Fishing in April is fraught with ample opportunities, at such a time you can manage to open a new season on rivers, lakes, ponds, quarries, switching from pike to crucian carp, from roach to chub or asp. All without haste, as on schedule, with a lot of pleasure in the end. The main thing here is not to burst.
For myself, I have already decided where I will spend the first full-fledged fishing. Why full-fledged? Here’s an example from past seasons. The ice has already melted long ago, the water is all on the floodplain – it’s time to drive the pike along the backwaters.
I come to the river with a box of brand new baits, with a new reel and braid and a bunch of plans in anticipation of the delightful squeal of the friction brake. Instead, I sit on the shore, sadly watching a real biblical flood. In the best case, I’ll check the game of new baits and remember the spinning skills forgotten over the winter. No, if you open a new season, then a real fishing, with the full use of knowledge and skills!
For several seasons I have been spending my first fishing trips in one big quarry. There were seasons when I started fishing in the last decade of March. It’s funny: nearby fishermen are conjuring over the holes, and I’m bathing my float near the reeds on a strip of clear water several meters away. And the fish bite! This quarry has a small shallow channel connecting the large quarry itself with a small quarry. Reed and reed thickets reign there.
Naturally, in these places the ice will melt faster, and life wakes up much earlier after winter suspended animation than in deeper places. It is here that the first shitiks come across, this is where the first roach comes. Here behind her, a silvery beauty, I go. Although it is only at first the roach comes. The closer to May, the warmer it gets, the greater the chance of running into a large bastard.
Moreover, the breeder in the spring is so picky that the worm is the best bait for him. And there it is already not far before the massive move of a large open-pit bleak, when the fishermen literally stand shoulder to shoulder and catch, catch, catch …
My fishing begins at home, and not so much with the preparation of tackle, but with the preparation of bait. I know that many anglers treat bait carelessly in spring, believing that the fish already has pre-spawning food, and it should snatch the bait itself from the pockets of gaping fishermen. But be that as it may, without bait, the result is always worse. Now, if you think about it, why is this fish going to the shore and into shallow waters? Bask in the spring sun? So she is cold-blooded, especially the roach – not tench with crucian carp. Spawn? So it will be later. Yes, she floats there to eat, what else! After all, it is in the warmed up small coastal places that all sorts of boogers and insects begin to come to life. But in order to distract the fish from these very boogers and direct them to the right path, that is, to our hook with bait, bait is needed.
Therefore, I begin to “cook”, remembering the two groundbait rules. Firstly, the consistency of the bait, already moistened and ready for direct use, should be crumbly, when it hits the water, the lump should disintegrate and slowly sink to the bottom, creating an attractive food cloud for fish. This is very important, because in the place of fishing the bottom is covered with tough algae (usually the quarries are chalky, and aquatic vegetation is already crunching from limestone deposits), last year and young, and the roach swims freely along and above this carpet of algae.
For the hesitant anglers, I will give you a clear example of the importance of the “mechanics” of complementary foods. Last year, my friend and I fished spring roach in the quarry. The tackle, location, bait and bait are all pretty much the same. But my roach followed the roach, I didn’t even have time to drink tea, and my partner had a couple of fish in half an hour. The whole thing was hidden in the groundbait – it had such a density that even if you put it in the feeder and go to the river with a feeder, it would not be washed out by the current in thirty minutes. In addition, his groundbait was based on steeply cooked millet porridge. The ball of such bait quickly went to the bottom, reliably getting lost in the thickets of algae. I gave my friend my crumbly mixture, and it went much more fun.
Secondly, the bait in the spring should not quickly saturate the fish, but only attract, this is not a bait, the point of which is to tie the fish to a specific feeding place, saturating it and hammering into its head the reflex that there is regularly free food distribute. I don’t see much point in spending money on expensive industrial ready-mixed mixtures. Almost always, I was helped out by a homemade mixture of bread crumbs, semolina, oatmeal, clean (without any extra flavors) cookies. Moreover, the volume of crackers reaches 60-70 percent of the total amount of groundbait. With special fishing flavors, not everything is unambiguous in spring either. In most cases, I use only two on such a fishing – fried and ground flaxseed and vanilla (not vanilla, namely vanilla).
On the shore I divide the bait into two parts, in one I add flax seed, in the other – vanillin, and the third I leave without the “stink”. Accordingly, I feed three points for fishing, along the way finding out the current taste preferences of roach. Here, on the shore, you can pour some earths into complementary foods, but not chalk from a quarry and not clay – I noticed that spring roach for some reason avoids such a cloudy cloud, even with complementary foods.
Spring tackle for fishing in quarries is no different in anything so tricky, it’s all a matter of habit and personal preferences. Someone prefers to fish with a fly rod with a thin line, but when fishing in the reeds, I use a more reliable tackle. Try to throw a rig on a line of 0.12-0.14 mm with a float of 0.5 g into a narrow corridor of the cane in a crosswind! Careless movement, a gust of wind, and all the rig will be tied with a sea knot on the nearest stalk of reeds. Here is where a more or less clean place, where you can “wave”. My tackle is simple. A five-meter “coal” fishing rod with rings and a reel (sometimes you have to cast farther when the roach does not dare to approach the edge of the cane and reeds), 0.16 mm line, 1.5 g float, 0.12-0.14 mm leash and hook No. 14-16. The difference in rigs is not very big, but you feel more confident. With the wind, especially with the oncoming one, and heavier, I will set the float so that it is easier to cast. Of course, by weighting it so that it is almost as sensitive to a bite as the same half-gram one.
Of the baits on such a fishing, I give the palm to the semolina chatterbox. It seems like it’s time for the baiting of all kinds of living creatures, but it was on semolina that most roach was caught, while the same popular maggot is so long in the fish that even the fastidious tench will be jealous. I “chat up” semolina at home in the evening, and in the morning I fill two syringes, one of which contains semolina with vanilla, and the second one is clean. Although I admit that there were fishing trips, when an ordinary worm, caught right there, on the shore, helped out a lot. The roach was much larger than the semolina, although it pecked less often.
Spring fishing itself does not have any special secrets in the quarry. Everything is as usual – keeping quiet, feeding according to the principle “less, but more often.” Precise bait fishing. Timely hooking and fast enough playing of fish during short bursts of bite. I do not lose heart when the bites stop, I patiently wait for the next flock to approach, not forgetting to periodically toss the bait. And an indispensable condition is to leave the fishing spot the same as before fishing, without garbage. And if he stayed after the winter, then in his fire or in a bag and to the nearest landfill. Nature must be protected and respected!