We had chosen Saturday 16th February as the weather forecast said although it would be foggy the sun should lift it by mid day and then it should be clear and sunny. When the morning came it was freezing cold, damp and mist every where. I say mist rather than fog as it was so damp you could feel it on your skin. Even though the weather was so cold we still gambled on it warming up and off we went to Peterstone Lakes in Newport, Cardiff. Situated right out the way, at the back of a farm that can be found after driving down miles of back roads and lanes. Its a pretty little complex with two smaller lakes to the one side where we had decided to fish and there is also the syndicate lake which is quite big and contains many double figure carp.
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| Brian started to hook into nice Roach |
When we arrived there was a low fog across the water and the banks were all waterlogged. This didn't put us of so off we went and set up our tackle. I had decide to fish one rod on a running chod rig and then i would also fish the pole in the margins. I had decided not to use ground bait as the weather was to cold and the water temperature low so it would just over feed the swim as the fish wouldn't be feeding that well in the cold. I had decoded just to trickle maggots and pellets in at a regular interval to try and encourage the fish to feed constantly
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| The fish size started to get bigger |
The next few hours were quite strange as there was no sign of interest on the Carp rod and only a couple of tiny fish on the pole. I was getting a few bites so i new the fish were defiantly there so i decided to tackle down. Reducing the size of my hook down to a size 18 wide gape from Carp Force on the Fluorocarbon Fishing line i got from Total Outdoors seemed to do the trick. I started to pull in some small Roach at the start and then they started to improve in size. Getting a bite each time i dropped the line back in showed me they had started to feed so i continued to trickle in small amounts of maggots and pellets every now and again and continued to catch fish. The quality of the fish was good and the size i was catching was averaging 1/4 and 1/2 lb but then hooked into a nice size bream about 1 lb.
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| Brilliant Days fishing at Peterstone Lakes |
Brian was starting to catch also with some tidy sized Roach and Bream and my mother also hooked into a couple of nice Roach and a few skimmers . Although the day started slow and it was difficult and took a few hours to get them to start to feed it was due to the weather and for those conditions we all did extremely well to catch as many fish as we did. The weather didn't improve until it was almost time to go and everyone did well to sit it out in the cold damp conditions.
It was a shame the sun didn't decide to show its face until the end as i recon we would have bagged up at Peterstone Lakes. An enjoyable days fishing was had by all of us and i will be going back there when the weather improves to see if i can get myself a nice big Carp out of the water as they have quite a few good size, different types, of Carp in there. A challenge for another day.
