Sometimes you’re set a challenge that puts you out of your comfort zone, I was tasked with fishing a parrot cage of a peg on a recent session at Woodland Waters near Grantham in Lincolnshire. There was no chance I would be able to use any rods, so I had to default to pole fishing with the Cadence CP2000 pole.
Now, I love my waggler fishing, it’s the method I feel most comfortable with, pole fishing, on the other hand, it’s my least favourite style of fishing. It’s the one I’m least accomplished at, but I know that in many situations it’s vital, so it’s a method I wanted to get more comfortable with. This session would provide me with an ideal opportunity to get to grips with it a bit more.
The Match Lake at Woodland Waters is mixed, with skimmers including bream, perch, carp and tench. There is also a good stock of roach with the real possibility of catching some absolute stonkers.
This is my kind of mixed bag fishing, so after plumbing up, I introduced three balls of caster laced groundbait at 13 meters and loose fed some casters closer in. The bait I used was from Evolved Baits, a new bait company. My mix consisted of 40% Canal and Drain, 40% River and 20% Molehill soil to help get it to the bottom quickly. The groundbait smelled gorgeous and it mixed up well too, with little riddling needed.
The session started very slow, but after forty minutes, I began to get the odd fish, mainly roach, with the occasional small skimmer. To induce a bite, I moved the baits every so often, which the fish reacted to positively. This led to me hook a nice fish which unfortunately I bumped off, although, immediately after this, I landed a nice 1lb plus skimmer.
After fishing the fruitless inside line for a while, I found I could keep a steady stream of bites coming at the 13-meter line. Cupping in a ball of caster laced groundbait every fifteen minutes or so, along with some loose fed casters, kept the fish in the area and produced some bites.
To keep bites coming I had to change tactics often, varying my Olivette setting from 4ft to 18in from the hook, changing the hooklengths between 0.08mm and 0.09mm with a size 20 hook, fishing as light as I could. I also varied my depths, fishing shallower on occasion and over depth at other times. It was proving to be hard fishing, even when fishing as light as I could in 12 feet of water using a 1.25g float, things were tough.
A better stamp of roach got me excited as my No 4 elastic was being pulled from the pole tip, however on the weigh-in, I managed 8lbs 15oz, my usual target when fishing for silvers is 10lbs. I shouldn’t be too disheartened though; it was still the best weight from the lake and I also lost a few fish that would have carried me over the 10lb easily. Woodland Waters has excellent potential and is somewhere I’ll be coming back to in the future.
Fishing with the Cadence CP2000 pole improved my pole fishing and helped me to overcome some of my reluctance to fish with the pole. It’s lightweight and a joy to use, and it’s something I will be doing more of in the future.
