As the weather forecast for Monday was also looking pretty grim I had a feeling it was going to be a tough session. But as ever I was desperate to get out on the bank and determined to put my day off to good use, I arrived at the lake at 9:30am (after a detour home to pick up my forgotten brolly) to find it deserted. As with previous sessions, the wind was hacking down towards the far end so I decided to hedge my bets and start in trusty swim 25 which (so far) had been doing me loads of bites.

I stuck with the same tactics as before (helicopter rig with a yellow wafter dumbbell on one rod and a feeder rod with corn on the 2nd rod) and had a few early fish on the feeder before the bites dried up around 11ish.

Rather than move (it was raining hard by this point) I decided to ring the changes and try some different baits. Bread is a great winter bait and having saved some slices from the liquidised bag I'd made up for the feeder I decided to try popped up bread discs and bread boiles for a while. I sat on my hands allowing 20 minutes for each rod but after no signs, it was time for something else.

Zigs are excellent during winter so I decided to try a piece of yellow foam on a 1ft zig on the feeder rod, my thinking being that some of the liquidised bread would float up through the water column and a suspended bait may trigger a bite...

And it worked! After ten minutes the feeder rod roarded off with what felt like a decent fish. Sadly, I never got it to the bank suffering a hook pull at the net... But it was encouraging to get a bite on a new method.

By now time was marching on and with no indication that the pink popup on the helicopter rig was going to produce a bite I decided on a move to the next swim. It's only five metres down the bank but peg 1 gives you access to the bowl end of the lake and I could still fish the lily pads from another angle. It's a move that'd paid off in the past but with the weather steadily worsening I was beginning to wonder if the conditions were completely killing the fishing...

Twenty minutes later the helicopter rod ripped off followed by the zig/feeder rod as I was slipping the first fish back! So the move was definitely worth it and getting a 2nd run on the zig was a conference booster.

But the bites dried up again, so much so that I decided another move was the go and up sticks round to the other side to try peg 7. The weather had changed again with the wind and rain stopping and a bit of blue sky showing. I only came round with the bare essentials and got both rods out, the helicopter in the bowl but quite close in and the feeder on a longer chuck towards the Lilly's lilies. Sadly nothing happened, not a knock or a tap despite giving three different spots twenty minutes each. By now it was 2:30pm and I was beginning to get a bit desperate for a fish!

I gave it 20 minutes back in swim 1 and lost a run on the helicopter. Another move back to swim 25 where I started the day produced nothing so I moved yet again further up the lake settling in swim 2 where some died back rushes and lily pads to my left looked like they might hold fish. This is also the thinner end of the lake so there's less open water to go at but the right hand side moving down the lake was in the sunshine so with a bit of luck there may also be carp heading to the warming water.

The fact that I spooked one fish casting the feeder gave me hope that the carp had found the 3 bread and groundbait balls I'd chucked in to prime the swim 10 minutes before the move....

I didn't have to wait long to get a run, with both rods producing a couple of fish a piece in the space of 15 minutes. The runs kept coming as I packed down, and I foul hooked a fish while reeling in the feeder rod so the fish had definitely pushed further up to the thinner end during the day. So another good day on the bank, harder than the previous trips but it's still very rewarding to be getting bites in winter from a new venue. A lot of moves really took this session from a couple to lots of runs and fish on the bank!

I'm currently praying to the river gods for a decent week of weather so maybe, just maybe I can head out to the river on Friday...

In terms of 'must do mods' on the DRZ400, the list goes:

1. case savers
2. bash plate
3. barkbusters

and purely for aesthetics:

4. tail tidy

Having done the first three items when I picked up the bike a year ago I've been putting off doing the tail tidy as there always seemed to be something else to spend money on. But having put up with everyone I ride with telling me I 'really have to do something about the arse end of the bike...' for a long time I decided to get to it and replace it.

The first challenge was finding a suitable unit. The ones offered by B&B and R&G appear top notch in terms of quality but pretty expensive for what they are. Asking around on Facebook quickly revealed that the Savage tail tidies listed on eBay for around $40 are more that up to the task at a fraction of the price. nice.

So I ordered one up from eBay along with an A4 piece of 4.5mm polycarbonate. One of the fellas who'd chimed in on the Facebook post had suggested making a backing plate for the licence plate as in his words 'it stops the number plate becoming a meat slicer' and also reduces the risk of the number plate cracking (which seems to be a common problem when the bike gets dropped).

