Rods&Reels Autumn Series Lychgate Fishery 25th Sept

Today saw me down at Lychgate Fishery for the second round of the Rods & Reels autumn series. This venue was completely unknown to me and a few anglers on how to approach it due to it being a private lake that doesn’t see many matches.

After visiting to the venue the day before and catching up with the manger of the lake I decided on an all out silver fish attack. Reasons being there were carp in the lake but were to double figures and didn’t show all the time.

Well after watching a few anglers mixing up buckets of groundbait and the likes it was time for the draw in went my hand and out came peg 34 which meant nothing to me as there was no past form on how the peg produced so it was a suck it and see.

When I got to the peg I was in kind of a bowl with a bit space to play around with.

The advice I had been given was that I didn’t need to fish too far out to catch the roach which moved around in shoals around the lake. With this in mind I decided on a 3 prong attack fishing 4m straight out then a swim 10m at the 2o’clock position. I would also set up a pole line down the left hand margin at 6m.

For the 4m line I set up a Hillbilly F1 Wire taking 5 number 10 shot spread down a 0.10mm main line to a 6inch 0.08 hooklength finished off with a Drennan silverfish maggot hook size 18 elastic choice was a Browning Cenex number 6. Bait for this line as well as the 10m line was a fine dark groundbait mixed the night before to make it inert laced with red maggot. For the 10m line I used the same set up just a heavier Hillbilly F1 Wire float.

The idea being to catch off one line then move to the other once that line had gone dead and just to keep feeding and alternating between the two swims.

For the 6m margin line I set up a Hillbilly Chump 0.30gr with a bulk of number 9 shot with 2 droppers to register the float once settled. Line dia would be 0.12mm main line to a 0.10mm 6 inch hooklength finished off with a size 18 Tubertini 808 hook eslatic choice would be a Browning Cenex number 10 elastic. Bait for this line would be chopped worm and caster hopping to draw out one or two of the bigger perch that were residents in the edge helping to hopefully bump the weight up.

With everything all it set the all in was called and out I went with the pole feeding all three lines 4m,10m with 2 golf ball sized groundbait balls each and my 6m line with a 250ml cup of fine chopped worm and caster.

Moving straight onto the 4m line saw the float shoot under and a 2oz roach on the end. This continued for the first 30 minutes then the line went dead so a move over to the 10m line saw me bag a few more.

Then both swims went dead, adjusting the shotting and depth failed to pay off to the point of me scratching my head. I moved across to the margin line and managed to bag a few 2oz-3oz perch but not the 1lb-2lb+ perch I was looking for. I re-fed that line and went back over to the 4m,10m lines to see if the fish had turned back onto the bait this was not to be and with an hour to go I knew I needed to temp a bonus perch out of the edge.

In went the rig and this time shot under this wasn’t a perch it was a carp not what I was looking for and as the elastic ripped out and shot across the lake I just held on knowing once the elastic bottomed out it was a case of waiting for the hooklength to go which in the end it did.

That was about it and I saw no more action (if there were fish moving back into the swim that carp made sure the backed off again.

With the all out being called I was disappointed with what I had caught as I feel if I had off been more opened minded I think a hemp or a bread punch line could of worked .

With the weigh in coming around I managed to put 1lb8oz on the scales leaving to take 2^nd in section.

Oh well always next time.