Petersfinger Midnight Visit
One year I
decided to fish the lakes at Petersfinger on the opening day of the new season.
On each of the three evenings leading up to the “off”, I pre-baited a couple of
swims in the top lake and just in case they were taken by other anglers, I
baited another two in the bottom lake as alternatives. On the actual evening of
the 15th I could not get off work until about six.
As I had to
race off to the lakes to get one of my chosen swims I didn’t have time to have
my evening meal. My mother told me not to worry because she would bring me down
some fish and chips later in the evening. I told her that I would probably be
on the first lake she would come to as she entered the fishery.
She told me
to expect her around eleven as she was working that evening. On arrival myself
I was dismayed to see my chosen swims were already taken up by other anglers.
In fact every swim was taken on the lake and there was no room for me.
I made the
long walk with my tackle down to the lower lake which ran alongside the River
Avon. Luckily I managed to get the further away swim out of the two I had pre-baited.
The nearer one was taken by another angler. I had chosen to pre-bait the two
swims as the nearer one was around eight feet deep and the further one was
about four feet in depth.
My thinking
was that if the deeper swim didn’t fish, the shallower one might produce the
goods for me and vice versa. As it was I had to be satisfied with the shallower
swim. I made my way round to my swim which jutted out into the lake slightly. This
made for easy fishing because I did not have to cast out very far and I could
see my float easier.
By the time
I had set up it was almost dark. As
other anglers had been set up for ages, I had to try and dissuade them from
coming up and standing in my swim to talk with me. The reason for this was that
I had a shallow depth and too much commotion might frighten off the fish in my
swim.
Over the
last few days I had boiled up two large buckets the latest magic bait of stewed
wheat seeds. These had been introduced into the four swims for the last three
evenings. I intended to use maggot or caster as hook bait and to loose feed
grains of stewed wheat on a regular basis. I had no idea what fish I might
catch, but expected roach, tench or bream if I was lucky.
The float
that I intended to use was a longish waggler, fixed bottom end only. This would
allow me to sink the line below the surface, so the wind wouldn’t blow my float
and ultimately my bait unnaturally along the bottom. The float had a little red
neon light fitted into the top of it so I could see it in the darkness. I used
a small torch to pick out the little red light. When the light disappeared I
knew it would be a bite and that was when I would strike into a fish,
hopefully.
As the time
got closer towards midnight I was feeling very hungry and I began to wonder if
my mum had forgotten about my fish and chips. All of a sudden I heard a bit of
a commotion going on in the top lake.
One by one I
could hear anglers calling out “shush” and “be quiet will you”. After a while
the commotion seemed to be getting nearer and nearer to me. It was pitch black
now.
Then I heard my mum’s voice shouting “Gordon, Gordon,
is that you”? “ I have your fish and
chips, where the hell are you”? I ran
over to her and realised she expected me to be on the other lake. She had
visited every angler on the other lake and finally, half an hour later had
found me.
She was not
too pleased I can tell you. I walked back with her up to the car park and
wolfed the fish and chips down with abandon because I was so hungry. I suppose
many of the other anglers had smelled the fish and chips. Because they would
have liked to have had them themselves I think that if they had seen me right
then they would have probably lynched me on the spot.
The next day was very embarrassing for me as I
took more than a little stick from a lot of them about mummy looking after her
little boy.
I must get
back to the actual fishing. This started when the club official shouted “All
in”. About eighty anglers made their first cast of the new season. I was full
of optimism due to my pre-baiting sessions and fully anticipated a string of
fish hooking themselves on my baits. Wishful thinking on my part I think. What
actually happened for the first six hours was in fact nothing. I did not have
one bite in the darkness hours. I just couldn’t figure out why. The only thing
that might have caused it was that the fish were in the deeper water over to my
right. The night had been quite cold so that was a possibility.
As soon as
the sun came up over the horizon it was as if someone had thrown the fish
feeding switch on. I reckon that the shallower swim that I was in had warmed up
first and that encouraged them to start feeding. My swim became a cauldron of
pin prick bubbles hitting the surface. Soon I was hooking one fish after
another. Some really nice roach found my caster bait irresistible. Most were
over the pound.
Every now
and again my float would slide away as the tench got in on the act and I
finished up at lunchtime with eight or nine around the three pound mark with
one hitting four pounds.
Two nice
chub around the two pound mark found their way into my keep net. I was snapped
up about three times during the session. These were probably carp, which went
off like rockets in the shallow water depth. I was not very proud of losing
those fish because I hate to hurt any fish by leaving a hook in their mouths.
I just had
to hope that the carp were able to transfer the hooks in snags on the lake.
This is something they seemed to be expert at doing when you hooked them
normally. By about three in the afternoon I had about seventy pound of fish in
my keep nets. I was over the moon and decided to call it a day then.
The next day
I fished the deeper swim and again I had roach and tench. The hook bait I used for
this session was maggot. It worked a bit better than caster. It could have been
that maggots could be seen more easier in the deeper water and made a bit more
movement. I fished from nine in the morning until four in the afternoon and
caught about fifty pounds of fish.
I did try
fishing with stewed wheat in both of the swims but the fish did not want to
know about it. This was very strange, because I had heavily pre-baited with it.
I have no answer to this. That’s fishing for you. I was unable to get to fish
either of my swims for about two months after that as a syndicate of five
anglers were in them on every weekend.
They
congregated around that corner and no swims were available over each Saturday
and Sunday. This became a feature around the fishery on the first two months of
each new season. I hated it that the club only half heartedly chastised these
anglers and they took no real action to stop them saving swims for each other.
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