Woodstock

I came across a Child of God, he was walking on down the road……sorry, chanelling Joni Mitchell there for a second. Tuesday session and the weather is warming up to a potential 30 C peak tomorrow and Thursday. So I’d already decided that Wednesday was going to be S******n rather than E*****m, fish 3-8 rather than 12.30 to 5.30, plus there’s a lot more shade. But that still left me with a decision for today, as it was definitely already too warm to be inside and just sitting in the garden doesn’t work for me.

There were a few options. My original thought was Hendre but fishing wag over caster and hemp instead of sitting it out for Bream. Tempting, but unfortunately a toxic combination of businesses, schools and pubs being shut means that Hendre is like a fair and everyone who possesses anything with rings on it is out fishing and drinking tinnies and smoking weed. Nothing wrong with that but they could do the critical bits in their back gardens and leave the bank free for anglers. So the Bettws ponds were a better option. Morgan’s Pool on the tip? Bit hot and sticky TBH. OK then, Woodstock and on the pole because, so far this season, the long pole has been conspicuous by its total lack of use.

I opted for peg 38 as it met all the criteria, in that it was very close to the carpark and…….err…..that was the only criteria. I set up to fish a positive line at 11m left, groundbait/dead/reds/caster, and a negative line 11m right over micros, plus a positive line straight out at 7m. 0.4 and 0.5g Drennan Lake replicas that Steve Lane made for me, size 16 Sensas 3405s to 0.10mm, and I kicked off with triple dead reds.

The response wasn’t instant but irt did build up, first fish long left was a big Skimmer, followed by a bit of noise then a run of F1 C**p, and I went on to take another big Skimmer, two Proper Bream and a fair number of F1 C**p, mainly long left but I had some F1 C**p short, and I ended up with about 10Lbs of Bream and 10Lbs of F1 C**p on dead reds, casters, bits of worm or corn, or to put it another way I caught 10Lbs of fish. But the F1 C**p thingies did provide some entertainment in between the actual fishing.

Nets are allowed again now (hooray!) but no catch shot because I’d made the mistake of putting the F1 C**p thingies in with my fish.