Many studies have been done into the effects a colony of cormorants have on inland fish stocks and reading the weekly angling mail you quickly realise that this is a national problem and not just confined to certain parts of the country, hopefully with the information gained from this study a balance can be struck with regards numbers of birds to reduce the damage these birds do to both fish and the stocks of fish in our waters, High Legh fishery is the latest fishery in the Warrington anglers card to suffer from a cormorant problem over winter and more recently the club has boosted Ackers pit with carp above two and half pound to combat this problem with fish of this size and above deemed to be too big for them to take.
On to this weeks fishing.
Thursday 16th June opening day
The plan for today was to get up well before daybreak to get to the river with a view to getting my quest for a river Dee barbel under way while my dad was set up for a day fishing for the shoals of dace that populate this lovely river. We arrived at the venue well before dark to find someone already in the peg I had hoped to fish and with still being pitch black a quick decision was made to put the barbel on hold and spend the day fishing the River Dee at Farndon on the Environment Agency pegs.
Having booked Wednesday off work both our feeder rods where already made up ready to go so setting up in the dark wasn't a problem and it wasn't long before we were both sat in our chosen swim touch ledgering to detect bites and we were treated to a truly remarkable aerial display from the resident bats which only added to the experience.
Back on the banks in the dark:
The fishing was painfully slow with bites few and far between but we were both happy sat back relaxing as the dawn chorus rang all around us, in my eyes there is no better way to relax and forget about the troubles of everyday life than being on the bank before dawn and sitting back watching and listening to the world come alive around you, truly amazing!! I did capture it on a voice recording but both this site and YouTube are having problems processing the video format.
As the sun rose the frequency of bites improves but they were just tipping the bait and not taking it properly resulting in violent bites on the tip but no fish on the strike, really frustrating!! we did manage to hit a few of these fish which turned out to be very small dace at around 9am I struck into a very tentative bite which was no dace the fish kept very deep and swam up steam and fought it out under the rod tip, a true sign of a better fish, with only 2lb line I had to be very careful and the fish was soon making a very determined lunge for a sunken tree to my left, a chub for sure I thought, applying as much side strain as I dare I maneged to turn the fish and after a few heart stopping moments a beautiful marked river perch was in the net. The picture below really doesn't do it justice its colours where so bright and its stripes were jet black like they had been applied with a permanent marker, my first ever proper river perch topping the scales at 1lb 2oz but it looked bigger and I think its low weight was due to it being quite hollow and had recently spawned.
First river "stripey" saved a dull opening day:
The fishing at farndon was really poor and in hindsight probably not the best venue to have chose to fish and around 11 am we decided it was time for a move and we stopped off at a local stream on the way home, hoping to pick up a grayling or two and salvage a bad opening day.
We made our way to a deeper glide and soon had an audience watching us proving that even cows love to watch fishing;
The results where instant with the first trot down yielding a palm sized grayling which dusted the cobwebs off the centre pin.
small grayling:
The next trot down produced what in my eyes is one of the best marked fish in the stream a salmon par:
Time to pass over the rod to my dad for him to have a go and this gave me a chance to try and record him trotting down the stream.
Which predictably saw a better grayling take the bait, some people have all the luck!! :-)
We stayed for around and hour and half catching a few more small grayling and salmon par before calling it a day. I hope to get out again this weekend some time to have a go for one of those elusive river Dee barbel.
till next time
tight lines
Danny
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