Personal Best Trip to Rixton For My Uncle

The bank holiday weekend loomed large and with the prospect of a 3 day long weekend I already had my fishing adventures planned in my diary.  Saturday was going to be spent with my uncle on Rixton Clay pits chasing the silvers and the elusive tench that live in its coloured waters, Sunday was a day devoted to spending time with my fiancé on our yearly trip to Bolton Abbey with our ever present companion, pippa,  this left Monday as my last fishing trip of the weekend and I chose to continue my pursuit of my target of a 10lb carp fishing a big bait in the margins on Flushing Meadows, the short write up of this session is now live on the “10lb+ carp mini blog” found on the on the top tool bar of the blog or on the following link below.

10lb mini carp blog update: http://satonmyperch.blogspot.co.uk/p/10lb-carp-mini-blog.html

I will be updating this journal type blog as and when I go out chasing this target and unfortunately at this moment in time pages on BlogSpot can only be one continuous message so the best way of following when I update this page is to either follow me on Twitter by following @SATONMYPERCH or to “like” the page dedicated the blog on Facebook:  http://www.facebook.com/pages/Dannys-Angling-Blog/282860255069146

As I said Sunday was dedicated to a trip put with my fiancé and our trusty side kick pippa and we made our yearly trip to the most picturesque locations in Bolton Abbey near the market town of Skipton and of course no trip would be complete without the venue including either a lake or a stretch of river and this venue lies on the banks of the very beautiful River Wharfe.

Having spent all year on the banks of the river I no longer saw this as just a river, I saw deep dark runs where I knew fish like chub may live as well as the faster water which no doubt contained the odd grayling and trout and there were a few fly anglers adorning the bank in pursuit of these game fish, unfortunately none of them connected with any fish but it was great to watch them and the art or casting a fly, great stuff.

On to this week’s fishing:-

Saturday 05^th May – Rixton Clay Pits

Arriving on the banks of this very poplar water on the Warrington Anglers card at the crack of dawn with the birds in full song never ceases to fill me with anticipation for the day ahead,   many locations we fish stick with us because of the noises we hear whilst we are there for example on the river the sound of running water is always a lovely backdrop to a day’s trotting this venue it’s the sound of bird song  that provides the background sound to a day on the bank and it’s a joy to be on the bank of this venue.

Arriving on the bank to find the first few pegs empty we both dropped on one each and in complete reflection to some if our river trips which cab see us covering a few fields it was a short 20m trip from the car to the peg’s , boy are we going to suffer when those rivers open again!!  First job is always to get the keep net in, ever the optimist, then the landing net and then get the sleeper rod out so at least we are fishing for the maximum amount of time possible.

The sleeper rod out it was time to tie up a quick pole rig and plumb up a short swim.  The short pole swim is a must when fishing a sleeper rod as you need to be able to put the pole down or ship it back in really quick to strike any bites that come on the alarm which from my experience on this venue so far are real screamers.

The bottom on this venue can sometimes be more reminiscent of an egg carton than a lake with deep channels close in on some of the pegs and speaking to the bailiff about depths he mentioned you can stand up In the middle in some places so a great venue for any aspiring carp anglers to learnt their trade with the marker float.  I had a certain depth of water in mind and luckily I found it quite close in, in my chosen swim, my chosen bait was castor on the hook with a very well-known ground bait balled in every so often, my target species where the better skimmers and roach with a hope of eventually picking up a bonus bronze bream or tench.

My day on the pole started off with a lot of frustration with getting my rig sorted as I was getting a lot of lift bites along some real sail away bites that I was missing s I spent a great deal of the first hour trying to get to grips with my presentation.  The first hour saw my uncle battling with the bigger species in the pit and coming of second best with them reaching the sanctuary of the Lillie’s but it wasn’t long before he got to grips with a better fish which had his light elastic stretched like a washing line across the swim and the sight of which had me shooting to his swim to capture it on video.

As you can see on the vide above my uncle managed to get the fish in and what a magnificent fish it was, easily the biggest tench I have seen on the bank and a new personal best for my uncle and what a way to capture the fish on a light set up on the pole.  My past trip with my rucksack and carp rod had seen me leave the scales at home and it was thanks to the kind natured angler on the next peg that we got a weight for this fish which revealed its amazing size to us all a 5lb 3oz specimen.  This fish is of course a small fish in the angling world but to me and my uncle who both enjoy our silver fishing most of the year these fish are real bonus fish for us.

Not long after we returned this fish and after capturing a few silver fish on the pole my sleeper rod roared off with a the fish causing a one tone bite on the alarm and I struck into what felt a really powerful fish that had me in a snag before I knew what was going on and the dreaded sight of a fish coming out of the back of a snag and you being left connected to the snag was the scenario that played out, dam!! In the back of my mind I knew that could have been one of the better tench or even the carp I have been chasing and judging by the power of the fish I still feel it was a carp and not a tench.

The skimmers continued to come thick and fast as the swim went from strength to strength and as time went on the quality of the fish improved with skimmers approaching a pound coming to the net but the roach where strangely absent from both out swims.  The sleeper rod was unusually quiet and isn’t it funny how things happen, my uncle commented that the rod had been really quiet despite the signs of fish around the area and no more than 5 seconds after he finished speaking the sleeper rod sparked into life and I lifted into a fish that I was certain was a bream judging by how easy it came in to the margin, things then changed, I tried to lift the fish and could not move it from the bottom as the fish suddenly felt reassuringly heavy under the rod tip and real scrap ensued but I was patient and eventually slip my net under a lovely personal best equalling tench of 4lb 2oz.

The fish photographed and weighed it was safely returned back and I got back to my pole fishing which was going steady with skimmers like the one shown below really making it into a decent session.  You catch countless numbers of skimmers on my local commercial but they are so easy to catch you really don’t appreciate them even though they are so much bigger and in greater abundance, these fish on Saturday where shy and difficult to catch and each one was greeted with a sense of achievement.

As the day wore on the sleeper rod shot into life two more time with tench the culprit both times and both put up a great fight.   The tench in this venue really amaze me with their variety of colours from fish to fish with some looking really washed out land lightly coloured and others being bright green with bright yellow bellies and light blue around their eyes, they really are something else in this gem of a water.

The afternoon trundled along and the skimmers seemed to move out and the roach moved into the swim and they seemed to stick around for a while until the swim completely died and I had to fish really shallow to scrape together bites for the last hour or so and was amazed to see the quality of the roach feeding shallow.

We stayed on the pool till around 4.45 when we called it a day and my uncle let his fish go and I decided to take a picture of my net which we estimated to be around the 15lb mark and I was more than happy with my days efforts and I cannot wait to get back on this venue again soon  it has so much potential to throw up a really big net of silvers if you can master the technique to holding the fish in your area all day and ait it well enough to attract the big shoals of bronze bream that live in this venue.

This week I have an opportunity to get out on the bank on Thursday due to a strike day in work, I am yet undecided as to where to visit bit if this weather holds and continues to be mild it could be time for a trip to Cicely mill or one of the Wigan waters.

Till next time

I wish you all

Tight lines

Danny