AN EVENING ONE THE RIVER DEE...

A warm welcome to this midweek blog update, Tuesday has for me now become a day where i start to think of the possibility of a sneaky midweek trip after work tomorrow and with the nights slowly beginning to draw in time for a river session after work is surely running out and we must take advantage of this time as before long we will be depressingly coming and going from work in the dark.

Work of late has been getting me down i have to say as the repetitive nature of my job leaves me craving freedom at times and i guess that is why i love the serenity, calmness and peace and quiet of the river bank so much.  We recently moved offices and for most the extra walk or the new surroundings worried most folk, for me, well it was the fact the new building contains only  9 windows, 9 planes to view the outside world where i am now lucky to catch a glimpse of a passing seagull  as opposed the wealth of nature we used to witness around our old building where you would see the swallows arriving on the fields and then departing so anonymously with the impending winter, V flocks of Canada geese and the occasional gliding buzzard all now not part of my yearly life walking into work or glancing out of my desk window but i guess most of all i miss seeing the seasons change the coming and going of the leaves , that crisp first frost tickling your face as you left your car in short there is a lot to be said for the loss of a desk side window lol.

Looking out of the 9 panes now writing this weekly blog update on my lunch break i can feel that suffocating feeling i did last week like an animal in a zoo i can smell the freedom of the outside world beyond the small windows, last week i could take now more i had to get out and with it a evening session was arranged on the banks of the serene and open banks of the River Dee,  her banks i knew off me the natural antidote for my most urban of illnesses.

"An Evening On The River Dee"

The drive to the banks of the Dee on a week day was a brand new experience for me an even more so given the lack of visits to her bank over the past 9 months but driving there i was back on autopilot the car knew the way, her wheels had worm down this path so many times before it was like she was bounded by her own tyre tracks. Passing Chester we headed to an area we had yet to wet a line in and given the few swims in this area we did not know until we passed the last bend if the pegs we had chatted about along the B Roads was free or not.  My heart sank as a parked car on the grass verge had me thinking we were out of luck but thankfully the parked car on this occasion belonged to a dog walker and not an angler.

Like two naughty children skiving from school to go fishing we unloaded the car and began setting up our swims.  The time we had set up the time was 1pm and i knew we were due a tide this afternoon but was unsure just how much it would effect us being just that little bit further upstream.  The river quite low i trusted to luck and set up on the lower flat part of the swim with a good foot or so down to the river surface, surely i was OK up here i thought as i plumed the depth and in front of me i found a nice depth for trotting, plumbing up further down i noticed it shallowed up on the inside about half way down the swim but as the flow came round a sweeping bend and of the outside of a tree above my swim i hoped i could hold a line about a 3rd of the way across as i had miles or river below me to trot into, surely i would draw fish into my swim from here and catch a few i thought.

My uncle settled in upstream on a peg that was not really ideal for trotting but with a tide due the other shingle bank peg was a no go and in all intents and purposes it was a feeder peg he fished situated between two trees fishing the float it was an all or nothing attempt to catch the fish under his feet. 

Trotting a stick down between a third and half way across the river feeding hemp and maggot i was soon picking up the odd dace along the fast glide.  The first fish of the session was a nice dace which was closely followed by a few of its family members and all looked well for a steady session.

I was optimistic of a good session ahead for us both as i could hear the striking and subsequent splashing of my uncle picking up a few fish above me.  During sessions fishing a river for silvers you do hit those points where you get a few bites and your confidence is high and you feel like you are nailing it, of course its an amazing feeling that all us anglers crave and love...but we all know that can all be dashed as quickly as that confidence was built and catching a decent snag can bring that feeling on really quick, but for a brief second i thought i had sorted it was the line slowly started coming towards me and i lifted to see me line clear of the water attached to a whole length of line from a snag on the inside right across the whole river to the far bank trees.  I can only presume someone on a feeder had snagged on the far bank and pulled for a break and their line had snapped at the rod end and the whole lot of line had sunk and snagged on the inside snag in effect putting line across the whole river, quite possibly, barring setting up on a sunken whole tree, a trotters nightmare.

