Sunday 15th April Windmill Fishery north Bristol

There was no club match on this weekend and as usual I tormented myself during the week regarding what to do. We had friends around Saturday night so there was sure to be drinking involved plus my daughter and her partner were coming around for Sunday Lunch at about 5.30. I finally rang Pete at Summerhayes to see if there were any spaces for his Sunday open but as he was holding the match on 'sellicks' he had to cap the anglers to 18 and yes you guessed it there were no spaces, serves me right for not booking in earlier. I had seen a few reports in Roy Garlands match press http://www.toppeg.co.uk/id12.html concerning a new fishery not far off the M32 towards Pucklechurch in north Bristol which is only about 30 mins up the M5 for me. They have a website http://www.windmillfishery.co.uk/ and according to the info hold Wednesday and Sunday opens. A quick look at the website and past fishing reports lead me to phone Terry the fishery manager  for a bit of info and within a few minutes I was booked in.The match lake is 32 pegs with plenty of room I was told and depths ranging from 5' to 11' so that was it sorted.

 I went to bed about 01.15 on Sunday morning and the alarm woke me up at 07.00 to be honest my head was not that great and I felt knackered, the spicy mexican dish that Mrs. Currie made and went down so well was also causing me a few probs but I'll spare you the detail. So after a piece of toast cup of coffee and some asprin I was loaded up and heading up the road at 7.45 for a 9.00 draw. I got there about 8.20 and met Terry the fishery manager, there were no other anglers around except for someone on the carp lake. I asked Terry were everyone was 'they'll be here soon, it's early yet go have look round'. The venue still looks a bit young but the design is great and there is plenty of room. To cut a long story short only 2 other anglers turned up Bill Ferris who I have heard of before and seen that he has done well on other venues, he is also a local, retired and spends quite a bit of time on this fishery. I think he won a club match on it the day before as well. The other guy was also retired and local. Anyway it was a day out and a bit of a knock up. We elected to fish in the more sheltered part of the lake as there was a bitter cold north wind and we spaced out 4 pegs apart, I was on peg 12 looking down the lake.

There was plent of water to go at. The locals told me to set up a straight lead to fish on the far shelf which was about 25 meters away which I did along with a banded pellet rig and a rig for fishing maggot at depth which was about 6' 13 meters out on a gravel bar 'simples'. On the whistle I went straight out like the other two on the lead with hair rigged lunchen meat and fire over a few 8mm fishmeal pellets. Within 10 mins the tip went around and a 3lb mirror was in the net, that was to be it for the remaining 51/2 hours although I did have a couple of skimmers about 10oz on the pole. Bill 'the mugger' Ferris caught his first carp after 2 hours and then had another 7 on worm (they didn't tell me that bit), he also had a 4 skimmers for 8lb again on the worm, the other local did not catch at all. Like I said it's a bit new but is owned by the Windmill Leisure Group who also are developing a Golf Materclass Course just down the road from the fishery. The fishery itself is being developed all the time with a tackle shop, cafe and toliets also planned. This will a very popular place very soon (bring some worm though lol). No club match next week either so will be booking into Summerhayes tomorrow,