Gone to seed.

I have had some vac packed casters in the fridge for a while now, and some pva friendly hemp, again vac packed and have been thinking about the roach on the fading blue lagoon. A lot. Has a lot of draw for a water the size of a good football pitch and perhaps the pole would be a good way to hold  a bait just on or just off the bottom?

Couple extra bits purchased and the hedge mostly cut it was on the nice level platform swim with a good ledge just in reach of the really old glass LERC 6 metre jobbie. Line trapped with a length of silicon tube (mistake). Not sure if a flick tip or whip set up, one is to hand, the other just the depth and a short line meaning shipping several sections to net. Anyway, I had enough depth to go just longer than the penultimate section and unship the butt if required.

A 0.6g pole float, 0.5 g olivette stopped with a micro swivel and dropper on the hook link with  a #16 micro barbed Kamatsua hook . I can just about see to use a No.8 shot as a dropper as long as the cut is deep enough but fear I am near No. 6  territory now. Which does make a difference with such a fine bristle. You see so much of what is going on with the bait when you go that fine.

Caster doesn't weed out all the small stuff but certainly catches the eye of the better fish.

I did lose an eel when the hook knot slipped  (another casualty of failing eye sight even with the hook tier) but don't think I would have won  anyway given the vertical nature of the pole tip bend downwards. Then another sharp pull next put in and the whole rig had gone in a flash  I had only used one silicone tubing instead of two.. Lesson learnt. Must have been a tench or a mud pig.

This certainly helped with this hard pulling hybrid of well over a pound.

A very different head down fight this with this one and I knew straight away I did not want to loose it. 1.02 and a lovely last fish. Do think I might go for ready tied hook links for this sort of fishing when being accurate is much more of an advantage.