It was not long after hitting this snag and then hitting another one against the far bank that i first noticed the river backing up a bit.  Over the next 20-30 minutes the river backed up and backed up and its level rose higher and higher.  In the picture above you can see the whole of the peg is under water where before the level was down the bank a good few feet.

After a while the river began to flow back on itself and this is when i got my better, love it when you know a bite is coming and you can really strike into it.

It was during this spell i put together a few decent fish including this very nice roach below, easily one of the highlights of the session

Unfortunately the tide began to ebb and after a few moments the normal flow of the river was resumed and with it the trials and tribulations with the snag.  The problem was not knowing exactly where it was situated as i guess the flow of the river would cause it to flow and i did go on to catch it a few more times before the session was out, very frustrating!

I made a big change to my plans and it was similar to my uncles where i tried to get the fish really close in almost in the slack in front of me and it did seem to work as a few small dace came quickly to the net and then it died and died solid for a good half hour.  Feeding the swim gently i began to get a few knocks of feeding fish and then the float slid away confidently, striking into the fish i was instantly in trouble with snags all around me and a tree to me right still half submerged i was connected with something solid and with a 1lb 7oz bottom on i was not confident.

From the feel of the battle i instantly ruled out a chub or barbel as is had not made a solid run yet and  then with a few flicks of its tail instantly knew i was into a billy and a nice one to boot.  The past fights on the dane have put me in good stead for dealing with perch and as soon as the fish came within sight it was scooped up, no second chances, they go mad in the landing net but at least you bank the fish. 

a 1lb 13oz perch and what a year for perch it has been for me!

After this perch i picked up a few more dace and roach but nothing really to shout home about and hitting another snag 30 mins before wrap up time i put out the pike rod for the last part of the session but nothing showed on it.  My uncle had a steady session catching some really nice roach and dace.

my net 

uncle net

All in all it was just what the doctor ordered and great to fish yet another new stretch of this fantastic river.

till. next time,

tight lines 

Danny



Predators Go mad as Weather Cools

A warm welcome to this weeks blog update and after my week away with my family I feel refreshed and feel my batteries are well and truly recharged.  It has been a manic few months for me from a work point of view with me being heavily involved in a new piece of work that has come into our office and although I feel like I have not really stopped I have thoroughly enjoyed the challenge it has posed for myself and how it has taken me right out of my comfort zone as contrary to what you would think from someone who writes a very open and revealing blog on the Internet I am not a confident person when it comes to speaking in front of a group of people and this job has almost pushed me into these scenarios which now its almost over I am really happy about but at the time I found it really stressful.  The holiday we have just been on was always the reward for a long and hard few months work and I thoroughly enjoyed it and apart from relaxing it also gave me the opportunity to spend a full week with my little family as since both me and my fiance work full time its been a long time since we have had every minute of every day to spend with our little girl and without getting too soppy about it all it was amazing.

Cornwall was the destination for our family holiday and we decided to make our base in the sea side town of Newquay, surfing capital of the northern hemisphere it would seem.  We stayed in a hotel right on top of the cliffs overlooking Fistral Beech and we was treated to some of the most beautiful scenery the British isles has to offer with white sandy beaches and clear blue seas by day and romantic sunsets by night.

Newquay was to be our base for the week and although we spent a few days in Newquay we also travelled to some beautiful local towns in Penzance, St Ives and Padstow.  I have to say the relaxed way of life and the beautiful harbour setting of Padstow was the place I personally fell in love with or was that just because of the Fish and Chips?  Some of the places we visited had harbours overlooking crystal clear coastal waters that where just alive with fish from really large shoals of small fish to some bigger fish that lazily cruised the harbour walls.  It did make me think that I should have packed a road and reel with me but in reality I bet those fish are a lot harder to catch than it looks.

The weather when we where down there was delightful as we basked in glorious sunshine for nearly every day of the trip and the bad weather only really started to creep in on the Friday morning as we packed for home.  The journey back up to the North west was long and tiresome with huge queues on both the M6 and M5 but thankfully my years of fishing the River Dane came into fruition as we jumped off the motorway around Middlewich as made our way home through the back roads, see fishing does have its benefits ladies.

