Partridge lakes , Pine canal

May 11th

Pine canal

With my working hours being increased over the next few weeks i decided to make the most of my early finish and headed off to Partridge lakes which was only a ten minute drive away , although the weather was pretty bad with strong gusty winds but at least there was no rain forecast due to the conditions i decided to fish the tip rod and as regular readers of my blog will know this is something i very rarely do even though i have recently purchased a Matrix 9ft Carp Master rod i hoped to put this through its paces on Pine canal .

 

This canal had only recently been re-opened after having had some recent work done where after being drained they removed the bowls on each side adding a far-side shelf making it into a long straight water similar to Spey but it was a lot wider at over twenty meters making an ideal feeder water , the fish stocking was a mixture of F1s , Carp and the odd big skimmer . With Pine being quite a trek away from the cabin with no close car-park it doesn’t get that many visitors to it which is a shame because it is really peaceful on their far away from the hustle and bustle of the Coveys .

With the strong wind blowing straight along Pine canal i settled on a peg near the top as they all looked the same , the conditions had a bearing on the tackle i had decided to use today with me using a 3/4 oz tip and a 25 gram pellet feeder i hoped this would also help with my casting accuracy because i am not the best .

Bait table

My bait obviously revolved around pellets ;

2 pints soaked 4mm pellets

Small tub mixed hard pellets

At 3 o’clock i was ready to get started i had a couple of exploratory casts to get my distance of two foot away from the far-bank as i didn’t want to go to close because it was still rather cold and i would almost certainly end up in the vegetation if i did with my casting , it wasn’t long before i began getting little taps on the tip with a proper pull round signalling my first fish which was a nice stockie Mirror carp around the 10oz mark and a real mixture of fish came to the bank in the next hour including a nice flying skimmer of nearly 2lb which showed the signs of spawning tubercles .

Flying skimmer

Most of my bites were now drop backs and i felt that i was not seeing most of them so i decided to change to a lighter half ounce tip this made a dramatic difference with it now bouncing around on every cast , my catch rate increased as well and apart from the odd miss fire i gradually began getting the pellet feeder to land in the same place . Up to now i had used a hard 6mm pellet on the bait band which mixed in well with the feed but i decided to try a yellow bandum although i was unsure that it would work because of the size of carp that i had caught but work it did with fish after fish coming to the bank and its surprising how a subtle change can make a big difference .

In my final hour i managed a fish nearly every cast sometimes the rod was getting dragged round while i was still sinking the line , it was a shame to call an end to my short session but it looked like it might rain a had also had run out of soaked pellets plus my lovely wife had made my tea and i was starving .In the three hours i had been here i managed 58 fish which worked out at one every three minutes not a bad catch rate by anyones standard , it was just a shame that only a couple where over a pound but it will be a cracking water when they pack on the weight plus it is ideal for anyone new to the sport or wanting to try a few things out .