#kingstonseymore

[afishermanstale]

4 hours, 3 PB's!

With temperatures finally rising and signs of a decent summer on the way, we saw the arrival of the hottest day of the year. It wasn't a difficult decision to go fishing, so my fishy friend James and I hatched a plan to finish work early and head off to Plantations in Kingston Seymore for a few hours to see what we could catch.

The lakes were quite busy, as expected on a beautiful hot evening, but we found two pegs we fancied, James in a little corner on peg 37 and I opted for peg 36 that juts out towards the middle island but has some good features in the margins to fish to.

James was float fishing in the margins with corn and balled in a hefty amount of groundbait and pellets before fishing just over depth.

I opted to fish on the deck with an inline method feeder and some of 'Martin's Miracle Meat!' that I had had success with at Cofton back in April, sweetcorn and pellet being my change baits.

After swiftly tackling up we eventually started fishing just after 5pm and were looking forward to a good four hours dangling until dusk.

I decided to just chuck my feeder into the margins to my right and resisted the temptation of the island. I was soon rewarded for my choice and within ten minutes my tip ripped round and I was into my first fish, after a frantic battle a nice common carp of around 5-6 lbs was in the net and after a few quick pictures was safely back in the lake.

There were fish showing all over the lake and it was clear the carp were almost ready to spawn and over the next few days I'd expect the lake to be bustling with activity of spawning fish.

Meanwhile, James was starting to tempt fish into his swim with a couple of pristine roach falling for the corn.

There was plenty activity in my swim, lots of knocks and twitching of the tip then another slower take which turned into a feisty battle which I thought was another small carp but as I brought the fish to the surface, a lovely little tench appeared. My first ever of this species and about 1-2 lbs, I was over the moon!

James then started to get into some bigger fish with a couple of carp and skimmers.

In fact both of us were catching regularly, I ended up with 3 PB's, my little tench, a common and a mirror carp of about 6 lbs. Included in my final tally were six more carp averaging 4-5 lbs and a couple of skimmer bream. A great haul in a couple of hours, mostly falling to meat and a few fish caught on corn.

James finished up with seven carp, topped with a beautiful common at around 4-5 lbs, four bream, two of which were lovely conditioned fish around a couple of pounds each and finally a couple of roach.

A great evening session and a perfect way to unwind after a day at work. Plantations is fishing well at the moment but probably best to leave it for a while while the fish spawn. We will be returning in a couple of weeks for another evening session for sure.

[afishermanstale]

Bars of silver.

Thankfully the weather has improved over the last week, well at least the temperatures have, so I was hoping that the fish would be back on the feed after last weeks chilly adventure!

I opted to fish my old favourite, Plantation lakes in Kingston Seymore. It was to be my first trip there of 2012 and it turned out to be my best session on the coarse lake ever!

After having plenty of time over the winter to read up and glean information of how to best fish in the winter months and of course some compulsory Christmas presents to try out I was eager to hit the bank.

As I mentioned the temperatures were much higher than of late and being the last day of half term I thought it would be busy, but with only another couple of cars in the car park I was pleasantly surprised to have a good choice of pegs. I opted for one of my favourites, 39 tucked away in a little corner of the coarse lake. I was targeting silvers, mainly roach and decided to chuck in a couple of balls of groundbait laced with casters, dead maggots and chopped worm to get the swim started as I set up.

I'm trying to improve my float fishing at the moment and set up a simple light waggler rig with a tiny size 20 hook and single red maggot to fish over my groundbait. I wasn't fishing far out and was more interested in improving my accuracy and creating a tight ball of feed and fish over that.

After a leisurely set up I baited up and already I could see the fish were interested with little knocks and shy bites. It wasn't long before my first roach came to the net, not huge but a good size and my tactics seemed to be working. In fact I caught for most of the day with some lovely skimmer bream adding to my net of roach. I kept feeding the bites and occasionally topping up with groundbait when things went quiet. In total I managed my biggest haul of silvers ever, 5 good sized skimmers and 16 roach. A great day and just goes to show winter fishing can be productive if you approach things in the right way.