While I was waiting for the unit to turn up in the post I got to designing the backing plate template and figuring out all the other bits I'd need to make the project run smoothly. One thing that came up in my research was that the police are pretty hot on roadworthy dual sport motorcycles having a reflector on the back of the bike:

All motorcycles must have at least 1 rear-facing red reflector which is visible from either side of the rear of the motorcycle.

https://www.tmr.qld.gov.au/Safety/Vehicle-standards-and-modifications/Vehicle-standards/Motorcycle-standards#reflector

if they pull you over cos they're in a bad mood, sure as eggs are eggs you'll pick up a fine. Interestingly, when I took the tail tidy into the local police station the cop on the desk said he wouldn't pull me up on it! But then I found out that traffic cops are a different department to bobbies in squad cars and decided that it wasn't worth taking the risk... The good news is that the factory fender ships with great bolt on reflector so my template incorporated the original to keep everything nice and legal.

And to doubly make sure the cops would be happy I also picked up these round screw in reflectors that I'd use in place of bolts - safety first and all that.

The template can be downloaded here: QLD Motorcycle Number Plate Template PDF. Please note: it seems that each state has a slightly different set of dimensions!

Which left the last challenge being how to wire in the back brake. I had no joy finding a 3 wire connector that matched the one on the bike and after a lot of asking around the general consensus was to cut the current wires close to the current brake light and then splice/solder the wire to the ones on the new unit. After some hunting around I found these excellent 'solder splice heatshrink tubes' at JayCar. What a genius idea: the middle of the heatshrink tube has a small band of solder so all you do is slide the tubing onto one of the wires, merge the wire strands as you normally would when joining wires with solder, slide the tubing back over both wires aligning the solder section with the middle of the joined wires and heat with a butane or electric coil lighter (or a heat gun if you have one, long and short being 'heat' not 'flame' as you don't want to burn anything). The heat melts the solder giving a great join quality and meanwhile the shrinktube contracts around the wire giving a waterproof seal. Wrap in electrical tape and it's good to go.

Once the unit arrived the first thing I discovered is that the slots don't line up with the holes on an Australian number plate - which isn't a big deal but if i was going to fix the plate to my polycarbonate backing plate I was going to have to perform some surgery. After a few experiments I decided to cut the ends off either side of the tail tidy and drill new holes in the plate to mount it.

I checked with the legality of this and found that:

Drilling holes in a number plate is only permitted:

• to enable it to be attached to a vehicle
• if the holes do not interfere with the appearance of any characters on the plate
• if plates are not altered in any way so as to damage or deface the plate.

https://www.qld.gov.au/transport/registration/numberplate/replace-change

The next challenge was figuring out which wires joined to which. The wire colours on the new unit don't match so it was a case of trial and error to figure it out: twist the wires together, turn the bike on, pull the brake lever and check to see if the light gets brighter - it turned out the combination was:

• grey to red
• black to black
• white to green

With the wires joined, the number plate and reflector fixed onto the backing plate and the indicators added it was a simple case of removing the old unit and bolting the new one in place using the original screws. The cables were routed around the subframe, the fender went back on and it was job done.

All in, it was probably $65 including bolts etc from Bunnings - we'll worth it as I think you'll agree, it looks far better than the original! 

Luckily for me the weather was completely different to the beginning of the week: a frosty start with blue skies and little or no wind - perfect for a winter bite! Having learnt quite a bit about the lake on the previous session I decided to fish the same methods (a helicopter rig on one rod and a cage feeder set up on the float rod) and use yellow baits from the off. I'd worked through all sorts of different colours last time and with sweetcorn outfishing anything else it made sense to stick with yellow only this time I was going to fish pineapple dumbbells on the helicopter rod in an attempt to pick out some bigger fish. With the sun already on the main body of water I fished with the sun on my back, putting the helicopter rod to open water and the feeder rod close to he died back lily pads.

I didn't have to wait long... The helicopter rod had been in the water for about ten minutes when it ripped off! I really wasn't expecting action quite so quickly and the bite took me completely by surprise. First fish in the net, too good.

No sooner had I slipped that fish back and got the rod back out and the feeder rod went off and this seemed to trigger a bit of a feeding spell. Over the next twenty minutes I had four more fish to various sizes - the yellow dumbbells and trusty sweetcorn were really doing the business with no clear leader in terms of bites.

And then it went all quiet... I didn't get a knock or a tap for about an hour despite regular casting and baiting little and often baiting using pellets and sweetcorn. On the previous session a move made all the difference so I upped sticks and headed two swims to the my right...

...and it worked! Both rods began produced fish and I had loads of fun jumping between rods, baiting up, tieing PVA sticks and regularly casting to new spots in an effort to keep the bites coming.

3pm came around far to quickly... I could've quite happily kept fishing into dusk. As luck would have it, as I leant down to pick up the helicopter rod to begin packing down it suddenly leapt into life! On the last cast, I'd positioned it right on the edge of the lily pads (possibly right among the storks) and it seemed to have tempted a bigger stamp of fish as the rod was bent and line was stripping from the reel.

To end on the biggest fish of the session was a real buzz which made the final pack down a little easier. I've really enjoyed the last couple of sessions, it's been a refreshing change to the pike fishing and to get winter bites has been brilliant.

