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The fishery in question is a strange place at times and often presents a challange. Its a naturally formed venue thats had a few stockings of craps over the years to add to the already resident roach, tench, crucians and skimmers. Its depth varys from 1 foot to 4 foot in places and the bottom is mostly smelly silt. Its quite open to the elements so come a windy day, it tends to catch it and this can make fishing a pole line tough going especially in a foot of water
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Because of this i decided to give the method a go last year for the simple reason that a) presentation should be better when its towing like hell due to the wind and b) you can get out to 16/17/18meters and catch those cheeky fish sat out in what they think is safe water. I do enjoy fishing the method but if i had a choice i would sooner be fishing the pole line but hey, sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do, and that method can often catch you some bonus fish (or ten) on this water. My only gripe with the smallest methods i could find is, well, they just arent small enough!
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With some sticking and poking the devices was complete and me and my friend were both confident it would catch. So after my dad dropping out of our little pleasure session it left me free to go try out the newly created item.
I arrived at the pool around 10:30am, the sun was shineing and the birds were singing. The air was fresh and there was a nice gentle but not particularly warm west/north westly breeze. This added a nice ripple to the water and if i am honest the pool looked bang on for a play on the pole. I resisted this urge though even if i did have it with me as all i really wanted to do was see if this banjo caught some fish. With only 4 other people on the pool i had a good choice of pegs and opted for peg 6, a peg with a nice bit of open water and a lilly bed about 20 meters out to my right slighty. If the going was hard i planned to chuck to this but really my main aim was to just get it out in front of me in open water and fish it as i would a match.
I first sorted out a little bait. Although the weather was not to bad this morning the temps of the water were still low and based on the match results from previous weeks the fish were still not spread out and getting their heads down. Most fish were being caught on tiny amounts of feed so i felt the best way to go foward was with some 2mm soaked feed pellets, a few trusty reds and whites and a small amount of IM5 green. I planned to use the pellets and the IM5 in the banjo switching to see which they fancied. Hook baits would be mags, pellet and some white boilies i had to try. While the colour of these boilies was bang on i just felt they might be alittle to big at 8mm.
The bait;
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With the bait sorted and the other gear all setup if was time to have a chuck, clip up and then have the first proper cast of the day. I loaded the feeder up starting with the IM5 and 2 live mags. A gentle chuck and......i managed to catch a over hanging tree behind me and damage the stem on the banjo
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I helped to sink the line alittle and placed the rod on the rest just gently tightning up to the banjo. It was then just a case of seeing if the fish wanted to play today. Well as it turned out i didnt have to wait long
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The hail hitting the water. You can see the pads just coming up on the right of the picture. On the left you can see a chap sporting some new Maver/Sensas clothing
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The switch back to IM5 and dead mag made a big difference and i was soon back into fish, picking up a few skimmers along the way. The carp were between a 1lb 1/2 and 2 1/2lb at a guess. I think i had 10 or 11 of those along with the couple of skimbos. Had i not had the interuptions and wasted (not really the right word) an hour or so on the pellet/boilie i might of caught afew more. Most important thing really was testing out the banjo and i felt it worked quite well, even if i did break it on my first cast
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Heres a few more shots i took on my camera phone.
The rig;
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I must of had the pellet on when i took this shot;
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And the catch....i did ask them to keep still...
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