november-2026-free-line-part-2 - Flipbook - Page 65
FREE LINE / FIELD JOURNAL
KEVIN HASKINS
Cover photograph: 33lb Two Tone Fish.
FIELD NOTES
I always try to get out fishing on my birthday, which also happens to be
St. George s Day, and this year it coincided with being the Tuesday after
the Easter bank holiday weekend. I d booked the Tuesday and Wednesday
off of work, and my plan was to go to the lake on the Easter Monday when
it was hopefully getting a bit quieter after the bank holiday weekend to
give myself a better chance of getting on the fish. The venue was Dinton
Pastures White Swan Lake, which is about an hour and a half drive from
my home in Bristol. The lake is a 24-acre dogleg shaped gravel pit set in
the Dinton Pastures Country Park and has a bay at each end and a long
central part of the lake up the middle. The lake famously holds some of the
best looking fish in the country, with pristine commons and lovely dark
scaly mirrors to well over forty pounds.
I arrived around lunchtime, and pulling up to the car park, I was pleased
to see there were not too many cars present. I knew that a lot of the lake s
stock had been in the Car Park Bay over the weekend, and this area had
been heavily pressured during the bank holiday period, but the weather
and the wind was due to change, so this was in my mind when I did a lap of
the lake to have a look round before deciding where to fish, but I didn t see
anything. There were still a few anglers present in the Car Park Bay, and
with a forecast low pressure weather front coming in and a wind change
due to be pushing out of the bay, I decided to fish a swim just round the
dogleg a couple of swims up from the mouth of the bay, with the thinking
behind this being trying to pick up fish as they moved out of the bay.
I got myself set up, and then went about having a cast around with the
marker rod with the float removed. This soon revealed fresh, new weed
growth about a foot deep up to about 25 yards out and then mainly clean
bottom from there out into the lake. I opted to place both baits just past
the new weed on the clean bottom at about 25 yards.
FREE LINE
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