Welcome to this weeks angling blog and as of this blog being
published I am probably uncontrollably excited about the prospect of gracing
the banks of the river the following day.
The hemp will no doubt we boiled and ready to go and I will have tied
more hook lengths than I know what to do with, my pole which has been a feature
of all my fishing recently will have had a good clean and will be safely stored
away for future trips to Flushing Meadows and I will be all set for this years
river campaign.
With only around 11 weeks to go now till the arrival of our
new baby girl the next month or so is going to be full of me trying to cram in
as much of the river as possible as my chances to get on the rivers far and
wide will be greatly reduced the closer we get to that delivery date, for
obvious reasons. This means an exiting
month or so is ahead for the blog in terms of both the rivers and my continued
quest for this elusive 10lb carp which believe you me still is a big part of my
fishing radar for the summer.
I would now class myself as a River angler at heart a big
part of me is missing when I grace the banks of the still waters on the card,
it is hard to explain in words what it is about the river that captures me but
ask any river angler there is something magical about the river bank that
conjures up that fire within.
Blog entry of trip for pike: http://satonmyperch.blogspot.co.uk/2012/02/first-river-pike-session-one-to.html
As the river season has drew closer I have been looking over
last years blgo entries and one or two spring straight to mind, that winter
pike session, my first aimed directly at fishing for pike when I caught three
in an hour culminating in my first river double figure pike at 13lb will live
long in the memory and if I can get any where near that this year I will be a
happy man. Trips last season to the
river normally included a session targeted at dace and one fish always springs
to mind is that big dace I caught mid way through the season, a fish I regret
not weighing now and a fish that put me in touch with a fellow blogger who I
had the pleasure to meat and fish with later on in the year, again a great
experience to share the bank with such a genuine angler who had an obvious love
for the sport.
The blog article to go with this picture: http://satonmyperch.blogspot.co.uk/2011/11/full-nets-and-wet-welly-regrets.html
Looking back over last years river campaign I feel I
progressed so much as an angler from my last year on the bank and I have both
my dad and uncle to thank for that so I would like to say a big thank you to
them both, publicly on here for all they have taught me over the last 2 years
and beyond, thank you and here is to this years memories yet to be made.. I
doubt I will see that level of improvement this year so my hopes and targets
for this year are really to elaborate on last year. I hope to try and be more consistent with my
trotting for dace and being a bit more outgoing and trying to fish further out
using the catapult to bait up accurately in a hope of luring some of those chub
on the Dee, I also hope to improve on my barbel personal best and to also spend
more time in winter actually targeting the pike on the river Dee. I am also looking at tweaking some of my bait
with the addition to the mix of some of Halfbeans Baits Hemp ground bait which
I have high hopes for come the winter.
As much as I love spending time on the banks of the River
Dee I will also be looking to build on last years trip to the River Severn with
trips to other waters on the Warrington Angler Card and it fills me with
excitement when I think about the plans I have for the coming weeks with
regards my angling adventures, lets hope the weather starts playing ball!!
So the gear is set the baits ready and by any luck I will be
watching England do a job on Sweden to give us three river hungry lions a good
send of on our way, so to all you river anglers out there good luck for the
coming season and I hope she brings you all you desire from her, tight lines!!
Away from angling, my evenings in the past week have been
dominated, not by the football but by the amazing program that is Spring watch
Live. Now I know this program has its
critics for it not being totally live but what a program to showcase the
Wildlife of Great Britain I must admit to being addicted to watching the
Peregrine Falcons and those barn owls are something else. Having seen one close up on the river Dee in the pitch dark last year they are such a elegant
bird in flight and really shocked me as it flew bye as they really do not make
a sound in flight. This program is well worth a watch, if the mountain of
football gets too much for you.
Link to Spring Watch Webcams: http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/18035848
On to this weeks fishing:
A week of torrential
rain saw parts of the country flooded by local Rivers being unable to deal with
the amount of rain all at once and subsequently bursting their banks, worryingly the area most effected was
Wales and with us looking to visit the Dee sometime soon it was starting to look
a bit ominous for the start of the river season. With rain coming down like
this it was always going to be a bit of a damp affair no matter which day or
destination we chose to fish at the weekend.
Luckily for us my car was due in for a Service so Saturday
was written off as a no go for fishing and we made plans to go out really early
on Sunday morning, this proved to be a wise decision as it rained cats and dogs
on Saturday, all day it poured down and its not often I look out the window and
am glad I am not fishing but Saturday I surely did, a dyer day to be out even
by our mad minds.
We made a plan to get up really early and see if we could
get on one of the decent pegs at Rixton and if not make the short journey to
either Cicily Mill or the a Wigan water.
Pulling into Rixton car park we where greeted to the sight of one van
parked up in the pitch dark, more than likely an overnight carp angler we
thought. Our initial feelings where true
and luckily they where only occupying one of the three “decent” pegs so my
uncle settle on the lilies peg and me and my dad set up on the adjacent peg,
phew the extra early dart had paid off.
