A warm welcome to this weeks blog update. This week’s blog update is being written on a
pretty unique date as believe it or not the 12.12.12 is the last repetitive
date we are all likely to see, depressing or what!! But not as depressing as
the “grueller” of a session me and my uncle suffered this weekend on the River
Wyre. On a much chirpier note it
surprised me this week that the blog is almost reaching the 50,000 views mark,
when I started this blog just under two years ago I never ever thought it would
attract so much attention and influence so many people lives, it has given me a
chance to meet and discuss all things angling with so many people. A while ago I set up a twitter account for
the blog that now has 599 followers and also a face book page what currently
has 41 people liking it. If you are on any of these social media sites you can
follow the blog on the following links:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/satonmyperch
River dee level
Friday morning arrived and all was not looking good when
I checked the EA levels above for the river Dee, the river was rising and
rising at quite a Sharp rate indeed and by the two o’clock update my worst
fears were realised as the rivers level was well over the acceptable higher
range of 6.5m at a heady 7.4m, any chances of fishing the river disappeared there
and then.
Having not wet a line the previous weekend due to the
river being in full flood we were itching to get our river fix and we
considered a few rivers from fishing the small river dee on the feeder to
fishing the tiny River Gowy at mickle Trafford.
River wyre
It was late on Friday night whilst mooching on the
internet at other river water levels I checked the river wyre in
Churchtown. This river is a spate river
and unlike the Dee it only takes a few hours to fine off from a full flood so
by the following morning it would only be a foot or so above its normal
level. When on a river you always have
to have safety in mind but with a spate river like thi its even more important to
be careful on the bank and also do your homework on the weather forcast as
these spate rivers can rise really fast and a flash flood is a real possibility
as the EA level chart shows above, the river can rise a few metres in only a
few hours.
Reading between the countless carp stockings on Frank
column I found out the EA had stocked this venue recently with 2000 chublets
which had me full of optimism as it was only around a month ago but
investigating further I found the reason for this was that a seal had been in
the river system for around 2 months, being so close to the sea I imagine the
water is quite brackish which allowed it to survive there. What effect this seal could have on the fish
populations it is impossible to report on but I can’t imagine one seal could do
catastrophic damage to stretches and stretches of river like was being
suggested on some websites I visited.
We set off nice and early on our journey up the M6
motorway to allow us to arrive at the river just after first light. The temperature monitor in the car dropped
lower and lower the further up the country we went from a warm 1oc as we left
home to a chilling -2 as we drove through Churchtown to the river, it amazed me
to see such a difference, all the cars were frozen solid and the ground was
blanketed in a white frost.
We parked up in the church carp park and made our way to
the river bank and I don’t think I have ever has such an chilling walk to a
river bank ever both in temperature and atmosphere we walked through a
graveyard as the first rays of daylight shone in the distance. The walk to the river was quite short
compared to some of our treks on the Dee but this certainly had a variety of obstacles
to navigate along its short path such as a sty and a rather rickety wooden
bridge seen in the picture below.
Arriving on the banks of the river she looked perfect
with plenty of swims that just cried out fish just over the bridge and we
quickly settled in two swims that both had features in them that we thought
would hold fish in the form of a submerged tree. As mentioned above safety was always in the
back of our minds so the majority of our gear was left at the top of the bank
with only the bare essentials being taken to the waters edge.
Looking at the ground it became apparent we weren’t the
first to grace these banks on this fine morning as the tracks below from a fox
show, these tracks had to be recent as these area would have been under water
the previous day and with it being sand any tracks would have been washed
away. Further upstream I did see some
really small tracks in the sand right along the side the river, the owner of
these showed themselves late on in the day.
With a nice trotting depth we were confident of catching
and having drip fed the swim whilst setting up we were confident, the river was
perfect and not a breath of wind it was a trotting dream. Well the first hour went by as did the second
and we were well on towards the third without so much as a stretched maggot,
zilch, nothing!, a change of swim was in order.
The second swim I tried was right at the top of the
stretch, where I was reliably informed the chub had been stocked, between our
stretch and St Micheals, personally and I stress this is only my personal
opinion here I cannot see the EA picking this point to release fish as for one
there is zero access to the river and two its banks were really steep, does make
you question whether the information on this stocking was reliable.
The swim was really deep, around 10ft I would guess and
like the previous swim was a dream to trot as it had a steady pace and depth to
it, but alas another two biteless hours passed me by in this swim, 2000
chublets?? Not to mention the fish that should be resident in such a river, it
had me really scratching my head.
We then settled into the third swim which allowed me to
actually trot along some sunken trees andi decided it was time to try a bigger
bait so I moved over to bread flake hoping that if there was a big chub under
there it might be lured out by a bigger bait, it didn’t work.
It was while in this swim the owner of the small prints
sowed itself as a mink appeared upstream form us and made its way down stream
right in front of us, bold as brass he was.
The weird thing about this swim was it was absolutely littered
with golf balls of all things and ou can imagine my reaction as my uncle
returned from stretching his legs with this tidy collection, tiger woods eat
your heart out.
We persevered with the swim for
the rest of the afternoon trotting down and even tried a more static bait approach
on my feeder with no success and at around 3pm as the rain moved in we made our
way back to the car, perplexed how such a nice looking river could be so bad.
On our way back we passed a
house that every angler dreams of, right next to the river!!
In reflection on the trip I have
to say I was really disappointed with it, the reports form every dog walker on
the bank was that they rarely see an angler on the banks of this part of the
river. It shocked me that a river so
perfect could be so devoid of fish. I
know every river has its off days but you expect to catch something, even if it
was a minnow or a few small dace. I am
not a big headed angler, far from it, but I and my uncle are not bad anglers we
know how to fish and it leaves you mystified.
Looking at the bigger picture it
was better to find out now how poor this river is on a trip where the Dee was
unfishable rather than wasting a day where we could have had a few bites on a
perfect river dee. It also makes me look
again at whether this card is really worth it for me any more, will waters like
this ever see any investment from the club? Us river anglers read every week
about carp going into every carp pool the club own, will they ever get round to
stocking the rivers because this river at the moment is not worth the money
they pay to lease it. Two 27lb carp went
into a pool this week to add to the countless other carp that keep getting stocked,
makes you thing how many silver fish just one of them carp could buy that could
transform a location like this that is just crying out for an injection of
life.
I have nothing against the stocking of carp for that side of the club i think its great to see the investment in stocks but i think it is about time some of the River anglers on the card found their voices and questioning why in the past 4 years there has been zero investment into this branch of the club, barring a few wooden pegs on the Dane and a few materials to fix the path.
Till next week
Tight lines
Danny
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