A
warm welcome to this week’s blog update, this week's update is not so much
about this week’s fishing but more of an reflection and rounding up the second
year of my blogging life and as the Blog approaches its second birthday its
crazy to think that 60,000 people have dropped in over that time and I thank every
single one of you that has helped me and shown an interest in my blog over that
time. People who know me in the "real" world know how shy of a
person I am around people I don’t know but through this blog and being
recognised and approached on the bank side it has done wonders for my
confidence in speaking to people, I put a lot of time and effort into this blog
and it’s great that it has given me something back.
As any angler that fishes every
weekend throughout the year will tell you it comes with its ups and its downs
and like the very rivers we fish our success levels ebb and flow from week to
week, there are things we can do to try and increase our success rates but
ultimately through the course of a year we will have our fair share of bad
weeks. The flip side of this is we also have our fair share of memorable
days and the beginning section of this blog is about celebrating those
few “red letter” session from the past year that are etched in our memories
forever, so come along and lets have a look back over the last
angling year.
The first session that springs
to mind was the very last session of the river season last year a day that saw
us catch steady till a high spring tide killed the action dead and for a few hours we
struggled to get a bite but then almost as if a switch had been turned on this
fish appeared and we gave the river season a royal send off with a nice bag of
fin perfect red fins.
Blog link: www.satonmyperch.blogspot.co.uk/2012/03/red-fins-arrive-to-give-season-decent.html
After the season closed our
attention turned towards our Stillwater campaign and Rixton Clay Pits grabbed
out attention as we basked in the spring time sunshine and enjoyed the wealth
of wildlife that this place has in abundance. The first few visits we
just got to grips with the place but as we refined our
tactics so the fish came and we were all rewarded with some beautiful tench
culminating in my uncle’s tench below.
Blog link: http://satonmyperch.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/personal-best-trip-to-rixton-for-my.html
Before we knew it the river
season was upon us and to fit in with the rest of this years river campaign it
was met with a swollen river Dee, this pushed us onto the River Mersey in
pursuit of a flowing fix and although the session was atrocious for both me and
my uncle it was a session to remember for my dad with this 7lb Bream and it
meant so much more the fact it had come from the river Mersey a waterway we
have lived on the banks of all our lives.
Blog Post: http://satonmyperch.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/dad-glows-with-pb-river-mersey-bream.html
The river season meandered along
and between the torrential floods came big bags of dace but it was winter and
pike I had my eye on and after seeing Martin Bowlers picture of his pike in
the snow, I wanted one for myself and so the challenge was set. A brief
gap in the ever persistent rainfall saw the river fall to a fishable level and
the banks blanketed in deep candy floss snow and I knew this was my window of
opportunity, the day started with a new personal best Perch of 2lb 5oz but it
was the ending to the piece that I enjoyed most, two pike around 10lb and with
it my pike in the snow.
Blog post: http://www.satonmyperch.blogspot.co.uk/2013/02/dreaming-in-winter-wonderland.html
Again the rain returned and
pushed the levels on the Dee to an un-fishable level and we were forced to
search for pastures new and I and my uncle found ourselves on the banks of a
new river altogether, the river Ribble. The day was slow to begin with
but by the end of it my uncle had landed possibly the
best specimen fish this blog will ever feature a massive dace of 1lb 3oz and a
whopping 90.4% of the British record and great way to round off the second year
of the blog.
Blog post: http://www.satonmyperch.blogspot.co.uk/2013/02/uncle-lands-massive-1lb-3oz-ribble-dace.html
Moving
on from talking about our angling year but still on the subject of that record
tingling dace some of you may have noticed it featured in this weeks edition of
the Angler Mail Magazine and also got a nice write up next to the picture as
well, had I known they were just going to cut and paste my email I would have
put a link to the blog in there!! This fish also earned my uncle a place
in the top specimens of the week competition and his prize, an Anglers mail
T-shirt will feature in a future update when it arrives. Well done again
to my uncle and to thank you to all the people who left such nice messages on
the Facebook page and forums it was posted on.
One final point I would like to
brush on before I move onto the bread and butter of this update is my
disappointment at the mess left on a location I visited recently doing a scout
of a potential venue for the blogs Spring/Summer quest for a 10lb plus
carp. I will be going deeper into my pre baiting plans on my main blog
and the carp blog in future updates. I arrived at the chosen venue hoping
to find any signs of where the carp where residing to give me a place to start
from with my pre-baiting, what I found really disturbed me, evidence of fires,
beer can laden bushes, food wrappers, pot noodle cartons the lot.
