Team Inbetweeny – Poplars – 8th January

Today I was joining Gordon, John and Stu for a day on Poplar up at Sessay, Poplars isn’t a lake I fish very often up here but I’ve always done OK on. Robbie told me anywhere around peg 37 in the bay would be a good spot for the day but we were going to do a little rover match between pegs 45 and 39. I managed to draw second pick and plumped for 45 where Pete Whale had done well from during the week. Gordon was on 43, Stu was on 39 and John decided to go on 37, (which wasn’t a peg to choose from).

My main reason for fishing today was to try out a homemade float, if it was successful I could then make a few more, the last thing i wanted to do was to make a whole bunch for them to all be useless! I had two different types to try today, both 0.4g pencil float bodies with 1mm stems, 1.8mm hollow tips and figure of 8 spring eyes. One stem was stainless steel, the other clear glass fibre. I’d been warned about the stainless steel stem being too thick, this was proved when it sank under its own weight!! The glass fibre stem version took six No.8’s, and a No.10 dropper. This wasn’t the ideal float to use today as it was pretty cold, although relatively mild for January, but at least I could get an idea of how it sat in the water, and if it took any water on throughout the day.

I set this float up for fishing down the track at 11m on 0.12 mainline, 0.10 hooklength and a size 18 Gama Pellet and Paste hook, this was finished with a doubled 6 elastic. I also setup another rig for fishing across, this was on the same line, hook and elastic but with a 4x10 Malman Cedar.

Bait for the day was a pint of maggots, some black swim stim, micros and 4mm expanders. At the “all in” everyone was still waiting for me as i’d not shot tested my floats prior to today so was still fiddling about getting it to sit correctly.

I was finally ready and went to 11m to fish down the track armed with a 4mm pellet and a fruit shoot with a down micro’s in and topped off with some black swim stim. First put in I had an indication and struck like Zorro! I missed it but lowered the rig back in this time when the float bobbed I was ready and met it with a gentle lift and it was fish on. The bites were so shy that they float only just pulled under the surface so you could still see it under water. It was fish number one in the net, a small F1 about 10oz. Stu and Gordon seemed to catch one at the exact same time I had done so we were all in lead, with John the only one to not have caught (off the flyer peg).

We were all steadily putting one or two fish into our nets apart from John who was still fishless after the first hour, much to his dismay as everyone that turned up for a chat we’d get to ask John how many he’d had to rub salt into the wound!

After two hours I’d had ten fish down the track and was doing OK but this is where the bites stopped, coincidental that Gordon and Stu had also stopped catching, probably because of all the commotion by our “visitors” and more likely the curse of Dave Wright!!

John had started catching one or two now that we’d all stopped and in the end he was getting a bite every put in and being rewarded with a small carp or F1 every time including some much better bonus fish up to 4 or 5lb.

So all our teasing hadn’t troubled John and he was now sailing away with the lead. We stopped fishing at about 3 as we were all bored (apart from Bagger Livesey on the flyer peg)!!

We did a quick weigh in, my 11 fish went 9lb odd, Gordon DNW’ed, Stu had 6lb odd and John........just shy of 40lb......

So an enjoyable day and it was even more rewarding seeing one of my own floats go under......and beating Mr T for the pound!