#abbots pool

With the weather a bit hit and miss recently and me being busy with my football team, summer is on it's way and I've finally got some weekend time back to spend fishing.

Predominantly driven by lack of cash I decided for some cheap fishing at Abbots Pool with some sweetcorn and a few dozen worms I dug on Friday evening as bait.

Abbots Pool is a lovely spot, tucked away in Leigh Woods, it's a medieval fish pool, which contains a few wild carp, tench, pike, perch and roach. It used to be renowned for its tench fishing – a species I'd love to catch, so I thought I'd try my luck with a running rig with a big lobworm as bait, hoping that if the tench weren't biting then I might be able to tempt a nice sized perch.

I'd had a well deserved lie-in so didn't get to the lake until after 11am and two fishermen were already set up, after a good chat with one of them about the pond and how it was fishing I headed to the far right bank with some lilly pads and good features to my left and right.

The lake itself has a great variety of vegetation, well established lilly pads and various other plants, coupled with plenty of overhanging trees make finding a spot to fish quite interesting but I managed to tuck my ledger just past a corner of pads, kept a slack line to allow for the bite to develop and sat back to enjoy the surroundings.

There wasn't much activity, apart from a family of ducklings scrabbling around by my feet but the place is serene and bursting with nature, woodpeckers, frogs, tadpoles, tits and wrens but where were the fish!

Bursting into life in the swim opposite me the chap I spoke to on my arrival was into a nice fish, I could see it was his float rod that had burst into life, his live bait taking effect and he pulled out a nice jack pike of a few pounds.

Eager to get my own fish on the bank and after almost four hours without a bite I opted to abandon my ledgering tactics and float fish with corn on the hook. Almost immediately it took effect and a pristine roach was soon in the net, this was followed by another five or six all falling for a single grain of corn. It was great to be catching fish that had probably never been caught before and even though they were only a few ounces they all put up a lovely zig-zagging fight.

Interestingly upon releasing one of the roach, I heard a splash just to my right and a jack pike had grabbed my unlucky roach for his supper, it was amazing to see and the little pike just held still after the initial strike, working out how it was going to fit the roach into it's mouth.

After a few more hours I called it a day, the light was fading and I'd had a great afternoon, my target quarry didn't show but those elusive tench will have to wait. I'll be back soon.

Location: Abbots pool, Bristol & Jacklands  |  Species Caught: Rainbow trout