Orfe-ly Crafty Creatures.

 My quest which is now into it's third year in searching for a specimen Orfe with a target weight of 6lb, only a few reside in this particular venue but are extremely weary fish, I just hope on one trip that I can catch one unaware and tempt it to feed and manage to slip my net under it.

Red Kite on the hunt for something.

 I have been to this venue a few times now and typically I'll adopt a stalking approach but with the wind blowing a hooley I decided after just a couple to go on the bottom and fish a flat-bed method with a short 4inch hooklength, the hookbait was a single Drennan bouyant maggot soaked in a sticky strawberry solution which in the murky water hoped could lure the marauding Orfe to my bait and in the feeder I used Sonubaits 50/50 green crush with the little pellets, which is excellent, just watch the oils leech out of it after a couple of minutes sitting on the bottom.

 I usually use one rod here as the owner is on bit of a money maker and charges nearly doubled to use the second rod which I personally feel is nothing short of disgusting and just money grabbing, that erks me alot and the owner of this particular fishery isn't alone in drawing this gripe from me as Bury Hill Fisheries is very much the same, if you've ever fished for the predators in the winter you'll know what I mean, three rods....yes then start to charge a bit more but there is nothing to suggest that smacking another £8 on top to use a 2nd rod is acceptable, alas I do not use a second, I think £10 is a lot for one rod but if I want to achieve one of my goals then I have to grin and bare it until I have achieved what I started out to do.

Another mid-3 

 Bites however were very slow on coming and I had to wait nearly two hours to get my first inquiry but it was a smaller specimen than intended but this told me that my target species was on my bait and feeding, the confidence level crept up and put a small amount of bait out just to keep it topped but not enough to put pressure on the fish still in the swim, at 3.8 it was about average and now I've had nearly two dozen Orfe out but most are this size. The occasional patch of bubbles would surface around my baited area but struggled to achieve more than single or double bleeps as fish passed through the area but not stopping to eat, the hours rolled by and the rigs fiddled with as much as possible to find a winning combination, this however never materialised.

They were showing.

 About six in the evening I spoke with Brian who was down with me and I suggested a match on another lake with a points based system put in place, as the action was so absent on the other lake we forgot about the specimen chasing for a couple of hours.

 Before we headed over to start our match I'd noticed something really beautiful in the woods which the lakes are set in.

Absolutely stunning.

 Crucian's were 2 points, Tench/Carp/Bream were 1 point and Golden Orfe were 3 points (Orfe in this lake tend not to surpass 5lb), Brian on the float and myself baiting and waiting a set of lily pads was the way we started. The float tactic seemed to work well as Brian raced into a lead of 6 Tench before I caught my first fish which was a Tench, then Brian managed another to take his lead to 7-1 then a minor miracle occurred as a shoal of Crucian's arrived in my swim, not before I had changed to the float myself and plummeted the depth to an inch off the bottom. The fish then kept coming and Brian's lead was being eaten into steadily and it was about twenty minutes before the hooter that I'd overtaken him and by 8pm I was the victor, no thanks to number of fish but the Crucin's were double points and that won it for me! A good bit of fun, as angling should be!