This early dart of an hour before we would normally set off
really was a master stroke as within the first 20 minutes of setting up no less
than 5 more anglers turned up with the same idea of getting on these pegs. It is a real shame that such a large prolific
and beautiful venue is seen in this way.
The site is an ex clay pit and this means after any rain the paths and
pegs are as muddy as I have experienced any where including the rivers. There are 4 pegs and the path joining them
that have been done up and proper paths put in and to be honest this has been
like this since I joined the club 3 years ago.
I have noticed work has started now on rejuvenating the pegs on Cicily
mill in the same fashion but surely it makes more sense to finish one venue
before you move onto the next. So with
only 4 decent pegs a precession of anglers arrived and left the venue during
the day when they realised the pegs where gone.
I am not one to moan without offering a solution if the club
was as pro-active at advertising work parties and paying contractors to
rejuvenate its waters as it was the buying and stocking or carp endlessly into
its waters then surely there wouldn’t be as many incomplete or “dead beat”
waters on the card, I have said it once and I will say it again its about time
the rest of the club took note of the great work the Wigan team do with the
Warrington waters up there neck of the woods.
Well that’s off my chest and I hope things do change as the club has too
many waters with so much potential for nothing to be done.
As I said we set up in the made pegs and for one reason or
another I just didn’t get going and it seemed to take an eternity for me to get
a line in the water. My tactic was on
the pole and my dad was on the rod and my uncle on the float rod as well
fishing the lift method.
I was starting to get a few bites on maggot on the pole as
was my dad on the float, I adopted the same tactics as a few weeks ago on this
venue but only closer in on a two plus two line. When I plumbed up I found that it was the
same depth at two plus two as it was fishing up to my number 7 on my pole so
being one for an easy days fishing I settled in on the two plus two line. I was getting the off fish but they where all
roach and it was really noticeable the skimmers where not there at all and it
showed in the catch rate, all would become apparent later on in the session and
I learned a great lesson.
While we were struggling for bites from small fish in maggot
my uncle fishing a bigger bait was having a bit of a red letter start to the
session as he connected with a really nice bream which from where we where sat
fought like it was a tench and both me and my dad where convinced it was till it
came to the net, a cracking fish of 3lb 15oz.
I continued to try and piece together a few roach on the
drop but it was proving really difficult to put together bites with any
regularity, one minute you would think you had nailed it with a flurry of bites
only for it to die just as quick. This
was not helped by the kingfisher of an uncle in the next swim to us striking
into his second tench of the session, the guy was on fire!!
It wasn’t long after returning this beauty that he was again
hauling in another green eyed tinca, it seemed a great number of tench where
taking refuge under those lilies and we later found out from the carp lads
doing a 48 hour session that quite a bit of bait had been put in and a lot of
tench caught the previous day so this made my uncles success even more
rewarding as there was no doubt a lot of bait in the area so did well to snare
so many nice fish and what a way for him to pay farewell to his still water
campaign which has seen him bank quite a few decent tench and crucian carp.
My uncle continued to catch silvers throughout the day on
maggot on both the float and the ledger, back over to my swim and I had got to
the end of my tether with the lack of bites I had tried everything to pull fish
into my swim and keep them there, it was time for a change. I got a few extra sections of pole out of my
holdall and armed with my trusty depth plummet I began scouting out a swim a
good 3 metres further out than my last swim.
I found it was exactly the same depth, as I had confirmed earlier but I
still wanted to be sure. The depth
sorted I began the same as I had don’t the previous swim and introduced some
micro pellets and maggots into the swim.
The swim fed I began by fishing a single maggot and wham!! A
nice bream straight away back in again and the float buried again with another
nice bream and this continued for around a hour with bites coming thick and
fast with either roach, bream or skimmer bream to blame. The swim eventually died and I picked up a
few stragglers that had backed of the feed throughout the remainder of the
session. The best of the net is shown below.
This was a big lesson for me on the pole, I always knew
depth played a major role in catching skimmers and bream but I thought if the
depth was the same then the fish would naturally be there at that depth and
would move in over the bait especially as it was in such close proximity with
the swims being only a few metres apart and on the same line at 12
o’clock. Granted had the swim further
out been a different depth or next to a feature it would have made more sense
but no exactly the same depth one swim no bream the other full of them, maybe
there was a submerged feature that I couldn’t see what attracted them but still
you would expect them to move in over m6y closer line as if was fed well
throughout the morning. Fishing is a
strange sport sometimes just when you think you have a venue and tactics nailed
on something comes along and changes it all a big lesson learnt on Saturday by
me and one I Will not forget.
The final net weighed in at 12lb 3oz with the majority
coming in that spell.
Well that’s this weeks blog update and I hope you all had a great
week on the bank and I wish all you river anglers all the best this coming
weekend as I write this now the sky is grey and it is raining so I have my
fingers and toes crossed it all blows out by Saturday and we get fishable
conditions on the river for me to try out my Dave Harrell river floats which I
bought a month or so back and I have been dying to get out and use.
Till next time I wish you all
Tight lines
Danny
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