I reflected on it a minute and
then thought, no I may be jumping the gun here it might not be anglers
and in that moment my eyes where drawn to specific things in the area, hook
packets, line, pre made rig wrappers and sweetcorn tins all over the place!!
This confirmed in my eyes it was anglers night fishing the area, which I have
no problem with but why o why do we live in a generation where no one takes
responsibility for their own mess!!, take it home with you!!. It is not
only bad for the environment, which is bad enough, but it does nothing to
improve the image of angling in general, most bait shops give you your items in
a bag it’s as easy as taking that page with you and putting the wrappers and
stuff in it when finished, rant over.
And with that off my chest it is
onto this week’s escapades on the bank:
With
rain all day on Friday it meant the rivers that were just about fishable were
due to rise again through Friday evening and Saturday so it was with an air of
uncertainty we travelled to the River Dee early on Saturday morning. What greeted us was a high but surprisingly clear
river that was rising but was not carrying much colour at all. We knew we might get the day out of it if we
were lucky but even a morning would be better than nothing. As you can see on the chart below I have
marked in red the period we fished and you can see it was rising all day and we
also knew there was a major tide expected as well in the afternoon so we were
in for a tough days sport.
Daylight
revealed just how badly the banks had suffered from the rain with them covered
in a brown thick muddy soup which made keeping completely clean a total impossibility. My uncle chose to do away with his seat box
and opted to stand up trotting while I made the most of my extendable legs on
mine to set it up snuggly on the bottom step.
My
plan for the day was to fish the bolo float and get to grips with not only
fishing it correctly but getting the rhythm of casting in (tangle free) and
feeding while the float is still trotting the swim, I feel I am slowly getting there
now but I am going to continue to persevere with it both till the end of this
season and into the summer when the season reopens as it really does open up the
option of fishing right down the middle of the river. The river with 2m to 3m on is a different
animal than at any other time as it can see you fishing anywhere from 12 to 17
foot deep so you need to be equipped for the job at hand, I personally use a
17ft Carbon active float rod for my fishing and I have to say now I know how to
fish with it I wouldn’t be without it.
The picture below shows just how deep you have to fish on the River Dee
at times and also highlights the biggest problem you face when fishing the
bolognaise method in deep water, the fact there is a large amount of line
between your float and your bulk shot means you do suffer a lot with the float
wrapping around the top of your rod, this is a problem that only practice will
fix.
I
adopted my usual mentality of starting of easy and going further out only if I needed
to and I managed to get a few fish but what became obvious very early on was
there was a decent snag to my right that I was going too struggle to miss. A few hours in and I had around 10-15 fish
and I decided a change was in order as I was losing the battle with the snags
by a cricket score. I decided it was
time to be aggressive and make the fish come to where I wanted them. I set up my pole rig and began feeding the
slack in front of me with hemp and introduced some free offerings into the slow
water to my left.
This
method took a few slow trots through to get right but eventually the fish moved
in and I began to connect with a few dace, I stuck on this method for a good
hour or so but as the swim grew the size of the fish began to reduce.
Another
fish comes on the pole:
I knew the better dace where holding on my old
trotting line where I had been hitting a snag so I decided to increase the
weight of my bolo float so I could fish further out and began to pick up some
better dace right at the end of my trot.
It was while fishing this method I witnessed one of the most surreal
things I have ever seen on the River Dee, a tidal bore come upstream, it was
almost as if a large boat had turned around downstream the waves where that
large!!. There were a few very
experienced anglers around me that day and I heard a few of them say they had
never seen anything like that, it was a unusual feeling of watching in ore and
being slightly worries sat so close to the water’s edge!!
Video
of bore
At
this point the water was rising quite fast but with only a hour or so to go we
would easily get the whole day out of it and surprisingly the fish continued to
come even though the river was rising on a large tide. The day was a lot harder than this blog
update makes it sound and we both had to really work hard for our nets of fish
and to be honest when its hard I find it the most enjoyable, when the fishing
is really easy and the fish are there “one a chuck” as they say it can
sometimes seem as less of an achievement than days like Saturday where we had
to really work for each fish. I know my
uncle suffered a lot with the fish being up in the water column and he worked
really hard for his net of dace.
My
net
Uncles
net
All
in all it was another learning session for me as I come to grips with all the
methods I need to learn to become a complete all round angler on the river, I hope
there’s a day where I can confidently pick a method and be able to fish it to a
good standard, but I guess all us anglers are caught up in a never ending
search for angling perfection.
Till
next time
I
wish you all tight lines
Danny
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