Winter Fishing 2009-2010

The winter months are now with us,dark mornings & dark nights, daylight hours are short,so come Saturday morning my mates & myself are on the road for approx 7.00am. It's the time of year were the bigger fish are taking it easy, I now concentrate on fisheries that hold stocks of the usual suspects, skimmers & roach.

Living just outside of Manchester there are plenty of commercial fisheries to choose from.My favourite for good all round winter fishing is Heskin Old Hall Farm Fishery in Wrightingon.This fishery has 3 pools, Nr 2 pool has the larger concentration of silver fish & you can catch plenty of silvers even on the coldest day.

It's now time to scale down on the tackle, I have 3 top 2 sets that I have set up for summer & winter fishing.My top 2 with the heaviest elastic is now put to one side unless I'm on a fishery and big fish are about.The other 2 are set up with finer elastics, one should be ok for landing good sized carp while the other is very fine & is for sliver fish only, if I hit a carp with the fine elastic then it's a battle to get it onto the bank.

I also scale down on my line weights, these days the lines are quite fine anyhow, but I stick to 6lbs .18mm mainline with a 3lb .12mm line hooklength.

Hook sizes vary, depends on what bait I'm using & what method.If I'm after roach up in the water on caster then largest hook would be size16, this size works well as when the fish are in a feeding frenzy a smaller hook means missed bites.

If I'm using bread punch then I will go down to a size 20, I'm not expecting the carp present in the pools to put in an appearance, so the smaller hooks will be ok for the ones I'm after. Float size varies depending on the weather & depth, I will fine down & use a shotting pattern that takes the bait slowly down to the bottom or mid water.

Heskin Old Hall Farm Pool 1 Latest Outing