Heath and Safety Police and Off The Top

The bank holiday weekend was a fairly quiet one, fished for a few hours on Saturday, late afternoon till around ten. When I arrived at the pool I was shocked to see so many pegs cordoned off with bright orange mesh, the council health and safety police had visited the lake and condemned around half of the pegs as being unsafe to fish, four of these pegs I fish on a regular basis.
(best buy some wood and fix them up so I can fish them again!)
The Carp were cruising on the top so a couple of zigs went out to try and tempt a bite. It wasn't long before a fish took one of these baits but it also picked up a lump of weed. I couldn't control the runs and head shakes and eventually it threw the hook. No other baits were picked up. I changed my tactics and tried stalking but the Carp weren't having it as they were in the mood for spawning, nothing could tempt them.

I visited Jubilee on Sunday and managed a single Carp off the top with a cut down boilie and controller, I did try the fly rod but couldn't get a positive take, plenty of fish had a look at the biscuit fly and turned away last minute. Had a sleeper rod in the margins and did get a second fish on this rod.

Went to Jubilee again late on Monday afternoon/evening but had a feeling that things were going to be difficult. The first thing to go wrong was managing to snap the top section of my fly rod, I was just setting up and pulling the line through the rings ready to tie a fly on and there was a 'crunch' sound as the rod broke, don't know what happened there!!.
One of my usual tactics at Jubilee is to have a sleeper rod in the margin, I had two very quick takes but couldn't connect with any of these fish so I just left this rod to carry on doing it's job with a hope that a connection could be made. I fed lots of biscuits to the Carp feeding on the top and after several hours managed to fool one to take, it shot off across the lake with such speed against a tightish drag that it eventually snapped the hook link just behind the hook. Learning from my mistake, the drag was slackened off a couple of clicks, another hook link went on and I carried on firing out the biscuits till I managed another take, at last a Carp on the bank.





A very frustrating and expensive session.