Emerald pool pleasure day,

A recent rare day for me to have a days pleasure fishing for a change as I nearly always seem to be tied to matches on the weekends, A change of scenery and a chance to catch up with Alan & Anita after I had heard the main Emerald Pool had been fishing well for silvers so that was going to be my target today ,

 I Arrived at the fishery to find I had the lake to myself as there were no other hardy soels venturing the bank , Deciding on not making it hard for myself I opted for a swim 2 pegs up from the bottom of the car park bank shelterd from the wind which would give me a short line to fish a 4x10 chanti on 0.10 - 0.08 and a 18 PR 434 and a 0.2 skimmer float on 0.11-0.10 and a 16 808 for what I planed to fish at 13mt in what I thought would be around 4ft off water"

     

                                           ' My Chosen Peg For The Day

 

                                                       My Inside Line

Pluming up on the long line I was surprized it was only 18- 24inches deep'  All the way from my left to right so I plumed back towards me and at around 11mts I found about 3'6 of water so this is were I would target the skimmers over groundbait and just loose feed my inside with casters by hand, I cupped in 4 big pots of wetted loose ground bait with some casters added onto the long line rather than cupping in balls squeezed together with the water being shallow, and 1 soft ball with some casters and maggots on the same line 3mts to my right.

Alan the fishery owner came round as I was tackling up and after a nice chat he let me use a keepnet to take a pic of my catch as he was sure I would do well though he said I had chosen one of the harder pegs on the lake as far as the recent results had been going but not to be deterred and liking a challenge even tho it had been the coldest night at the fishery.

Starting on the line I cupped one ball in it took me ten minutes for my first fish, A carp of 4lb what was not the plan followed by a roach of around 6oz on single red maggot I was cupping a nugget of groundbait in after every 5mins to keep them searching for offerings and I was getting fish up to 12oz but it wasen't fast so after 45mins I switched to my more positive line with a single caster and netted a nice 14oz hybrid first chuck, I caught quite well over this line for the next 30mins with some roach and hybrids pushing the pound mark tho the bites were drying up and getting iffy and I felt that most of my bait had already been eaten" topping up with one ball containing more caster it was time to try my short swim where I had been feeding by hand.

First lay in of the rig on single caster and float shot under and at the net I lost a cracking roach over a 1lb a couple of smaller roach before a 1lb fish was safely netted then I couldn't get a bite mainly for it being just over 2ft deep the fish could be seen flashing when connecting with them but I wasent expecting to catch short in numbers so I carried on feeding it by hand and returned to the long line, Double caster seen me catching some lovely hybrids skimmers and a bonus tench before the bites slowed again becoming more iffy and after a couple of foul hookers it was time to add more bait to pin them to the deck .

By spending the rest of the day swapping between the two lines being careful not to push then to hard I had a great days fishing and in just over 4hrs I had a mixed net of mainly hybrids and big roach for a total of approx. 40lbs