THE ULTIMATE ANGLING BUCKET LIST

This was repeated with various other amounts of weight, until we knew how much lead would take the
lures down to different depths with the outboard running, so that when we spotted char on the sounder
screen, we knew what it would take in terms of weighting to get down to them.
Our findings were, that as a rough guide, one ounce of lead will work a small mepps spinner at around
fifteen feet; two ounces at thirty feet, with all graduated combinations in both directions.
We also found that in May, when most of our fishing was done, that certain areas were most definitely
favoured. Again, the echo sounder would help here, though many times we would pick up fish on the
lures after having seen nothing on the screen, and visa versa.
On other occasions, the sounder screen would show very little at all throughout the entire day, so we
would therefore work the sixty foot contour with different amounts of lead on different rods until some
sort of pattern started to show.
We never bothered fishing much after May because thermal stratification would start to kick in, pushing
the fish into ever deeper water all over the vastness of the lake looking to find suitably cooler
temperatures.
The unfortunate knock on consequence of stratification is that it's the water-air interface and surface
layers that absorb the oxygen from the atmosphere, but because there is no mixing either side of the
thermocline, the hypolimnion becomes depleted and less hospitable.
Food will be scarcer there too. Conversion to body weight is reduced due to the lower temperatures,
and with lower oxygen levels also acting as a limiting factor, growth becomes stunted as a result.
Typically, Coniston char would be around the half pound mark.
We would occasionally see the odd bigger fish to over a pound, but these were few and far between.
More recently however, when I was filming with Jeff and Bill, and not having fished for char for a good
fifteen years leading up that day, I noticed just how much the population balance had changed during
that period.
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