This trip out to Rufford Meadows Fisheries had been a must go to in the fishing diary for a while and after great reviews from a few of the lads from Fishing in the North West it was the Sunday crew’s time to give it a go, bit short on bodies this week so it was down to myself, Dave H, Mike and Callum to do our best on a new venue for us all.
Under new ownership the venue has been tidied up with new footpaths,trees cut back, toilet facilities and Neil has said this is just a start with plenty more improvements to follow.
Not the biggest of venues but one of the deepest I’ve fished which involved some preparation work at home making pole rigs up then cutting them back to suit using 0.8 and 1g floats and getting the shot bulked up to get the bait down to the bottom quick,also I prepped 3 guru elasticated feeder with various hook patterns.
Choosing the widest part of the venue gave me good scope for my feeder,using a 24g Guru elasticated feeder filled with trigonella soaked micros and dead red maggots and banded 8mm trigonella pellets and hook bait
Once I found my spot I clipped up and put in 10 feeders full of pellets to boost my swim ,and the bites started to come,each bite or take ripping my tip round not always resulting in a fish, The first part of the day brought me fish from 2.5lb to 5lb but these fish fought like fish twice their weight
2 pegs down from me Dave was off to flyer fishing into the deep water on his pole about 8m out getting into Carp,tench and decent silvers,later on his margin swim brought him some really good carp and plenty of crucians
Michael and Callum were further down on a narrower part of the lake which seemed sheltered from the wind but still with enough ripple to give the fish confidence to feed shalla,fishing feeder and pole the lads were also having a great day using Aurora pop ups to the far side between the rushes and sweetcorn close in the margins both using micros soaked in trigonella as feed
A harsh change in the weather brought strong winds and a threat of rain but one thing that stayed the same was the fish were still hungry, my second net of the day seen the stamp of fish stay the same with few bonus bigger ones
Nets drying off and it was time to get in the margins,white hydro wasn’t enough to stop some of these carp bolting off,feeding plenty of micros and dead reds using pellets and hook bait made for a frantic last couple of hours for us all with the bigger fish moving in for an afternoon feed
I went with a plan to fish the pole but ended up using the feeder most of the day. Dave next to me fished the pole most of the day and Callum and Mike chopped and changed all day but the one thing we all had in common was we all caught over 100lb of carp each backed up with some great silver fish which tells me this is going to be a venue that will fish well all year round,it doesn’t strike me that this is an easy venue to fish as other people round the lake were catching but not as prolific,this venue looks like every peg will produce fish if fished correctly and the right quality bait used
I will be returning pretty soon and beefing up my tackle for a crack at some of the bigger fish we seen cruising round and take it from me they looked around the 20lb mark if not bigger
big thanks to Neil for his very kind hospitality and sharing his knowledge on the venue
until next time as always its been a pleasure, Brian
mmmm
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