With mild weather across the country it seemed a great time to try for an early season bream, so with a week off of work I headed to Oxford to target a large gravel pit that has produced some impressive specimens, with boats allowed on this water, I quickly donned my life jacket and headed out in search of a likely spot, despite the cold winter most of the bottom seemed to still be covered with fine weed, so when I discovered an area of clean gravel glistening on the lake bed, I knew I had found a popular feeding area, with plenty of fishmeal ground bait, small pellets and a scattering of corn on the spot, my baited rigs were cast to the spot. After a long period of inactivity, I began to get indications, and proceeded to land a procession of tench, initially smaller male fish of 4-5lb fell foul of my rubber corn offerings, later in the session I was lucky to snare a lovely female fish of 8lb 2 oz that really showed that spring is on its way.
Being an angler who likes plenty of variety in my fishing, I headed across to Linear fisheries Oxlease lake for the final night of my session, I hadn’t fished the lake since 2002 and amazingly on my arrival the only swim available on the bank I hoped to fish, was the same one I had fished eight years previously! On arrival I cast my rubber corn bream rigs out whilst I got my carp tackle sorted, ten minutes later and I received a very twitchy indication, I struck and after a strong fight, landed a nice mirror of 24lb 9oz, sticking with the same rigs I landed another small stocky and a gorgeous chestnut flanked 25-02 by the next morning.
The following week was prime time for a big perch, and with my good friend Joe Hoyle home from university we had our usual tour of the local commercials, whilst putting together a magazine feature. Simple live bait tactics were used, with baits positioned against marginal features, with regular introductions of chopped worm and red maggots fed around our bobbing loafer floats to attract prey fish and perch. The week went even better than we could have hoped and we landed around 35 perch including 14 over 2lb and 8 over 3lb, topped by a brace of 3lb 9oz specimens, once again reinforcing the view that commercials really are the place to track down a super stripy.
Plans for the next few weeks involve heading even further into the South-West in search of the beasts of Bodmin, the giant Wels catfish of Anglers Paradise, simple boilie and pellet tactics offer me a great chance of contacting a new personal best, and with the wonderfully eccentric Zyg Gregorek on hand, I’m sure we will have a great time.
