a few pleasure sessions...!

With no matches here till April 5th I just had a few pleasure sessions here the last 2 weekends

Plus I had got my new hillbilly's "Redneck floats" in the post and was itching to get out and give them a go....

One was on the venue we used last year for our winter league and it fished ok with plenty of small fish and I had about 30 lbs in a few hours fishing...I didn't take my camera but will be having a few more sessions on here in the next few weeks and take it next time..

It's Autumn here now I think..?..am still having trouble getting used to the seasons here and this craic with wearing Santa outfits on Bondi beach in 34 degrees in December even confuses me more..!,I don't think I will ever get use to Christmas in the sun, well anyway the temps are dropping a little and it has rained quite abit this week and is more comfortable to fish in

The other sessions I had are on a new venue we have started to fish just this year here and is probably our best match venue at the moment..Caddis creek...while it doesn't throw up huge weights in the matches it is very consistent and fair and lots of small fish so plenty of bites all day. All the pegs are pretty even and the same depth and so far there have been no fliers with the winners coming from all over each time. It almost all carp and there is a good head of wild goldfish plus a few koi's. It has a few catfish and bass and some huge eels (over 8 kg) but I don't normally fish for these unless it's really hard. The carp average from 2 or 3 oz's up to 1 1/2 lbs but there are some bigger ones to be had too up to 10 lbs, mostly in the edges but I found they tend to keep out when we have a full house on the venue. So far our matches have been won with 20 + kgs weights and all good backing weights with usually just 100 -300 grams separating the top 6 but pleasure fishing or a small knock ups 40 to 50 kgs can be caught easily....(excuses for the weights in kgs but its the way all the matches are done here)

Caddis creek

It can be hard sometimes to get an idea of how venues fish or whats the best methods for a match when pleasure fishing venues here on your own mainly because you will have the venue to yourself, most of the fish have never been caught before and usually you can catch on everything but once we have 20 or 25 of us on the same venue it can be a different story.....this venue has been good so far mainly because of the big head of smaller fish but think I do need to get some of those bigger fish out so with this in mind I fished these sessions at I would for the match but tried a few different things mostly with the margin swims to see what worked best

margin swim right at the reeds

For any of the matches I have normally fed 2 balls of groundbait and some corn at both 11 and 13 mts in about 3 1/2 to 4 ft of water and catch on 11 straight away and later the fish shy away a little and move to 13 mts....baits are usually corn or maggot but I have caught here on pellet and recently found a supplier here for a micro pellet which I have been using now also. There is also a small ledge at 5 to 6 mts on most of the pegs and I have got lots of small fish on this pleasure fishing but struggle in matches but found the last day even with 2 of us fishing I found I could keep fish coming all day there by dropping in a small nugget of liquidised bread on a kinder cup and fishing 4 and 6 mm punch while Richard's pole lines seem to die or slow up after a bit...not big fish but over 40 in 2 hours so maybe worth a go

I fed margin swims both left and right close to the edge about 6 mts down each side where its about 2 1/2 ft deep but one swim I just kept dropping in 5 or 6 pieces of corn and a few pellets every 5 minutes or so and the other just dumped in 2 big pot fulls of corn,hemp and some luncheon meat and left it.

In both sessions the swims where I had been constantly feeding just produced smaller fish and I did foul hook a few also but the sides I dumped the feed in all produced bigger fish and had them queued up for the last 45 minutes or so. Plus all the bigger fish came on 8 or 10mm meat punch (no need to worry about the dreaded turtles one the fish move in)

the margins were full of fish for the last hour..!

At the end of both sessions on Caddis creek I had close to 50 fish both times but my session fishing more with dumping big pots and using meat probably weighed close to 40 kgs where as the session where I fished the 6 mt line more and bread punch was about 25 kgs so plenty of ideas for the weekend's match

I used white hydro with pull kits on most of my rigs on the long lines and 6 mt line but had grey also on a rig and didn't have lost fish at all only a few foul hookers, all my margin rigs are black hydro's

25 kgs of fish...mostly on bread punch

Also all my "rednecks" made it through the sessions even with a few runsin to the reeds in the margins, they defiantly do what they say on the packet and full compliments and thanks to Neil (if he reads this) for his great service and products

Anyway am out here tomorrow (sat) for another pleasure session on a different venue and the

have our match on Sunday so will update on here later this week

Pic taken from a session on Caddis creek about 6 weeks ago....33 kgs in "summer"