Widows flash fishery

November 18th

widdows fishery

With the weather looking pretty reasonable for the time of year , blue skies , light winds and a settled ten degree temperature which had been similar all week , so with this in mind i decided to make the effort to get on the bank again for the first time in a couple of months after my little operation just to see if i could get the enjoyment back . Obviously when you are pleasure fishing you want a few bites to keep you active and warm so today i would be hopefully targeting the silvers , which are plentiful in Widdows flash fishery with some nice sized skimmers and roach although i had not been here in a couple of years but i couldn’t see much changing in that time .

After my short ten minute drive to the fishery i was surprised to see half a dozen anglers already there which looked promising although they was on the favoured pegs , from previous experience i knew that the car park side pegs were very shallow so those were out of the question and i finally settled on peg 19 were it was a couple of feet deeper but i had to contend with the footpath behind me although i could not see that being too much of a problem in the brisk conditions and i could always break down twice if it got busy with dog walkers .

On settling in at my home for the next couple of hours i decided to keep things simple while it was a short session and i just set up ;

top four line towards my left at the bottom of the near slope in 4ft and i would feed this by hand with maggots so used a 4×10 maggie float with a strung out shotting pattern , main line was the usual 014 garbo and hook length was six-inch of 010 garbo which had a size 20 guru maggot hook attached .

eight meter line down the center of the lake were it was just over five foot deep and i would feed maggots here by catty so i used a 4×12 maggie float with a bulk plus dropper shotting pattern  , main line was the usual 014 garbo and hook length was six-inch of 010 garbo which had a size 18 guru maggot hook attached .

At eleven o’clock i was ready to start fishing and as i was setting up i kept an eye on those other anglers near me but i had only seen one small silver being caught , so with this in mind i was going to be very wary with the amount of bait i put in . I sprinkled a dozen maggots in down the track and began on my top four swim throwing four maggots around my float every couple of minutes then laying my rig through the falling bait , after nearly an hour i was still biteless and i had still only seen that small silver been caught right at the start of the session , so i needed to either have a review of things or just pack up and go home thankfully i managed to talk myself into doing the former of them and plumbed up a couple of new swims ;

13m directly in front at the bottom of the far bank slope were it was just over 4ft deep

13m towards my right down the middle of the track were i found a small meter by meter hole where it was just six-inch deeper at just over five foot but it could make all the difference at this time of year when the fishing was difficult .

pushed my top four swim about six-inch further down the near side slope ;

I also mixed up half a pint of micros too see if the fish meal could get the skimmers interested in feeding and i decided to kinder pot in some pellets plus a couple of maggots directly in front of me then potted twice that amount on my long channel swim which i would leave for at least twenty minutes so that hopefully the skimmers would settle on it , all the time that i had done the alterations to my swims i had continued to loose feed maggots on my top four swim so i gave this another try while my other lines settled down a bit . It took about five minutes before i finally had my first indication and i then had four nice sized roach on the bounce , i couldn’t quite work out if it was just the time of day or that the slight drop down the slope had made that much of a difference but i wasnt complaining anyway .

I decided to rest my top four swim for a while and went on to my 13m line directly in front of me , after taping in a couple of maggots plus a sprinkling of micros and no sooner had my float settled then it slide under with a ten ounce skimmer making its way to the bank , for the next thirty minutes i kept putting the odd fish in the net and i was quite happy getting a few bites at last but i had to be really careful with the amount of feed i was putting in because if i over did it i would have to wait quite some time for an indication .

After awhile the bites on my long line had almost disappeared i didn’t want to kill the swim completely so i gave it another feed of micros before giving it a rest and trying my channel swim , i had to wait a lot longer for indications but the fish i did catch were well worth it because they were skimmers touching the two-pound mark and for the rest of my short session i rotated between all three swims picking a couple of fish off from each before swapping lines . At three o’clock it got noticeably colder and i was waiting a lot longer for a bite so i made the decision to call time on my fishing and after my very poor start i was pleased to end up with thirty skimmers plus a dozen roach for about twenty pounds , not to bad in the conditions and after my break away from the sport lets hope i don’t leave it as long before my next trip out on the bank .