There must be something about a concrete bowl reservoir but if often takes Farmoor a couple of weeks longer than other reservoirs to ‘switch on’ in Spring. But when it does, its one of the best buzzer waters in the country.
With many waters showing great catch returns on buzzers through the warmer weather, I was itching to get to Farmoor to check it out and a last minute meeting cancellation at work, just before the Easter weekend, gave me the excuse I needed. I raced home, chucked my kit in the car and was on the water by 3pm for a quick four-hour session. It was a hot, bright day but I hoped there might be some good activity later on.
The joy of fishing somewhere regularly is that you have a good idea of what it likely to work and when. I knew that if the fish were on buzzers then it was just a matter of location and depth. With an easterly wind, I started on the northern bank, with the wind on my left, but towards the western end, where the wind was blowing into. I started with a floater and straight-line buzzer set-up with a size 10 grey boy on point, size 12 on the middle dropper and a black diawl bach on the top dropper. I spent 45 minutes trying different depths with no interest so moved towards the eastern end.
I continued counting down again and soon had my first take. But this was not the usual arm-wrenching buzzer take; it was almost a gentle suck. After missing a couple more, similar, takes I changed my set-up to put a sugar cube emerger on the top dropper which would act like a bung. I thought by hanging the buzzers at the right depth and having the emerger as an indicator it might be easier to pick up the subtle takes. This approach worked well with a couple of quick farmoor bows to the net; both hard fighting and between 3lb-4lb.
Things went quiet after that for a while so I changed back to the straight-line set-up, to get a bit deeper. Once I hit a certain depth (around 15-25 second count, or I would guess 8-12ft) I started to get regular takes and, having managed to get the hang of the tentative takes, regular fish to the net. This included a double hook-up where unfortunately I lost both fish.
By 7pm I’d brought 9 rainbows to the net and not a single one was less than 3lb, with a couple of 5lb plus slabs. Great fun!