Commercial Capers..

With having a little bit of time on my hands I decided to venture to a local commercial fishery and have a play. I have recently got hold of a new long float rod, a Preston 15/17ft. Having not used a long rod before I thought a commercial would be a good place to see what sort of action the rod has and also what its like to fish with in general. I set up the rod with a pole float (garbolino Dc13 1g) with an olivette and a couple of droppers to a size 16 G point pellet hook.

I was really surprised when I plumbed up to find that the pool that I was on only had a depth of about 4ft, bit gutted at this but I had set up my gear so could not be bothered to move.

I had soaked some 2mm pellets and made up some fish meal groundbait, introducing this into my swim at about 5 metres.
I baited the hook with a 4mm expander and put my first cast out. Straight away my float sunk and the tip bent nicely, a small skimmer of about 8 oz was first in. This trend continued for the next 20 mins with a regular ball of groundbait, followed by 4-5 bream. In the first hour I probably landed 30 fish, all of which ranged from 6oz to 2lb.

This was until my float popped out of the water and I struck into a fish that took line straight away...no bream!

This was when I realised that using a long rod though very enjoyable is not really the tool for bagging zoo creatures. The action is brilliant as it has a through progressive flex that absorbs all of the kicks from the fish, but it does feel like you are towing a plastic bag in a river, and takes probably twice as long to land the fish. The fish that caused this was a mirror carp of around 8lb, a very grey fish, which may have have some ghostly heritage.

I thought that this would have messed the swim up but it had not, again the bream were back....not that I minded them but after probably 50 they were getting I hate to say this but boring?

As the light started to fall the swim changed allot with tail patterns swirling and brown clouds appearing...yes the bigger fish had moved in. To cut alot of hard fights short I had a total of 12 carp in the last 2 hours, at this point the skimmers were gratefully received as a break to the arm wrenching carp. The largest carp weighed in at 12lb 8oz and the others ranged between 6 and 10 lb. I have put some of the pictures below as I was getting fed up with getting off my box tho photograph them...lazy old git!

Largest of the carp at 12lb 8oz

Amongst the bream and carp, I had a very welcome bonus first for the challenge. A crucian carp of 2lb 1oz, though I am sure there are bigger in there it got me a grateful 45%! If fact I actually lost a much larger fish when the hook pulled, due to me giving it to much pressure whilst some of the local "burberry boys" were watching me. ...bugger!

(Incidentally they sat a couple of pegs down from me for the whole time, behind buzzers shouting at each other and saying that there was no fish in lake...interesting)

Pretty pixie at 2lb 10z

The pictures do not do this little fella justice but I did what I could.

By the end of session I had roughly caught around 60lb of bream and silvers, over 100lb of carp and my bonus little pixie!

Not bad for a play on the new bit of kit!