Under the Boardwalk

With a little sunshine eventually peeking from behind the seemingly ever present clouds of recent times my dad and I were prompted into action and arranged an afternoon session at Stockton Reservoir. With very little local information to go on at the moment other than some not so inspiring reports from Ryton, the very shallow reservoir and it's healthy head of roach seemed as good a bet as any given the only very recent upturn in temperatures.

Pegs 11 and 12 are midway along the wooden walkway and are adjacent to a small island which acted as a wind break on the day giving us an inviting area of flat water in which to float fish. We employed the simplest of tactics, each selecting small waggler floats capable of casting two thirds of the way to the island and size twenty hooks for our maggot bait.

Loose feeding three or four maggots each cast I was soon getting the odd bite and catching nice little roach ranging between 4 and 6 ounces on single yellow maggot, dad was starting to get amongst them too catching fish of a similar stamp.

Bites increased as I built the swim and I was eventually getting a bite a chuck then I momentarily hooked something much bigger, the hook came back bearing a glob of indeterminate slime and my roach shoal was scattered.

Bites were now at a premium and although I did catch a crucian carp of about a pound and a half the roach seemed determined not to return. Fortunately one thing I have learnt over the last year is to always have a plan B and in this case I had, from the start, been flicking the odd maggot down by the boards to my left between my platform (peg 12) and the next (peg 13).

The walkway structure at Stockton is a couple of inches above the water level and runs the full length of the far side of the lake it was constructed to make an swampy unfishable bank fishable, each peg is a wooden platform jutting out from the main walkway and is equipped with a brolly hole and metal clamps designed for attaching rod rests.

It seems that the fish now see this walkway as natural cover as I was getting indications straight away and was soon catching roach again. Dad had found his sport slowing too and followed suit by feeding inside to his right where he was soon into some roach too.

The fish were still biting when we packed up, we had caught plenty of roach a single perch and a crucian, I reckon a good pole angler could easily have put together 20 or even 30lb of fish on the day. The carp don't seem to be showing yet though, I only heard of one caught although there was around fifteen anglers on the water.