On one occasion
while fishing the middle lake at the height of Summer, the best swims alongside
the island, were taken on both sides of the lake. I started fishing the middle
section and after a couple of hours the shoals tended to move closer and closer
to the island due to the pressure of loads of anglers in the area. My swim died
on me and I decided to give a swim well to my left and under a line of trees, a
go. The lake was just a little deeper there and they had built a small
retaining wall along that section. You could sit behind the 3 ft wall and rest
your rod on the top of it. The wall gave you a bit of cover and with trees
behind, your form was not highlighted on the horizon. You did not have to cast
out a long way as you did in the open swims of the middle and island swims, so
the fishing was much easier and less affected by the wind. The lake was quite a
bit narrower at this end and a cast of around 40 feet would get you to the
middle.
After about
an hour I had caught only a few silver fish for my efforts. I was just mixing
some ground bait up and had pulled my tackle into the side. I was about half
way through the job and I glanced down just to see my float slowly drifting
along then sliding under the surface. I thought that it would be a little perch
or something like that, so I was slow to decide whether to strike the bite or
not. The decision was taken from me as all of a sudden the rod lurched out
towards the lake. I managed to grab it just as it flew over the little
retaining wall. My hands were covered in ground bait and I was in a right mess.
The reel handle was spinning round and it caught my knuckles. It was really
painful, but I had no time to consider that as whatever was on the other end
rocketed out towards the middle of the lake.
How my
little size twenty hook managed to stay attached was a miracle. As I was
playing the fish I had to continually dip each hand into the water to get rid
of the ground bait. It turned
out to be a plump tench of around 3lb. Although I thought that it was a fluky
fish, I decided to bait the area at the end of my rod tip. With all the
commotion going on, I thought that any self respecting fish would be long gone.
Imagine my surprise when 15 minutes later the float slid away again. Although
this fish shot off just like the first, I was in control this time and soon
another nice tench was in the net. I had never hooked fish so close in and I
found it difficult to stop myself pulling out the hook when I struck. I think
it helped that my rod had a particularly soft tip and this cushioned the
strike. I was totally amazed that the fish frequented an area so close in to
the side. I decided to plumb the area carefully and I found a slightly deeper
depth about 6ft out from the wall and just this side of it was a weed bed
travelling about 12ft parallel with the wall.
Anglers must
have fished there totally unaware of the feature and been fishing over and past
it without realising it was there. The weed bed and the wall must have been a
shield between the angler and the fish. The tench would probably be patrolling
along the bank and mopping up the bait dumped at the side at the end of each
fishing session. The angler would be unaware of the presence of the fish due to
the weed bed.
I cannot
take any accolade from the discovery as it was a total accident, but I fished
on and caught another 9 tench. I fished the swim quite a few times that summer
and it worked a treat, although I did pull out of a few fish now and again. It
was great fishing, guaranteed to sharpen your reflexes and it gave me
opportunities to sit on my hands and wait for the float to absolutely slide out
of sight.
During the larger matches it became the luck of the draw as to
whether you could catch the 60 to 70lb required to win these popular matches.
If the carp fed in the top lake, there were a few swims which would always top
the weights.
If not, the swims just to the left of the
island could not be beaten by anyone in the small lake in front of Longleat
House. All in all, well worth a pleasure session and even fishing the matches
during the Summer months, providing you draw the middle or top lake. After
about the end of September we stopped fishing the matches as they became very
peggy, with the shallower two lakes unable to compete with the much deeper top
lake.
If you didn’t draw the top lake you knew you
where only fishing for a section win as the match would invariably be won from
there.
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