Early Season Black and Green Buzzers

Nice Rainbows from Arnfield Fishery with the West Yorkshire Police Team

The Venue and Position

We had caught several fish mine were all on Sandy's Blank Buster Specimen Hunter Green Buzzers but we moved about 20 feet from the windlane at Arnfield, the wind was blowing down the tree line and across the water perfect for fishing but cold! We saw this was were the bigger fish were rising and feeding. Wind was whipping down the treeline and it was the obvious place to be, all potential food would be taken from the promentary across the the reservoir. With Stephen's great new electric motors we glided across and anchored up as shown below.

The Technique

My technique for those over wintered Rainbows is regularly the same. I use copper coloured tungsten bead head PT (copper coloured I find has better results than gold, maybe it is slightly less glitzy)  on the point and two different sized buzzers (Sandy's Blank Buster Specimin Hunter Green Buzzers) 12 and 14 on droppers. I cast over the rising fish and allow the team to drop to just below the feeding depth of the rainbows. Quite often they will be hit on the drop however if they do not then I lift my rod tip, about 3 feet taking the team into the feeding zone (in this case at a depth or 2 to 3 feet). I then drop the rod tip and perform a gentle figure of 8 retrieve to take up the slack from having lifted the rod tip. I then allow the team to drop back through the feeding zone to 1 foot below the feeding zone and repeat.

The technique is pretty basic but works every time. I use a 4lb leader and either 5 or 7 weight line depending on the size of the venue. Using 4 feet of Stroft on a tapered leader of about 8 feet gives me a perfect rig with droppers 18" to 2 feet apart. The results were pleasurable as can be seen below, a nice lunker! The fight was superb, the rainbow hit and immediately tore up the wind lane. I turned the fish and it went towards the tree line on the promentry I had seconds and only line tippet but had to turn the fish or it would smash me through the trees in the water. Quickly I put pressure on turning the fish away from the tree line and from the shallow water on the promentary of 5 feet to the deeps. Here it was fought for about 15 minutes but it was always going to be beaten as long as I kept the pressure on to stop the barbless hook being thrown and did not bully the fish. 15 minutes later Mick scooped the net under the fish, thanks Mick what a great time!