Hartleylands Farm Fishery. The Reservoir. September 30th, 2005,

Well today was one of those spur of the moment days, I’ve been off with Mrs M for a couple of weeks, and one of our golden rules is that if we’re both off I don’t normally go fishing, but as she had brought me a new pole last week I was itching to try it out, just to make sure I’d set up the elastics right you understand.

Maria said last night that she was going to visit a friend today so I thought I may as well snatch a few hours down at Hartleylands on the Reservoir.

There was a bit of rain about as I woke up this morning, so a leisurely breakfast meant that I didn’t load the tackle up till 10·30am, and a bit of traffic meant that I didn’t arrive at the farm till noon. There were eight people already fishing on the Reservoir as I settled in on peg 5.

Bait for the day was GOT Baits 6mm expanders and paste, with their 4mm hard pellets as feed. I’ve been using GOT Baits since a visit to Rolf’s earlier in the year and feel that quality wise their range is second to none.
I set up 1 swim in the left hand margin where there was a nice 2ft of water, and a comfy open water swim at 7mtrs with about 7ft of depth. The margins would be fed by hand and wouldn’t be touched until clouds of mud betrayed fish feeding with confidence. 2 large pots of pellet primed the 7mtr line.

1st put in on the 7mtr line with an expander at dead depth brought a positive bite straight away and a sharp lift resulted in a few feet of Black Hydro streaming out of the top kit and after a brief tussle a nice plump mirror of about 4lbs was in the net, a nice way to christen a new pole.

Let me say at this point that I tried Hydrolastic when it 1st came out and didn’t get on with it. However having visited the likes of Stockton, Clattercote and Rolf’s this season I’ve decided to give it another go in the new pole. I’ve taken the No1′s out of the match kits and cut the power tops back to match, resulting in very stiff kits that I’ve elasticated through 2 sections. The stiffness of the kits seems to be the key with Hydro. Throughout the afternoon I alternated between 7mtrs and the margin using kits with both red and black hydro fine tuning the tension till I was happy with it.

Typical Reservoir carp

Sport was nice and steady all afternoon despite the occasional flurry of rain and by 5·15pm I’d managed 32 Carp, the best being around 8lbs, 3 Tench and a dozen skimmers, a great workout for the new pole.