Welcome to this week’s blog update and I doubt I have
ever sat down to write an update for this blog feeling so emotional about its
content. The introduction to my weekly blog has covered a wide variety of
issues over the past two years, some that affect me directly and some I can
only hope never will. This introduction was due to be about the changes I have
seen in the past week in regards the seasons changing and wildlife and was
supposed to be a nice, relaxing and pleasant to celebrate the fact we are
slowly beginning to move out of the worst winter I can
remember, that all changed on Wednesday evening as I
received news about the fact Warrington Anglers had lost a stretch of the River
Dee that holds such a magical place in my heart.
All anglers have venues and
places that hold dear to themselves, a special
capture or the sight of an early morning mist lingering ghostly over the water’s
surface can be only a few reasons a place can become special to an angler, the
stretch Warrington have just lost was that stretch for me. It was the
place I first cut my teeth on the "proper"
river having started my angling life on one of the small tributaries of the Dee
and I will never forget that first walk to the river the grass
glistening with dew and the smell of fresh flowing water in the
air and the only sound to be heard was the gentle soothing sound of water
flowing over shallow gravel, I blanked that day as I did so many times on this
venue whilst learning its moods and hot spots but it was always a pleasure to
explore its mystical depths.
This location also put me in
contact with some of the nicest, genuine anglers I have ever met Gordon Munro, gave me a pint of his maggots he had
left over at this venue on only our second time bumping into each other, Gordon
Ashton, barbel expert, spent a good 2 hours showing me the ropes on how to fish
for barbel here and I also remember fondly long chats had this year with Richard
Jones and Neil, all genuine river men who were a
credit to this sport and a credit to
Warrington Anglers and this venue.
Unfortunately these people,
like myself, my Dad and Uncle and all the other genuine river
men who I didn’t have the privilege to meet will all now have to suffer the pain of losing a stretch we all hold so
dear and
its all because of the actions of a minority of so called anglers that don’t
have the decency to go about their sport in a respectable manner. I heard rumours about 6 months
ago that WAA where to lose this stretch due to so called anglers making noise
and driving around the fields as if it were a rally track on the opening
weekend at an obscene hour, thank you so much for your actions, well done!, you
are a disgrace to the club and the sport, I am a firm believer in what comes around goes
around, we can only hope.
In my mind I don’t think these
people where serious river men as I remember that weekend fondly, after all it
was the magical June the 16th, the opening of the season and a day I had waited
3 months for. I distinctly remember it as I remember
being frustrated that it rained the whole week before and actually put the
River Dee into full flood and unfishable, no serious river man would have even
considered fishing a river in such a state, never mind driving a car around the
saturated fields, the car parks on this stretch are clearly marked out as well
so a clear sign or disrespect and appalling behaviour.
One or two people have pointed
the finger at the residents but in reality how can they be blamed, if the shoe
was on the other foot I certainly would not have been happy at
all. I am feeling a mixture of emotions at the moment an unrelenting
feeling of loss mixed with bouts of happy memories and annoyance that the
stretch has been lost for something that should never ever be a problem!!
Maybe the WAA is too cheap to purchase and thus opens it up to the non-desirable
people of this world who think they can treat everyone with disrespect and
abuse.
For me personally, I have
spent countless hours researching this venues past history and more hours than I care
to remember fishing this venue and learning the good spots to fish, not only
that but when writing a weekly blog you have plan your future trips weeks in
advance and I
had already drawn up plans
of what I wanted to try on this venue in the coming season, all now a waste of
time.
What this will do is make me
refocus and go again on another venue, I
WILL find other spots and other
locations to find these special fish and I WILL put in as much effort as this venue to
succeed, onwards and upwards.
River Ribble – “Quality
not quantity”
We have fished the River Dee now for around two years
solid and over that time we have begun to learn her moods and how she fishes in
different conditions, looking at the EA chart on Friday for the River Dee we
knew she would be a tad too high for us to try seriously and would also be
carrying a fair amount of colour so we decided to move out attention elsewhere. The river Ribble was looking good but with
only one trip to her under our belt we had no idea what conditions we would be
arriving too but she was dropping and had a day or two where she had
continuously fell so we decided to travel through on Sunday for a second visit
in 3 weeks.
Before that visit I had a date with work as I had put my
name down for some overtime on the Saturday and on the way in I crossed paths
with a sight that screamed one thing to me, spring! As I turned the roundabout
towards my work I had to slam on the breaks hard as right in front of me stood
without a care in the world, in the middle of the road was a duck and two
drakes. These animals starting to
compete for females is a small sign there is change on the way and after the
winter we have just endured it is not a minute too soon.
With my endurance and patience tested to the max on
overtime it was time for some relaxation and it was with great excitement we
headed off to the river Ribble. We
arrived at our chosen destination and began to set up using my new lamp from
Sports direct that I am reviewing to set up in the dark and first impression
are its great value for money but more on that in another blog post.