It might be pushing it, but I may have to do another session this coming Monday...

Unfortunately, the weather man had other ideas with heavy rain being predicted all day on Monday... But what the hell, I was so desperate to get on the bank that I decided to dig out my elderly fishing umbrella from the shed and head out anyway.

As predicted it was raining heavily when I pulled into the carpark. Luckily the lake is only a short stomp away so after booking in at reception I headed down to the water and jumped into the first likely looking swim. I wasn't expecting to see much but swim 13 (lucky eh?!) on the ring road side of the lake gave me a good viewpoint to watch the water and plenty of interesting areas to put a rod to. With my back to the wind and the rain hammering down on the umbrella, I somehow managed to get both rods out, a choddy with a pink popup to open water a method feeder with sweetcorn in the margin to the left.

One thing that became quickly apparent was that the lake is a fairly uniform dept of around 4ft and is very, very silty. Not a massive problem for the chod rod but tricky for the feeder... Ah well, I figured leave the baits in place while the rain was coming down (in sheets...) and watch the water for any clues as to where the fish might be shoaled up. Apart from lots of liners and wind bites on the open water rod nothing much happened and as there was a break in the rain around 10.30am I decided to reel in and do a lap of the lake in an attempt to find another likely looking area.

As it turned out, the far side of the lake down towards the wider end was far more sheltered and out of the wind with relatively calm water. The other thing was a 'feature' in the form of a fairly big set of died back lily pads. After another hour of rain and nothing to show for it I decided to upsticks and head round to the other side casting the method rod as close to the lily pads as I dared and what was the choddy rod (now a helicopter rig with sweetcorn) to open water in the bowl.

I didn't have to wait long! Within 10 minutes the tip on the method rod swung round and I had my 1st run of the day. Unfortunately, I somehow managed to lose it... Damn, I am out of practice! Ah Well, it was as good a sign as any that there were fish in the area and it was worth another cast. The only change I made was switching the short hooklink I was using on the method to a much longer mono hooklink with a size 10 hook and a long hair, my thinking being that the method was more to get some bait in the water and that the fish wouldn't be attacking it as they would in the summer.

The good news was that the change seemed to make a difference as I hit a winter feeding spell and landed seven or so carp over the next couple of hours! Both rods produced fish with the method outfishing the helicopter setup. One thing that I did start to do is feed the swim using a catapult, firing small pouches of sweet corn and pellets little and often. And it did appear to work as I was now getting regular knocks and runs, with one fish coming 'on the drop' seconds after the method hit the water.

At one point, the action was so frantic that I ended up with a triple take, the last fish being the largest of the session - not bad at all!

Miracuously the rain then stopped and the sun came out! Amazing. Unfortunately though, this seemed to kill thinks off and the swim went quiet... I've had this before, especially in winter where the fish seem to back off an area and the solution seems to be to either cast a couple of metres either side of where you've been having bites or move one swim to the left or right. As it turns out, moving swims did the trick as a move to the left and casting 3 or so metres away from the previous area produced several more fish in quick succession.

All in all I had nine carp out and two missed runs - not bad at all considering the conditions! It was also great to be out on the bank despite the weather (although the sun in the afternoon was splendid!) and I really enjoyed the challenge of fishing a new water. Don't get me wrong, I've really enjoyed my pike fishing over the last couple of months but it's hard work, especially with the recent weather. The banksides are incredibly treacherous, the water fast and coloured and the pike less than up for a bite...

But today it was all about a pleasure session in relative (if soggy!) comfort and I had a blast. I'm already looking forward to my next session.

I've had such an amazing run of excellent pike sessions on the Bristol River Avon over the last month or so, with loads of jack's and a couple of nearly double fish falling to ledgered sardines. But now we're into late November the weather is becoming a much bigger factor...

We had really heavy rain overnight on Wednesday and from checking the water levels on Friday morning I could see the river was higher than usual. As I walked into the 1st field to my new 'banker swim' just on the bend my heart sunk... Although there'd been a frost and it was very cold (great for pikeing, not great for fingers!) I could see that the river was very coloured and hacking through a quite a pace. Several of the swims that I'd fished on previous sessions were unfishable due to being the underwater!

But out went the rods and I couldn't quite believe it when the left hand rod ripped off minutes after the bait got the deck! However I struck into nothing... Very odd...

Unfortunately this set the theme for the day. My baits were being attacked and ripped to shreds minutes after being cast out. I'm 99.9% that the coloured water had brought the eels out in force and they were enjoying a free meal. It's happened to me before on the Avon and although eels are on the endangered list, they seem to be prolific in the river.

I persevered though, moving through five swims but as the sun started to sink at around 4pm I packed down with nothing to show for my efforts.

Damn. My 1st blank.