Dad and Lad time

As the weather has now turned some what warmer I thought it time I took my 7 year old son for his first session of the year. After a word in my ear last week that a local venue was producing a few fish I thought it was about time I showed him something other than chucking a pole around, as for the past two years all he has really done(quite well though I must add) is catch ide and small carp on a local puddle and I think even he was getting a bit tired of catching a fish every put in at ten meters. So we headed down to Sally Walsh's dam for a lesson in feeder fishing. Nice banks with no features as such to get hung up in whilst casting and lots of open water to go at makes it a good water for improving casting skills.
We arrived to find a fair few people fishing so jumped into the third peg up from the dam wall, mainly because he was moaning by now about carrying his seat box after walking all of 30 yards from the car! I got us sat comfy and set about explaining how the feeder works and why we had no float, he did comment that he would like it as he didn't have to keep his eyes on a tiny dot out in the middle, next for a bit of casting practise. It went...................... erm lets just say he'll do better once his arms and fingers stretch but I have seen far worse on the banks. Once I had him in position I set about sorting a light float rod for my self.

Within a few minuets Kyle was into his first fish, a skimmer of around 6-8oz and I had a small roach first chuck. I was expecting a few more to follow but it was a bit slow to get going really with the warm spring sun and almost flat surface not helping much. Kyle had no more fish in the next hour and I kept plugging away picking up the odd small roach. he was getting a bit bored now so I altered the hook length and made it a fair bit longer and also un-clipped the spool and cast a rod length or two further and clipped back up, this improved things slightly as did the bit of breeze and he started to miss 3 hit one and net a few small skimmers and roach whilst I kept picking a few roach up loose feeding maggots. He kept having a few goes at casting him self and was getting the hang of it right until his feeder almost landed right on top of my float! Cheater I muttered to him just as the tip flew round. The little bugger only bagged him self a skimmer of around a pound right from under my nose! He was rather confused by the next bite as the tip, as he put it 'went the wrong way' before I told him a fish had swam towards him and he should strike. The sun stayed out and the wind dropped and the fishing got harder so we called it a day. I managed just a few small roach in between helping Kyle out. I chucked all mine back but for Kyle it was the fist time he has been able to use a keep net and was nice for him to see what he had at the end of the day.