La Ridelee

[smufter]

Just to let you know how the trip went (other than moaning about it) which I went on with my daughter Lydia, my best mate Norman and his nephew Anthony.

Arrived around 6.30pm on the Saturday, had a quick look around the lake and each picked a swim. Gave Lydia first choice (because we are gentlemen!) and she chose one on the far side of the lake behind the island. I decided to go into the one next to her in case she had problems at all.

During the course of the evening I had a couple of takes, one resulting in banking a lovely conditioned 15lb Common. Anthony landed a smallish (11lb or so) Mirror later in the evening and that was it until the next morning.

Went back into our respective swims and around 9am Lydia noticed a lot of bubbles and fizzing next to the pontoon she was fishing from, so dropped her bait into the middle of it. Some 15 minutes later her rod tip went and she caught a nice 16lb Mirror. Well done Lydia for using your noddle!

No more fish caught that morning but during the evening session on Sunday I had a screamer of a run and landed another Common, this time a 16lb'er.

Monday evening saw Anthony land another smallish mirror, similar size to his first one. He went on to catch one more small mirror and a larger one at 21lb on Friday.

No more fish at all, or runs to be honest, the lake kinda switched off until Wednesday night when I landed another common, this one at 17lb (getting bigger!).

Lydia and I decided to fish two different swims from then on, and moved to two that had not seen any activity (other than Norman dabbling with his pole for Roach) and Thursday evening saw me land my biggest fish of the trip, a nice 23lb Mirror. Liddy didn't have a bite at all in what became known as "No Carp Corner".

I decided to let her have my swim the following morning, she wasn't keen on being given the "pity swim" as she called it, but I was desperate for her to catch a fish.

I had noticed during the week that a lot of fish had been splashing around under a certain tree during the mornings and whilst it was very snaggy decided to have a go, so went and dropped a single piece of plastic maize under it, having to lie on the path to keep out of sight. Within about 10 minutes my line started to move away slowly, the baitrunner started clicking and I pulled out a very hard fighting 13.5 lb Mirror, just managing to stop it going into the nearby weed bed. Liddy had still had no joy, she missed one run which had taken her into weed, struck and felt nothing.

Norman finally caught a fish on Friday night, a small Mirror car around 10 or 11lb.

So the weeks final tally came to.... me (5 fish) Anthony (4 fish largest 21lb Mirror) Lydia and Norman 1 fish each.

Not a brilliant week to be honest, nearly all of the fish we saw "boshing" were in the middle of the lake in the weed which we couldn't fish, with a few big splashes coming from the margins, again very snaggy and impossible to get a bait into. Very few fish were seen in open water.

The lake itself was a lovely size, the swims were ideally placed, and the whole surroundings were good. The fish that we caught were in superb condition.

It's just a shame that other things happened to put us off. If the lake had been clear and fish-able all round, we would return. It was a shame that because of the conditions we had to pack up fishing as soon as it got dark (or shortly after) as we felt that the lake was definitely an "evening" lake but you could not cast in the dark due to the amount of weed. Fishing all night was out of the question, had we been able to then I think that our catch rate would have been much, much better.

 

13.5 Mirror

17lb Common

 

16lb Common

 

Lydia's 16lb Mirror

 

My 23lb Mirror