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Old 08-26-2009, 10:07 PM
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The first choice you have to make when you arrive at Lathom is which lake to fish. You can see all four as soon as you get out the car, and all are within casting distance of the car park!

I opted for pool 3, simply because I had my lad with me and juniors were not allowed on the other lakes. Pool 3 is well stocked with all kinds of fish, but there’s nothing of any substantial size in there, making it ideal for the young angler cutting his teeth.

Knowing there was nothing big in there, I opted to go with the whip and fish the margins. I fished chopped worm sitting just on the bottom to start with, and immediately pulled out a small crucian. A couple of minutes later, I was into my first ever barbel, a magnificent specimen that must have weighed at least an ounce!

My step son had caught a couple straight away too, a small orfe and a tiny common. I’d been loose feeding hemp into my swim, and pretty soon it began to pay off, as the little fish were driven away and the carp moved in. The swim was literally teeming with fish, they were falling over themselves to get to the bait.

To avoid the smaller fish, I decided to put a whole worm on a 14 hook, and pretty soon I was pulling out a carp virtually every time I put the pole out. There were also a few goldfish in there, and a nice Golden Tench of about a pound.

I switched to pellet, feeding 4mm halibut pellets and using 8mm ‘Hali Hookers’ on the hook, and the carp couldn’t get enough of them either. As soon as the feed hit the water the carp were on them, and with so much activity around the float the worry was fish getting themselves foul hooked.

It was all a bit chaotic, so I decided to have a little go with the feeder rod in the hope of catching a proper barbel or maybe even a chub, but again it was just the ravenous carp jumping on the bait as soon as it settled on the bottom. After a while I switched to the waggler, and fished pellet up in the water. There was no problem getting bites, but I was finding it difficult hitting them for some reason.

A switch to bread flake rectified that, and that also seemed to attract a slighter better standard of fish. They really went nuts for the bread, and I would have loved to have tried a bit of floating crust to see if I could have tempted some of the bigger fish in there. Unfortunately floating crust on the hook is not permitted, (neither are boilies or open ended feeders incidentally) and having seen the way they went crazy for the crusts I threw in it’s easy to see why.

To be honest, it was too easy and I must have caught between 60 and 70 fish. More importantly, my step son caught 20 odd, which is what you want when you’re just starting out. If it’s constant action you want, then pool 3 is ideal.
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