The Long and the Short of it

It's been quite some time since we visited Jubilee Pools due mainly to dad being out of action as a result of a long term shoulder problem, on Tuesday we made our first visit of the season to the Leamington AA venue.

With most of the far end of the Horseshoe pool occupied we decided to fish from pegs on the point, we tackled up with beefed up quivertip set ups as is our norm for this water and set about fishing a variety of hair rigged hookbaits over loose offerings. To begin with sport was slow although there was plenty of fish activity in the area and it was a good hour before I had a pull on the tip and connected with a bream of about three pounds.

After this my swim went quiet again but dad started to pick up the odd fish, he had a bream of around two pounds, a small tench and a roach of about twelve ounces then he had a better bream in region of four pounds, then his bites dried up.

Meanwhile, given a complete lack of action back on my peg, I had taken the view that it was worth experimenting with long hooklengths as the fish here often sit in the surface layers. The theory being that with substantial average depths at Jubilee and current trends being for particularly short hooklengths I may be able to capitalise on the likelihood that carp will be intercepting free offerings at all depths with no fear factor.

My opening gambit was a ten foot tail fishing a single grain of sweetcorn on the hair while drip feeding grains of corn one at a time over the top. I reasoned that by selecting large flat pieces of corn for the hook I could achieve the required flutterability to tempt a fish and with the long tail I could ensure that the bait was noticed by carp swimming in the surface layers.

I would love to be able to say at this point that I went on to catch a string of carp and my theorising was sound but as time went by I began to shorten the tail by a foot at a time and began to feed a few boilies.

Phil phoned for a chat just as I had managed to get myself in an almighty tangle (one of those that starts with a couple of coils spilling off the reel and inexplicably becomes a birds nest within milliseconds) so I talked on the phone, picked at the tangle and continued to feed a few boilies for several minutes.

Finally I was in a position to fish again and first cast with a boilie on a four foot tail the rod failed to make it onto the rests before being wrenched around and I was doing battle with an unseen carp. After a spirited fight and a few hairy moments one of the pretty Jubilee commons was on the bank, she weighed twelve pounds.


Another partial success!