I did notice on the way up the motorway just how the seasons are starting to change as the lines of trees started to show the faintest signs of the autumnal colours coming through and this became more and more evident the further north we travelled.  I also noticed it as well as we travelled to my partners mums house as she has a big conker tree in her street and it its branches where laden heavy with conkers, of course these conkers will never be allowed to fall naturally towards the end of September time as the local kids will soon be alleviating the tree of its quarry with a barrage of sticks as soon as they see a glimpse of a half ripe conker, i wonder if they still keep em in jars or vinegar to harden em up :-)

The air of change in the air has already got me thinking of chasing those River and Canal Pike again not forgetting those crisp cold mornings that lie ahead chasing the shoals of dace and chub on the River Dee and River Ribble.  i really do love seeing how the different places i fish change throughout the year and i end this introduction with a picture i took in Autumn last year on the River Dee.

on to this weeks fishing:

River Dee - Saturday 07th September

After arriving back home from Cornwall at around 8pm with approaching 7 hours of driving under my belt saying I was very tired would have been an understatement and in all honesty fishing should have been the last thing on my mind but whether its madness or an addiction I have I crazily set my alarm on my phone for a barmy 3.30am wake up call it really is times like this where i struggle to defend myself against the people who call us anglers mad. 

The River Dee was our chosen destination and arriving at my uncles doorstep at 04.45 i didn't actually feel too bad and was actually quite looking forward to the session ahead.  My plan was to fish the stick float for roach, dace and if i was lucky chub using hemp and maggot as bait.  We arrived at the river to find the banks empty and we had the choice of which swim we wanted to fish and after some deliberation we decided to fish swims we had yet to fish this year to see how they were fishing.  

To cut a long story short on the trotting front it was a terrible mornings fishing with us both scratching around for bites in what was a very out of sorts day on the River Dee.  The fish just where op for it at all and this became even more evident when the match on the other bank kicked off and failed to produce bites for anyone with any regularity.  In these scenarios many reasons are given such as the river needed a good flush through, its not cold enough yet and there is too much bait going in the stretch.  The morning did produce one unusual fish in this palm sized flatty but that was the only fish of note in a net of perch and the odd dace.

I decided not to waste this afternoon and made the decision to become proactive about the situation and if the slow fishing was down to pike I could be missing out.  I quickly tidied up my gear and set up a pike rod with the idea of dropping in a few likely spots on the length to try and winkle out a jack or two.  The bait was a small dace and it was to be fished as close to the snags as i dared to let it, conditions where really good in my opinion for predator fishing as the water had a great clarity to it.

Roaming the stretch produced no sign of a take and i did give each likely looking swim a good 20 minutes or so but alas no pike was forthcoming and i returned to my original peg to settle in for a longer vigil.

After only 5 minutes in the original peg i had some interest on the pike float as the bait quickly darted for the nearside bank, odd i thought as normally the pike do not mess around on this river.  It was not till the fish came close in i saw it was a perch that was eyeing up the bait and continued to watch as the perch corralled the fish into the margins, in my head I was thinking that dace is too much for that but in a split second it had nailed the dace and i struck into the perch.

It would give me great pleasure here to say it was a monumental fight that saw the fish almost escape capture whilst emptying the spool of line but that would be a total lie and the truth is on such heave pike gear it was a short and sweet fight and it wasn't long before the perch was on the unhooking mat, bang on 2lb and not the first good perch I have had from the river dee.

Apart from one aborted take from a small jack pike terrorising the fry shoals that was it for the fishing on Saturday and I left feeling happy i had made the trip out as it was rewarded with such a beautiful perch.

Bridgewater Canal - Warrington Anglers - Sunday 08th September

With the disappointment of the previous days silver fishing and a good pint and half of maggot left over I decided to rise really early and have a few hours till midday fishing the local Bridgewater Canal.  The canal being as urban as it is I never recommend fishing locations like this alone so I managed to persuade my dad to come along for some company and support, not fishing but just there as a friendly companion.  My dad doesn't get on the bank as much any more so it was great to spend a few hours chewing the fat with my old man.

