A
warm welcome to this weeks blog update
and as I write this I am on my last day before I go back to work after my
paternity leave and I can tell you it’s not a good feeling at all!!, it leaves
me asking myself just where did that month go?
Who knows eh, but I know one thing for sure I will always look back at
this month off with the fondest of memories and although I have used a large
chunk of my yearly leave allowance in having an extra two weeks off it was more
than worth it. (although I doubt I will be
thinking that in a month when the rivers start fishing and I am stuck in work)
I
start this weeks blog update on a bit of a sad note, unfortunately while we
were fishing on Saturday on a local carp pond my uncle hooked into a carp on
his pole that suddenly went very solid and heavy, as my uncle continued to play
the fish it became clear the fish had got tangled in some discarded fishing
line. Thank full my uncle got the carp
in and them began pulling in the other line which as you can see on the picture
below was stupidly thick to the point we couldn’t tell if it was line or not.
My
uncle eventually pulled in around 30 yards of line with the above rig on the
end. When looking at this picture bear
in mind that the pond in question holds carp to around 5lb so first thing I
noticed was the size of the bait and hook and then I noticed that there was in
fact a weight on the line behind the ledger weight so if any fish had managed
to eat this bait and got hooked they would have been tethered to the lead
weight as there is nowhere for it to go.
As
the line went all the way to the bank I can only imagine it was a night line
left for someone to come back to later as the line was so thick I couldn’t see
it ever cracking off on the cast. I see
my fair share of bad angling in my time on the bank but this is by far the
worst thing I have seen, hopefully the “angler” involved is bumped into by a
more experienced carp angler and shown a thing or two about how to fish
responsibly.
Looking
forward to this weekend’s fishing and I highly doubt we will be on the river
Dee this weekend judging by the Environment Agency levels on the picture shown
above. I half expected this though when
it rained constantly for two days solid, no river can take that amount of water
coming into it and still be fishable a few days later. Its times like this fishing takes a back seat
and my thought turned to the people who live along the banks of these flooded
rivers and how hard it must be for them to deal with our ever changing,
unpredictable weather patterns.
Just
before I started to put together this week’s blog update I had two videos fall
into my Youtube Subscription box from anglers, who’s adventures on the bank I
follow closely. The anglers in question
are “Charlie” and Stewart Bloor. The
videos they posted are shown below respectively.
Youtube
videos
When
we sit on a warm summers day on the banks of our favourite river watching the
water pass us gently by we can sometimes forget just how powerful mother nature
can be and its videos like these that remind me never to take it for granted
when by the river bank, the river is certainly the most dangerous venue I fish
and videos like this always serve as a reminder of what even the smallest of
rivers is capable of, take care on the banks and never forget your safety is
worth more than any fish.
From
my angling point of view there is no way the river is going to be in any fit
state by Saturday for my type of fishing, yes the river may well drop but not
to a sufficient level for it to be a viable option to travel to the river to
try so I think this coming weekend we will be either back on a local pond or
commercial, which I don’t think would be a bad thing for me as I think I need
that confidence boost that comes with fishing a commercial and I am looking
forward to it already!!
On
to this weeks fishing…..
“deja-vu or
what!!!”
Anyone
that read last weeks article will see I left it with the presumption that if we
went the river then this weeks update may well leave you with a big sense of
deja-vu, well I have to confess now although the standard of fishing and size
of species was greatly improved the agenda for the day was exactly the same in
that we started on the river and ended up on a local pond.
As
regular followers of the blog will know I recently moved out of my parents’
house and now live a good 5-10 minute drive away from my dad’s. This has meant the start to my mornings
fishing has a new feel to it and I can say one thing for certain it’s a lot
harder to get yourself out of bed to go fishing when you are snugly tucked in
bed opposed to my normal Friday night vigil of browsing the internet, unable to
sleep with the excitement of the day ahead, a new baby coming along kind of
makes you appreciate sleep a little bit more!!
Saturday
morning came and I had accidently left the kitchen window open the previous
evening and boy did I know it when I entered the kitchen to make my breakfast,
the floor was icy cold on my bare feet and there was a real chill in the air, a
quick glance out of the window and up at the sky revealed it to be as clear as
a bell and studded with countless stars, the first frost of the year had
arrived.
We arrived at our chosen destination with precision timing as
the first rays of light warmed the now drenched grass; all around us was heady
with the smell of flowering Himalayan Balsam that as a mass looked as confused
as our seasons have been this year with a mixture of bright greens from the new
shoots to the dark lifeless browns of the plants that had fulfilled their
duty. Walking through the undergrowth, laden heavy with all the fishing
gear I could hear the closed bugs of these flowers exploding as they jettisoned
their seeds far a wide, it left me with no doubt that change was on its way,
and so it proved to be this week.
The swim I had chosen to fish was
a shallow glide down to the submerged branches of a tree downstream, it was in
fact like a mini version of the swim I had fished the previous week but lacked
one thing, the depth. This week's swim was
only around 4ft deep but did have a nice slow slack on the inside line where I knew I had a
chance of a nice roach or perch.
