Gold N Brown

I hate fishing off platforms for reasons I have never quite been able to put my finger on and at Meadowlands, Warren Pool, the venue for all of my recent fishing trips with my dad, it's platforms or nothing unfortunately. I do, here more than anywhere, always take a good look at the platform before setting up as some of them are decidedly iffy.

Members of Slimming World aren't allowed on this platform

                                                                       or this one

Having secured a couple of solid platforms to fish from we set about trying to catch some fish using straight lead and banded pellet tactics. After a mixed start we started to regularly catch carp, fish which varied dramatically in shape and size, some being chunky and broad shouldered and others lean and torpedo shaped, each one fighting hard all the way to the net.

Carp here seem to move in at speed in the shallow water to intercept free offerings so two methods worked throughout the day, either casting the lead out, throwing the rod on the rests and then firing a couple of pouchfulls of pellet down the same hole before tightening up or firing the pellets in first quickly followed by the end tackle.

Amongst the carp other than the odd good roach and skimmers we caught some more samples of brown goldfish, my new fascination. No longer a disappointment to me I have got a bit of a soft spot for the brown goldfish in each of their various guises they are always tough little cookies who give you a decent scrap pound for pound. They vary enormously in appearance and guessing their exact parentage is almost impossible but they hit your bait as hard as any carp and provide the angler with some fun and that's ok by me.

A little bit Cruciany

Fan Tail but a bit pale

I caught one of these too

A Game of Two Halves

For our latest outing my dad and I decided to try our luck on the smaller pool at Meadowlands, Warren. Armed only with pellets and a few maggots we fished side by side, perched on some precarious looking platforms using straight lead and banded pellets tactics.

I opted to fish at thirty odd yards and fed pellets at a rate of three or four every couple of minutes while dad had dropped in slightly closer.

Straight away I was into fish, a tear away bite resulted in a pretty linear mirror of about six pounds on my second cast, this was followed by a smaller sample and another decent carp threw the hook soon after. Indications were frequent and I was catching reasonably well, some small carp, a couple of decent roach and the now inevitable skimmers, then I brought a different species altogether to the net. My heart skipped a beat as a big crucian carp emerged at the surface before being enveloped in the the net, I instantly remembered the Meadowlands advertising and the claim that this pool in particular was famed for its big crucians. Folding back the mesh expecting to see a deep bodied bar of gold, a crucian carp the jolliest fish that swims..... my heart sank as a skittle shaped, fan tailed and dull scaled creature of particularly dubious parentage stared unblinkingly back at me.

Brown Goldfish as they are commonly known are, through no fault of their own, the culprits in many a big crucian claim and are, sadly, likely to account for all of the big crucian captures from this water.

Meanwhile dad had adjusted his range and was fishing further out beyond the leaf debris where he was starting to pick up some skimmers and sizable roach.

By now the breeze had dropped and in the flat calm conditions my swim was beginning to stutter, bites were becoming few and far between and in desperation I fed a margin swim which only resulted in the capture of another big brown goldfish.


After another bite less half hour I packed up and went for a walk round the lake. At each peg I stopped to look at I could see my dad in the distance bending into another fish and when I had finally circumnavigated the lake I sat behind him to watch as he tempted take after take from his carefully nurtured swim and a string of carp, brown goldfish and silver fish came to the net. His biggest of the day was this seven pounder.

Plink Plink Fizz

By researching archived match results on the Internet and asking around it soon became clear that the most successful method at Meadowlands Fishery over the last few years has been a straight lead approach with pellets plinked regularly over the top. The theory is that carp are attracted to the sound of the pellets landing and although it is likely that regular small amounts of feed will bring fish up in the water it is reckoned that the biggest fish will always feed hard on the bottom.

It was with attempting this method in mind that I arrived along with my Dad and Nephew Henry at the pegs generally called the bay on Lambsdown lake., it was a warm day and this area of the lake was flat calm. Dad set up a float rod in order to fish maggot and I put together a tip rod to fish the pellet, Henry was to drift between the two outfits in order to give him the best chance possible of catching a few fish.

Early on maggot was producing fish with my dad and Henry catching skimmers, the odd perch and a nice stamp of roach, I wasn't catching but kept up the regular doses of pellet in as tighter area as I could manage.

When the action on the maggot peg had started to peter out the straight lead method finally began to pay off, the area I had been feeding was now fizzing with bubbles and takes when they came were fizzers too each one threatening to tear the rod off it's rests.

Dad switched to 8mm pellets on his float set up too and between the three of us we caught carp to around eight pounds and odd skimmers for the remainder of the session.

Henry, on this occasion, didn't manage to catch one of the bigger carp but enjoyed himself catching a few fish on each method and showed a real interest in both the fishing and wildlife.