There was definitely a chill in the air and although there was no breeze it was noticeable the drop in temperature form the previous day.  I set up in a the swim i had fished before going to Cornwall and i was really confident of a few bites and as i had fished the swim a few times before i drip feeding the swim as i set up my gear to fish it.  We are hoping to fish the canal this weekend as well so i am thinking of doing a detailed blog on what a session for me is like on my local water.

All set to go I was fishing around 11 metres of pole to a far bank reed bed well out of the boat line as to try and build an area of feed for the fish to settle on.  The first put over and i fully expected the float to go before it even settled but to my amazement the float settled and remained as stationary as the heron working the far bank margin further down the canal, not what i had imagined.  Eventually the float slid away and i lifted into a small fish that within seconds became a much bigger fish, a bigger fish that came into the middle of the canal before releasing its prey, a skimmer with deep cuts down it side, a pike was obviously on the prowl.

I was not here for the pike today so I shipped back out and managed to get a few fish before i then hooked into a slightly better fish and again it all went solid the pike again,  the same pike maybe? and with that it again released the fish.  I again ignored it and went back out but the swim was tone cold dead and all around the area where i was fishing fry where scattering everywhere, not how i imagined the morning would go.

I then remembered i had left my piking gear in my holdall from the previous day so i quickly grabbed it and waited for the next fish.  The intention was never to pike fish but sometimes you just need to move these jacks further along the bank as it was obvious i was not going to catch steady with it around.  The pike on the prowl it did not take long for it to take the bait and before long a nice pike weighing 6.5lb was on the bank.

The fish returned further up the canal i settled back into the swim and began to catch steady then but after around half an hour i lifted into another decent fish that this time went solid again and this felt a better pike which again spat the bait.  The time was 10.30 and i was only fishing till 1 o'clock so i did not reach for the pike rod this time but continued for the silvers and caught steady for the remainder of the session which culminated with the capture of this bronze bream, easily the fish of the session.

The final net was not the big net of silvers I had hoped for but considering the predator activity i think it was a well earned one and i look forward to having another shot at this canal this weekend.

till next time

tight lines

danny

Dreaming In a Winter Wonderland.............

A warm welcome to this week’s blog update and boy what a weekend on the bank it proved to be and I am still buzzing from it now, that’s the magic of fishing it can bring the angler so much joy and happiness, yes its nice being around the great wildlife the north west of England has to offer but nothing beats that feeling of achievement after a red letter day on the bank.  Another milestone also passed by with last week’s post in that it was my 100^th blog post!! It only seems like yesterday to me I was an avid reader of all the great blogs on Blogspot and now I am 100 posts into my personal blogging life, madness and surreal and all I can do is thank you all for reading my updates and I hope you all enjoy reading them as much I enjoy writing them.

I start this week’s update by covering a program that aired for the first time this week on the Quest Channel called Fishing in the Footsteps of Mr Crabtree (http://mrcrabtreegoesfishing.com/ ).  There are 6 episodes to the series that will show weekly at 9pm on a Thursday evening and they will cover all aspects of our sport from pike fishing to river fishing, the opening week was devoted the fish of spring, the teddy bear eyed tench.

The program stars John Bailey as host as he takes a different child under his wing each week hoping to teach them the ways of Mr Crabtree.  I have long said on my blog that it worries me how many new anglers to our sport only know how to fish with a heavy lead and a bite alarm, many times on the bank I get speaking to young people in our sport who have never fished a float, don’t get me wrong this is not me preaching but more me disappointed as it as such a shame that the art of float fishing a canal say for roach and perch is fast becoming a dying art and a young kid’s first fish these days is just as likely to be a 5lb carp than a perch of a few ounces and I just feel you have more appreciation for the bigger species like carp when you have spent time catching the smaller fish.

