorter. Then, just as I was reaching for my landing net and the unseen monster was about to surface, inexplicably my hook lost its hold!
For a moment I had thought this was going to be my hattrick of big perch for October, but then again on reflection, I suspect the lost culprit could have been a big tench. That was all the action I saw.
Lake one at Priory was my next stop. The nights were getting colder now so I was hoping the carp and small fish activity would be dying away, to let me try to get at some of the bigger fish in the water. There were lots of leaves dropping from the trees, so I opted for pole tackle, cupping in a couple of balls of groundbait to start with, well laced with casters, pellets and chopped worm. After kick starting the swim with this, my plan was to simply loose feed casters over the top.
I caught a few early small skimmers and roach before I noticed fish swirling for the casters I was regularly flicking in by catapult. I switched to a light on-the-drop rig and started bagging small roach in the 2oz to 4oz category. Every now and then I would go back on my full depth rig and catch a few better skimmers. This pattern continued for a few hours, but nothing of any real size was showing.
I persevered with my light shallow set caster rig and in the end, did start to find some bigger roach around the 12oz mark, but no signs of any chub or big perch that the lake undoubtedly holds.
I met another angler who was fishing tucked away in an overgrown corner. He reckoned he had caught a two-pound perch, fishing tight to a reed bed, along with a couple of carp – on single white maggot. Hmm, hadn’t thought of trying that! This angler had also witnessed someone catching decent chub to over 4 lbs in the past, using pole tackle in similar fashion to what I had been doing, fishing casters shallow. But that’s for another day and another month now.
