May 17th - Pleasure Session at Sessay - Oaks Lake‏

With no club match this weekend and with the weather not looking too promising I was in two minds whether to go or not. However come dinnertime on the Sunday I was itching to go and decided on an afternoon up at Sessay where I planned on practicing my paste fishing. I arrived at the fishery at about 2:30 and all the lakes we’re matched up, there was no room on Alders, Poplars or Maple so I had a quick walk round Oaks and Firs and eventually decided to settle on the Oaks down the bottom end where Chris and Andy Nattrass were fishing. They’d both had a few on a variety of methods so I was fairly confident of catching a few for a change.

I’ve never really got into paste fishing but would quite like another string to my bow seeing as its wearing a bit thin of late and nothing seems to be working for me!

I only set up one rig, a 0.5g BGT paste float on 0.17 Powerline, a hooklength of 0.15 Powerline to a Mustad Carp Pellet in a size 14, although these hooks are a bit bigger than conventional hook sizes. Elastic was 14 Maver latex.

For bait today I mixed up some Sensas Pellet Power ground bait into a stiff paste with the view of adding more water the more confident I got with it. I also had a handful of 4mm pellets to kick start the swim.

I plumbed up carefully and settle on a flat area at about 7m. I’d plumbed up so that only the very tip of the float was showing however the shotting would only just drag the body under and the paste would do the rest of the work.

First put out with a ten pence size blob of paste and half a dozen pellets saw no action and when the float finally rose out of the water I struck to discover the paste had eventually gone. I would repeat this for the rest of the day and slowly build up a swim with my hook bait. On the third put in, the float rose out the water again and I just presumed the paste had disintegrated again before it slowly slid off into the depths and I was rewarded with my first fish, an F1 of about 2lb. For the next hour I was slowly building my swim and apart from a few liners I had nothing else in the net. I decided to dump in a small handful of pellets to see if I could interest a few more fish. By this time it was absolutely bucketing it down and most people were packing up or had already gone.

The big dump of bait had worked and I was soon into my second fish of the day, similar to the first, another good F1.

I’d been continually adding a bit more water to my paste so by the end of the session it was just about hanging on the hook and it proved to work as the bites were coming faster and easier to read.

I was slowly getting used to reading the bites and knowing when to strike and luckily I had plenty of chances to practice, I ended up putting 13 carp in the net, all at least 2lb a piece and a couple at 3 or 4lb, oh and one lonesome Ide! So all in all I probably had about 30lb in 3 hours, and the first hour I only had the one fish!

I’d had a really good day and given myself a proper induction into paste fishing. I just need a good draw on the next match to try it out again!