First time out with Spikers

I’ve not done much fishing this winter, but I took advantage of a nice mild spell this weekend and set off down to Birchwood Pool in Shropshire for three days. Temperatures had been very cold leading up to the trip, with Friday showing a great increase to almost 10-degrees. It stayed mild throughout the trip, and several other members also saw a good reason to get out onto the banks and have a go which made it quite tight with only 2½ acres to go at.


Luckily for me, I picked the right area to fish, as well as the right tactics too. Using Dayglo Yellow Juicy Pineapple 14mm pops dipped in the ever-awesome Esterblend 12 I kicked off my trip with a nice plump mirror known as Lumpy at 4pm on the Saturday afternoon. The sun had been very high in the sky and was shining directly onto a nice set of reeds which I had a feeling the carp would be patrolling.

The next day wasn’t so productive or warm, but a day later on the Monday I was into another fish named Flid from the same spot at roughly the same time of the day. It was the same tactics that produced the fish too, offering pops on Spikers connected to size 6 Stronghold’s alongside the PVA Bag Clip System filled with a few broken BYT boilies. This was the first time I’d used the Spikers, and although I lost another fish shortly after landing my second, two on the bank in February proved to be a good first time test for them.
Crowy