This program see’s John and Sam stalking the margins of a pond for tench kitted out with a rod and a centrepin reel fishing under the rod tip using old fashioned tactics tweaked with the best the modern day has to offer to fool these shy fish.  It took me right back to the days before I started writing my blog when I used to fish a lovely tench water on the Warrington Anglers card called Cicely Mill, at only a few feet deep and reed lined margins I used to fish with my centrpin right under the tip of my 13ft float rod for these lovely fish.  In review I thought the show was fantastic and a breath of fresh air to the very stagnant TV fishing series of late and it really didn’t surprise me to see the greats of our sport like Matt Hayes publically complementing the series on Twitter.  I think it did exactly what it intended to do from the outset in taking people back to their childhood and open the eyes of the younger anglers to our sport to the joys of float fishing, it certainly ticked box one with myself and I can only hope box two was ticked with a few youngsters and I really can’t wait this week’s instalment on the rivers, 10 out of 10.

This week on the banks of the Dee went to show why it is important to be polite and friendly on the bank to the people you meet as I had a very special fish capture as you will see in the update later on but my electronic fishing scales packed up on me and I had no means to get a weight for a fish that was obviously a personal best.  I walked along the bank to ask another angler if I could borrow their scales and on approaching the peg I realised it was a fellow I had had lengthy chats with last winter and he had no hesitation in lending me his scales.  It just goes to show treat others as you would like to be treated and be polite and it will always have its benefits later on down the road, far too often people on the bank can give you the cold shoulder and be ignorant and there really is no need for it, thankfully on the river Dee they are very few and far between.

The result of this was this week I decided to invest in some new scales that don’t require batteries, I will get the old one up and running as a backup but inspecting these ones below I am already more than made up with them.

On to this week’s fishing and although it all happened in one day I will split it into two halves, the day session and the short “on the way home” session.

River Dee Day Session:- TROTTING FOR DACE

  Last week I fell really ill with this vomiting bug that has been going round and it really knocked me off my feet so much so I was off work from the Wednesday and spent the majority of my days either in bed or in the bathroom.  Friday came along and it began to feel as if the worst of this bug had passed and late on Friday evening I “perched” myself at my desk and watched while the thick snow began to fall out of the window of our house.  The snow fell and fell and fell and eventually became so thick it blanketed the whole of our car park in a good foot of so of snow.  I wrapped the blog up around 12.30 and gave my uncle a call as to whether it was sensible to go ahead with our trip to the river the next day, a quick chat and we decided the trip was off. 

This decision was made, not because of the conditions being too bad to fish in but the fact that my dad and uncle both live down on streets that are on quite steep hills and with us leaving under the cover of darkness it would be really dangerous for me to travel in the conditions alone, not to mention we didn’t know how bad the conditions were in Wales.

With no fishing on the agenda I tried my best to have a lie in but it didn’t materialise at all and I was sat in my living room checking out the river Dee water levels at 5am.  It would seem that I wasn’t alone in my early morning vigil as I received a text around an hour and half later from my uncle saying how mild it looked outside, a quick glance out of my window and he was right the snow was thawing and it was very mild.  It took us a matter of minutes to change our minds and I was already in my fishing gear before I the phone left my ear and I quickly swallowed a few ibuprofen tablets and made a beeline for my mobile igloo, also known to many as a car.

The roads locally were treacherous and my head and body were aching more and more as the journey to my dad’s continued, this was a bad idea but looking at the EA chart I knew the river would certainly flood for the next week at least and this could feasibly be our last chance to get out on the river for a few weeks, the opportunity was there today we just had to take it.

Driving the river in the daylight is not something I am normally accustomed too and with our final destination being a popular stretch of the river we hoped the harsh conditions over night would see a few people turn over when there alarm clock went off.  Pulling into the car park the stretch was empty except for two cars right at the top end of the beat so we settled on two relatively open pegs that we knew would hold some dace.

In last week’s update I went into detail about my general set up for trotting the river and this week I decided to try and add another string to my bow by using a Bolo float and fishing a lot further out than I normally would.  These floats are traditionally fished with a bulk shot a few feet above your hook and I decided to go with this set up and used an ollivette to make up my bulk shot weight.  This style of fishing is generally used to fish a third to half way across the river so it would also see me using a piece of tackle I don’t normally use on the river and that’s a catapult.

