The Oaks, Sessay, Maple, 12th June 2022

June's venue for fishing was back to a commercial after the wild, natural waters of Lake Semerwater.  Only two of us available for this outing so Rich picked The Oaks at Sessay.  It's been over 11 years since I'd been here and with this weekend being free from big matches as ideal chance to pick on of the snake lakes and get some pellet and F1 bashing done.

The Draw
We had a wander around Maple, just behind the cafe and then walked over to Cedar via Oaks and back via Willow (the specimen lake).

Both Maple and Cedar are about 14 metres wide and ideal for a pole only attack.

We ended up selected pegs 13 and 14 on Maple where there wasn't an advantage over each other and made the fishing social.

Set-up
I'd only packed the pole to be honest and set up the following lines:
  • 13 metres across - full depth
  • Top 2 and 3 section off to my left - full depth
  • Shallow rig
Bait was extremely simple.  Fishery 4mm and micro pellets together with some 4mm expanders prepared the night before.

We were able to park right behind our peg for an extremely simple boot to peg with all the gear and the kitchen sink that we all carry nowadays.

All-In
We were ready about 9am and I went straight over at 13m with the full depth rig, expander pellet and a small kinder pot of micros.  Potting in from a height to make some noise and attract some fish into the swim.

The float danced about and of course some lifts meant rebaiting the soft pellet.  Finally I connected with a fish however it was a small skimmer and this pattern repeated itself for the first 15 minutes of fishing.

Rich on the other hand who was fishing the same line across was on banded 4mm pellet and he was hooking F1's rather than silvers so it didn't take me long to change the hook length to let me fish banded 4mm pellet.

The change in bait was instant, the small skimmers replaced by chunky F1's and more "bites at the cherry" rather than a soft expander coming off the hook, however the bites were still a bit iffy and the fish appeared to be shallow so a quick change to the shallow rig hooked a few more fish.

It certainly wasn't a fish a bung and I'd been priming a shorter line with 4mm pellets to see if I could get more fish up in the water however going on this line is just wasn't happening.

Finally, the strategy of feeding the closer line by hand and dropping a full depth rig over the top of it and waiting resulted in a better stamp, less foul hooked fish and a more regular catch rate.

Some proper chunky F1's crashed the party too as well as some Ide and hybrids.

Result
I had around 20 F1's of differing sizes and plenty of silvers for a decent days fishing.

Conclusion
As Tom, the owner, had mentioned, the lakes where fishing a bit "iffy" and the match results had reflected this with weights down in the 30lb mark.  There were some fish spawning in my nearside margin and plenty of carp mooching about on the surface.

The soft pellet was durable enough at the start of the session and only bagged silvers.  Banded 4mm was the better hookbait.

It was a matter of getting the fish to feed on the bottom with different patterns of feeding.  Loose micro's caused too much activity in the peg and the fish would end up foul hooked so a nugget quietly potted in across was better.

My close swim it was better to feed some 4mm by hand and then lay the rig in and wait for a bite and then feed again once the fish was hooked to settle other fish in the area.

Rich stayed longer and text to say that once the sun went the fishing just died.  An odd day however, plenty of bites and elastic stretching action.    

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