Simply Pole Fishing

 Berkel, Borculo - 29.07.2017 

Today I went up to the Berkel to fish with Roger, Theo and Alex. We decided to go downstream of the weir where some tall trees were sheltering the river from the strong winds.

Sheltered from the strong wind by the trees

Roger was on peg 1, Theo on 2, Alex on 3, and I dropped in on peg 4. We had a good 25 metres between each peg.

My peg for the day with the others in the background

I looked at the peg and thought I would set up the pole at 10.5 m and the waggler for across to the far side - about 20 m.

The Response M70 at 10.5 M - a dream to use

When I opened the holdall the absent waggler rod automatically changed the tactics to pole only :-(

The M70 was the right pole to choose for up to 13 m

Rigs for today were a 4x16 (0.5 g) Preston Chianti and a 1 g Inter Carbon. As it turned out I used the Chianti rig all day.

A small string of No. 11 shot and some No. 9s as bulk on 0.11 mm main line will give me a slow fall in the lower half of the water. A 0.09 mm hook-link finished off with a size 16 B512.

Alex on the next peg. He had a Tench on the waggler later on

I used a top 3 (3.95 m) with a No. 6 yellow slip elastic through the top 2. Depth was about 2.5 metres and the bottom was quite clean.

I went to see Roger and he was catching well

Bait for today was very simple; Maggots, Casters and Hemp.

Keep your bait simple in the Summer months

I mixed up half a bag of Expo and half a bag of Secret at cupped in 4 balls with some casters at the start. Then I just loose fed Hemp and Casters over the top all day - every couple of minutes.

There are lots and lots of these in the Berkel

First run through and I had a small 50 g Roach - good start. The fishing was very good. I had a fish nearly every put in for the 3 hours that I fished.

I was well happy with 15 lb of Roach

At first I caught on a single maggot, but later the bigger Roach wanted double caster.

It is fair to say we had a good days fishing, with the float going under most of the day.

Theo had a good day on the pole as well

I managed to put together 7.1 kg of Roach - 70 fish altogether.

Roger smiling with a great catch of pole-caught Roach

Alex had quite a few small Roach and a nice Tench around 3 lb.  Theo put 3.74 Kg on the scales and Roger had 7.28 kg of Roach.

I think we will be back here again very soon!