Regular readers of this blog will be looking at the above
picture and thinking they had stumbled on to the wrong blog but I assure you
that your eyes are not deceiving you, that is ground bait on my side tray. I arrived at the river with a plan and that
was to fish a closed cap feeder on maggot ground bait and hemp. My uncle being a good float man was
determined to stick to his guns and prove you can catch close in on this river.
I made a few quick casts to get some bait down and then
left the feeder a bit longer and it was not long before the tip of my Shimano
purist rod rattled round and I was into the first fish of the day a small dace. This dace was quickly followed by a small
roach and a few more dace before I missed a real wrap round of a bite that just
had to have been from a better fish, I was gutted but at least I was doing
better than I had last week. I re-baited
my feeder and back out it went, at this point we were a good hour or so into
the session but it felt like it had gone by so fast.
The fact I had not fished the feeder much really showed,
when I got the cast right i was normally rewarded with a bite but those cast’s
where few and far between and it showed in my keepnet. My uncle was starting to pick up a few fish
on his float line and it was noticeable the fish fed in spurts before moving
off and then moving back in very slowly a few more fish and the process was
repeated. It was while watching my uncle
land a small chub I felt a hefty pluck on my finger and my natural instinct to
strike saw me latched into a much better fish that felt really big in the fast
flow, I was certain it was a nice chub by how hard it was fighting, I eventually
got the fish under my feet but it was keeping really deep so I still had no
idea what it was I was connected too!!
What felt like minutes passed where in reality it was no more than a few
seconds but I felt every shake of the fishes head as it began to tire and
eventually it gave up its identity as it slid over the landing net lip and made
its mark in this week’s blog update, a bream, and a first ever river bream for
myself.
The fish didn’t quite reach 3lb as much as I tried
(weighed it 3 times lol)
The fish safely into he keep net I quickly got back to
the fishing and from this fish on it was as if a light was switched off in the
swim, the quiver tip remained set in stone with only the rhythm of the river
causing it to occasionally pull round and slowly settle again. I tried everything I could think of from
longer hook lengths to just feeding maggot in the feeder. My unce started to pick up a bit more action
on the float line but my swim remained dead.
Hein sight is a thing in fishing you get good at using
and looking back I stayed on the feeder too long as soon as the swim had died
for 20 minutes I should have moved over to the float rod but the reality is I wasted
a good 2 and half hours trying to make something happen. This could have been down to me being tired
from a long days overtime the previous day and looking back I have to admit I had
a tad bit of a case of “lazy-i-tis”.
I decided to stretch my legs and visit my uncle for a bit
and refresh myself with a strong coffee,
there is something about watching someone trotting a float, especially
someone who is quite good at it, the way they control its decent down the river
and almost drop the bait into the fishes mouth is a true art. While I was stood with him he was going through
a slow patch and in the best John Wilson fashion we began to talk up a bite “got
to be a chub there Azz!”, “yeah, got to
be “ was my uncles reply and with that bang the float disappeared and my uncle
was into a fish that certainly wasn’t a dace and with my uncles drag set looser
than a porn stars belt buckle there was no chance he was losing it and in came
one of the best cub we have had form the Ribble so far, but bot was he a
warrior with a pike bite on his lower back and another bite above its dorsal,
this was one lucky chub.
I returned to my peg and quickly set up my 17ft carbon
active float rod and I decided to fish a bolo type set up to see if it gave me
more control in the fast water and it wasn’t long before I was happily running
a float through the swim. At first it
was all quiet but I soon struck into a fish and it felt a nice fish to boot, in
the fast flow of the ribble you never really know what you have got on the
other end size wise till the last moment but I was over the moon when the shiny
mirror like scales of a big roach slipped over the lip of my landing net, I was
pleased as punch at this capture, 1lb 3oz and made the trip worthwhile in my
eyes.
I continued to pick up a few more dace but I didn’t get
the chub I had hoped for but in reality I had left it too long before moving
onto the float rod and had I done it sooner then who knows and its that unknown
that will get me out of bed this weekend chasing the dace and chub shoals on
the river.
The river ribble, for ourselves, is proving to be a river
where you have to work for every bite and it is rewarding us with quality fish
when we get them. To put it into
perspective my uncle caught 8lb of dace last time out on the River Dee which I guess
was made up of about 50 dace whereas on Saturday my uncle had 8lb of fish and
it was made up of around 15 fish.
Uncles net
Hopefully this week we will find the rivers in a nice
state which should see up picking up a few dace.
Till next week thank you for reading
And tight lines
Danny.
hi paul, thank you for taking the time to comment. I fish a place in spring and summer called rixton clay pits, i have blogged about it on here a few times, the litter on there is a disgrace, like you i am baffled, some anglers just put it in a carrier bag and tie it to a tree in their peg with the attitude someone else will move it, then you have the people who put it in a carrier bag, carry it to the car park and then put it next to the shed for someone else to clean (its so lazy its more effort to chuck it there than the car boot) some people are a disgrace to the sport but its the genuine ones that pay the ultimate price.
ReplyDeletemust admit i wrote last weeks introduction on he morning after i found out so i was quite emotional about it lol.
thanks again for commenting mate
danny
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