The river has been really out of sorts of late and it had been a
long hard decision to commit to giving it one more try and not try a local
still water venue, so my expectations of the day, I have to admit, where quite
low and I set myself a target of 20 fish for the session, a total you would
laugh at achieving normally in the past year from this venue.
My side tray also saw the effects of the river fishing so poor
and it lacked a bait I normally feel like I am fishing unprepared without and
that was my half a pint of castors. This bait has not worked at all the
past few weeks in any capacity and has gone to waste at the end of the session
so rather than wasting money I chose to not take this bait at all and went with
maggot and hemp seed.
Maggot is a good al round bait that I hoped would catch me any
fish from small “eyes” to plump fat roach. As I had fished this swim a
number of times before I began feeding the swim up as I prepared my tackle, I
knew from experience that the swim had a deeper holed around two thirds the way
down the trot and this is where I would pick up the majority of my fish so I
began to trickle bait in on that line.
Reading the angling press they always say to go by the rule of a
number four shot for every foot of water you are fishing, I have found that not
to be the case on the river Dee and I always fish slightly heavier as I like to
have a bit of line lying on. So armed with 8 No 4 float and a size 20
hook I made my first cast into the unknown.
The first hour brought plenty of bites from fish with this
lovely dace one of the better fish to come in the first hour. It looked
like I was in for a good days sport and with my uncle and dad not paying me a
visit yet it looked like they were also enjoying a much needed bend in their
carbon fibre.
In the next hour I put together a decent number of fish, nothing
spectacular but the bites where coming regularly enough for me to keep the swim
ticking over nicely. It was then my first visitor of the day arrived and
it was my uncle with the not so good news that he was really struggling for
bites. Obviously I had struck a bit of luck and landed on a shoal of fish
as my uncle was doing nothing different to me and was only around 20 yards
upstream. While my uncle was sat on my peg having a blood warming brew I
had my second visitor of the day, a pike swirling in the edge, not a good sign
for the future of the swim.
After my uncle returned to his swim I picked up a few more fish,
again nothing of any size till I struck into a bite that felt by all intents
and purposes as the bottom until it kicked and went hard for the tree, at first
I thought it was a pike taking the fish but it wasn’t strong enough for that,
my mind then went into overtime thinking what it could be from a grayling to a
chub but to my amazement it was deep green flanks that broke the surface and I
was amazed to see it was a perch.
Now a fish this size would offer little resistance on a pond but
fish in a river are a different animal all together, they are lean and hard
fighting and have the flow to their advantage, this is one thing I love about
the river, you just don’t know what your next fish will be.
As the afternoon moved on I picked up another small perch and
continued to catch the odd dace and as the swim deteriated further the odd
minnow!! My dad and
uncle had gone back to their pegs and their fishing had improved but was still poor.
I decided after a hour of trotting without a bite to spend change over to my
pike gear to see if there was anything doing.
In went a small roach live bait and
after around 20 minutes I had a take, I actually thought the pike had let go or I had
missed the take but no I had my first pike of the year, a pike that wasn’t much
bigger than the roach it took, easily my new personal best smallest river
pike!! It drew laughs from my uncle and dad with calls that the roach had it in
a headlock being banded around, with my tail between my legs I returned the
pike to its watery home, see you in ten years when you’re a 20 pounder.
I spent the next hour chewing the fat with my uncle on his peg
whilst watching him trotting a float relentlessly through his swim with little or no
return, again the tide began to ebb and the fishing had died , it was again
time to make a move any stop in on another venue on the way home.
I was reasonably happy
with my works morning, let's hope this week's floods get the fish on the feed.
“spot of carp
fishing”
Not long after leaving the banks of
the river Dee we found ourselves hurriedly tackling up to fish another local
pond, this is a pond I have featured on the blog before where we had a cracking
net of small carp in only a few hours. We were not the only anglers who
had chosen this destination for our weekend’s recreational activity so as
always I went over and had a quick word about how they were getting on.
The answer was not good, they had
tried every bait under the sun and had only one carp between them and what was
worse they reported there had been a few lads fishing our chosen swims and they
had thrown the best part of a big time of sweet
corn into the margins.
One bait they hadn’t used was maggot
and with the bottom of this pond being thick with silt it was a good bet the
carp spend most of their time rummaging through this picking up bloodworms and
invertebrates to make up their natural diet, so all of us were confident, the
only thing was time was already against us, we had to pack up at 5pm and it was
already 2pm.
The fishing started off very slow
with none of us even getting a knock for the first hour and then my uncle
connected and landed the first carp of the day, at least they were up for the
bait and with renewed confidence I kept feeding the swim with a lazy trickle of
white maggot, eventually this paid off and
the elastic melted out of the top of the pole as the fish went hard for the
middle. It resistance tamed it was soon in the keep net with my uncles fish.
As the afternoon went on the sport
got better with us picking up carp at a slow but steady pace and it was great
fun, the only down side being my uncle pulling in that awful rig .We ended with
a creditable net for the time we were there and left happy
This weekend looks even worse as I am
finishing this blog update off so it looks like a commercial for sure for us
tomorrow.
Till next time
Tight lines
Danny
