German Lane 22/02/11

Today I visited one of the lakes on my 11 venues for 2011! German Lane is situated just through Euxton and has two lakes one a match lake canal style and the other a medium sized lake with two islands in it. I heard a lot about this place through maggotdrowners.com and was looking forward to my day.

I arrived at 11am and decided to fish the main lake I'd heard this had lots of carp in and was a good all round lake, plus I knew the match lake was going to fill up later because there is a match on Sunday and a few Brig lads were coming down to practice.

I decided to start with the feeder rod and set up a medium sized method feeder with a really short hooklength of about 3 inch. I was using black breadcrumb and 2mm carp pellets on the feeder and I had maggots and corn for the hook.

First cast to the island/jettee and I was getting knocks and twitches on the rod straight away but no solid bite to strike at. When I brought it in the red maggots had been sucked to death! This persisted for the first 30mins I then tried corn but to no avail.

While I had the feeder rod out I was also feeding a close in line for my pole. I set my pole up at 11.45am the rig I chose was too short to fish on the bottom I was about 6inches off the bottom but too lazy to change it. I was into a small roach first put in on maggot. I caught about 5 small roach in the next 15 mins and decided to give it a rest but continue to feed.

The feeder line had gone very quiet so with a bit of deep thinking I decided to try a longer hooklength thinking the weight of the feeder might be putting them off. I was right! I put a hooklength on that was about 8 inches long first cast with corn on and I was in to this bigger roach.

Next cast same again. But then it went quiet. So back to the pole and I was getting a bite every put in but they seemed to be sucking the maggot and when I struck letting go but I still managed to catch steadily. I decided to come shallower to see if the bigger fish where up in the water and also started to throw in about 5-10 maggots with each put in. This seemed to work as the roach started taking the maggot rather than just sucking it and the size started to get better as you can see from these pics.

I decided to pack up around 4.30pm I probably caught over 30 roach but didnt need the landing net all day (a few of the bigger roach may have justifed using the net but I was saving it for a bigger fish!). I could have caught more if I concentrated on the pole but thought the feeder to the island would definately have produced a carp or two? I'm told that in the summer off the same peg I was on today fishing about 9m out using pellet and paste you get loads of carp so maybe they were just sleeping today??

I enjoyed my day and will definately give it another go in the summer but was a little underwhelmed just one carp or bream would have made it a great day but again at this time of year a decent days fishing I suppose.

Regards,

The Maggot Dangler.