A Pleasant Somers Afternoon

My neighbour Roger invited me to fish the Meriden Hall syndicate water last Summer but on the appointed day it teemed with rain and for one reason and another we never got around to fishing all Summer. Last Thursday though a chance presented itself and off we went, however, due to a lack of both parking and pegs at the fishery we were forced into a rethink.

Although it was a little disappointing not to get a crack at a new fishery salvation was at hand, or more precisely just down the road, in the form of Packington Estate's Somers Fishery.

Somers Fishery now bears no resemblance to it's former incarnation which was a regular haunt of mine. The four established pits Molandsmere, Siblings, Anniversarys and Siblings which once held stocks of fish at traditional levels are now ten re-sculptured and landscaped, heavily stocked pools, named with a nod to the past but in essence a completely different fishery.

We paid our money plus a £2 surcharge for taking the car onto the fishery, dipped our nets and took a little drive round before settling on a couple of quite inviting pegs in Gratuities which at one time was part of Anniversarys but is now at the opposite end of the fishery, the sign informed us that we could expect to catch Carp, Bream and Roach.

Again I was fishing a waggler and had sweetcorn as my primary bait, Roger started on maggot and was soon catching small fish (mostly perch) regularly.

The corn hookbait was attracting some attention and I was getting the odd quick bite managing to nab a couple of small tench early on but it was quite clear that the fish had seen it all before. In fact nobody was catching very much at all.

Supremely organised as ever the situation required much rooting around in my seatbox looking desperately for an alternative hookbait, after some time sorting through the clutter of various bits and pieces I seem forever destined to cart about with me I came up with a tin of luncheon meat.

Very small cubes of meat on a size 16 hook transformed the swim, bites were frequent and positive and I began to catch fish regularly.

With the sun on our backs, Roger happily swinging in small roach and perch each cast and me putting together a bag of tench all between one and three pounds it made for a particularly pleasant and enjoyable afternoon and some decent fishing.

Although Somers isn't the same place I fished as a lad, it couldn't be less like it in fact, and it's now an all singing commercial fishery where you are invited to sit on a slab of concrete and poke your pole or hurl your method feeder towards the ever present island feature, but I accept that it is what it is and therefore I may well be back at some point in the future.