A day at Shearwater Lake

A day at Shearwater Lake.


On a very wet and windy day me and my mate Matt went to one of our locals for very rare day session, well for me anyway, i'm normally only in to week end or longer. Anyway, we both arranged to meet there at 6.30am for rods in at 7am, rules, I didn't sleep a wink that night so I was up at 4.30, loaded by 5 and out there by 5.15. Too early to start fishing so I parked up and went for a wander and took a few photos.



In this pic i spotted a Little Egret on the far bank, not a usual sight around here but getting more common in the last few years. Sorry about the quality of the pic, i couldn't hold the camera still.

Matt arrived at 6.05am so was early himself, he selected a swim he'd fished before so we set up there, a bit awkward and tight but I didn't care, just wanted to get the rods in as fast as I could. On taking the rods out of the bag I noticed neither rods in the bag were set up, they should have been as I was going to use the rod set up I used in Cornwall, but my stepdaughters better half had used them when he was there and packed them away with the end tackle taken off, never mind half hour and they’d be ready.

7am on the dot rods were in, that’s when the heavens opened up, did it rain or what, it hammered down, and the wind was strong enough to make us hang on to our brollies at times, the weather men got this forecast wrong, but what the heck, they always do.



I was fishing corn on top of ground bait and various sized small pellets, and matt started on flaked bread, 25 minutes and Matt had his first fish a nice Common.





Then after a couple of small takes he had another about the same size 20 minutes later.







With nothing happening on the corn I started on boilies, see if they would attract a carp or two, well I could see carp in my swim but they weren’t feeding on what I was giving them, so I changed to 14mm halibuts, these were soon getting takes, lots of them, but only short takes, bream I thought and soon my thoughts were found correct, the first of many bream came in.















Matt was having a few littluns on the maggot, perch and roach plus a few nice sized bream.











By 8am I was beginning to believe I was going to have to settle with the fact that bream was going to be my catch all day, but at 8.05 my left rod shot off and my first carp slid in the net, a mirror nice one, my first ever out of Shearwater.





By lunch time we’d had a few more carp, plenty of bream and a few more roach and perch, the rain was still tanking it down, although there had been a few breaks now and again.





My first ever leather carp, not bad, well I was chuffed to bits anyway.



After lunch there was a lot of noise coming from the dam end of the lakeand before long we soon saw what the noise was about, sail boats, lots of them too, we thought it must be a competition or something because they were shifting pretty quick, mind you with the wind howling there was no way they’d have gone slow. Some of them were blown over and I was quite surprised how quick the chaps were righting them, impressed I was.











The afternoon drew on with me banging out the bream one after the other, they loved the pellets, and we both had a few more carp in amongst the bream.























Matt had a couple I didn’t get a shot of, as they jumped out of his hands and back into the lake.







Those glasses he wore cracked me up, anyway, time was getting near to packing up so we called it a day, one more thing did happen earlier which surprised me, one of my rods screamed of and when I struck a flippin cormorant popped up right in front of me, it had snagged my line and got tangled, I give it a good yank but the critter got away, bet that was a shock for it, was for me lol.

After we packed up we discussed the day, I myself thoroughly enjoyed the trip, nothing big caught but didn’t mind, catching fish and getting out there was enough

And can’t wait for the next trip.

great write-up pl, and some nice fish, weldone on the leather and the mirror "firsts"


im not too keen on the bream, but seeing a few perch come out was nice, your thread was made interesting with adding the boaters into it.
As for Matt's glasses, what does he think he looks like?? are they kiddie ones??

Cracking report/pics there PL.......love the mirror and Leather, beautiful fish....never had a Leather yet.

Well and Matt's glasses...what can I say?

NOT cool dude

Very good report PL and some nice fish there.Well done to you both.

Now then,Matt in his not so cool shades and you,PL, with a fag in your mouth whilst holding a fish just prooves you are a pair of chavs

pmsl just wicked tr

I'll have you know i was polite to the fish, the fag was out, if i was a chav i'd have give it a smokey blow job,..... as it was, he was lucky the rain had put it out.

Yeah yeah yeah

wow long gone are those days.