Local Waters Round Up 21/4/15

The recent warm weather has certainly livened up the fishing, at Bullocks Farm the owner Phil says that the match lake is fishing well, the fish are well spread around the lake and most pegs are producing. Luncheon fished over a bed of pellets is producing carp, crucians and skimmers. If you fish with maggots or casters you will catch a larger variety of smaller fish and get a lot more bites. The Carp Lake has been producing fish to mid doubles, Krill flavoured pellets used in conjunction with a pva bag has been doing the 'business', method feeders with a mixture of ground bait and micros has also been catching. Rushcombe lake has been a bit slower, you need to fish with smaller hooks and finer lines to get regular bites on this lake, maggot fished over micro pellet has been very successful.

At Bitterwell Lake things have really warmed up, the carp are being caught off the top on bread and mixers, one lucky angler caught 7 surface carp in an hour. The roach and skimmers are still showing, the recent warm weather has seen the carp moving into the edges in the afternoons, fish a large bait over a bed of smaller baits like maggots, casters or pellets and wait for the water to start colouring up and the tails coming out of the water then hold on tight. Dan Shipp, son of England international Des Shipp, has been bagging up recently on the feeder. For more information ring Terry 07827 340432

Viaduct Fishery has been fishing its head off this week, at the weekend the match on Lodge Lake was won with 344lb, there was also weights of 219lb and 183lb on Cary and Campbell. Pellets is the bait to take, there are lots of big fish showing, Spring Lake has produced 2 x 23lb carp this week and another 23lb fish was caught on Cary Lake. Pleasure anglers on Cary have been taking catches of up to 30 carp in a day and most of them are doubles, bomb and pellet is the best method. Despite the excellent carp fishing the skimmer fishing has also been excellent, Leon Hubbard caught 55lb to win the silverfish match, all caught with expanders and micro pellets. This week Steve and Paul have been stocking with small tench, just to keep the stocks ticking over for the future, the tench in the lake at the moment are all between 2-3lb and are probably more than 16 years old, so this new stocking will keep the tench fishing good for years to come. In the past match catches of over 100lb of tench have been caught, usually in the margins. If you have never fished Viaduct, this is a good time of year to try it, for more info ring Steve or Paul on 01458 274022.

Huntstreet Lake has been fishing well, quite a few 30lb+ fish have been caught on the main lake, on hot days a lot of fish have been showing on the surface, one of the bailiffs described it as being 'black' with big fish. Bottom baits and surface baits have all been catching. Withy Pool has really benefited from the influx for new carp from Bridge Pool, one young angler caught 22 carp off the top with floating pellets he was fishing across to the fish sanctuary area from the public footpath bank. The carp are moving well around the lake and most swims are producing fish. Boilies are the best baits on the bottom, don't forget to try in the margins during the afternoon or evenings, Mixers or floating pellets is best on the surface.

Bridge Pool has been producing plenty of skimmers and bream, a recent match was won with 49lb of bream on soft pellet hook bait fished over micro pellets, the recently introduced tench from the main lake have just started to wake up and a number of 6lb+ fish have been caught, don't use boilies for the tench, more traditional baits like sweetcorn, red maggots and worm will work a lot better. There are some very large roach in this lake, I caught one over 2lb recently, but they are hard to catch and the pole is the best way to catch these, casters is the best bait on light rigs fished on the drop.

Gloucester Canal at Puriton, the first few bream of the year are starting to show around the log ponds, this is the time of the year when they start to move there to spawn in the reeds. this is also one of the best time of the year to catch the carp in the canal, they know that the bream spawn in the log ponds, so they move there to eat the eggs, fish to over 30lb have been caught here in previous years. Between the bridges at Puriton there are a lot of roach showing, so if you fancy catching a few red fins that the place to go, not very far to walk and plenty of bites, pole is the best method, you might even get an odd tench as they hang around the weed in the margins at this time of the year. Further up the canal at Pilot, Ian Didcot caught 70lb of bream on the feeder fishing in the tanker bay. Day tickets for the canal are available on the bank.