Getting used to flicking the line out tangle free and baiting the hook without the float wrapping round the blank of the rod took what seemed like an eternity to get right but eventually I began to get to terms with it and managed to get a few decent trots through the swim.  The main problem I encountered was the swim was noticeably shallower just past my bed of hemp which made it really hard to get a decent presentation and to further my problems I was also struggling to cast in and feed the line with the catapult whilst letting line run from the reel to allow the float to still run through the swim.

With the wind coming down the river I decided to pull my line in to the end of the tree to my right, this had two benefits, one I gained control as it was closer in and two the maggots where going straight down so it meant I could trot a small distance in front of me and get bites. 

Doing this soon saw me picking up the odd dace but all of a sudden the swim died and did so for around 10 minutes, I decided to persevere and I was so glad I did as not long after casting in the float buried and I was into a fish that was in another league all together.

The fish made lunge after lunge for the safety of the snags to my left but I was determined not to lose this fish like I had done the better fish I had hooked into in previous weeks.  I am sure the new reel had a part to play in me winning the fight as it helped to cushion and control the fish’s powerful lunges where I feel the unforgiving nature of the closed faces drag would have seen me snap off on one of the final lunges the fish made.  In my head I thought it was a nice chub, which have been rumoured to be in the area, but what came to the surface was something altogether more rewarding, a big perch and the person who said nothing looks bigger than a big perch certainly knew there stuff, I was shaking with the sight of what was in my landing net, definitely a new personal best.

The fish safely in the net I made my way along the bank to see if anyone would lend me their scales to use and like I mentioned earlier I came across a guy I had had a few conversations with in the past and he was more than kind enough to help my cause.  Returning to my peg I quickly put the perch in a carrier bag and got it on the scales, 2lb 5dr, I was more than made up with this fish!! A perch over two pound is a fish I thought I would never catch.

The fish was put into the keep net so I could have another admiring look at the end of the session, the scales returned I spent a good hour chewing the fat with the guy who lent me the scales and both shared our knowledge of the Dee and the surrounding rivers.  I eventually got back to the trotting and settled in for an afternoons trotting and between 12 and 3pm I put together a respectable net of 10lb including the perch.  Not my best session on the float but considering I was on the bolo float I was more than made up.

 My uncle had a solid days dace fishing with bites coming all day long and he ended with an outstanding net of 16lb of all dace, a more than respectable day’s work and would have actually put him joint top with the winning weight in the Dee anglers match on the other bank.

 As many of the blogs followers on facebook will know I have been experimenting recently with an app called Instagram on my iphone and I am really impressed with some of the changes you can make to pictures, I was more than made up with what it allowed me to do to my perch picture, I feel it really brings out the fishes colours.

Going with the flow of the day – a bit of opportunistic piking

With there still a decent amount of light left and the fact we knew this would probably be our last trip to the river Dee in the next few weeks we quickly rounded up a few live baits in a bucket and set off to see if I could achieve my goal of a pike in the snow, after no activity all day again at our current location I was far from optimistic, but one thing I did know was if I was going to get a pike today the place we were heading was as good as anywhere.

Parked up I made my way to the spot and with freezing cold and shivering hands I baited up my rig, said a little prayer to the fish gods and cast out into the murky depths.  The float danced on the surface as the fish plodded around under its surface and then it settled into a rhythmic motion almost as if the lapping of the waves agitated the dace into motion.

In a blink of an eye the float descended into the depths and I struck into what felt at first a small jack pike, that was till it realised the dace it had just engulfed wasn’t heading into its lair as easily as it would have liked and that’s when I felt the full power of this pike as it made a strong run.  I was using my braided line for the first time and I have to say it left me in full control of this pike, I always felt I had power in reserve and whereas before I used to give the pike some drag this allowed me to firmly apply pressure to the pike so it remained in front of me and before I knew it I had my winter snow pike, I didn’t weight the fish as it was not a record breaking fish but I knew by holding it the fish was easily around the 10lb mark.

With the light fading fast I didn’t have long to try for another fish so I quickly got my pictures so I had time to hold the pike in the margins and let it rest fully, again this rumour that pike are a hardy fish is just that a rumour, we should really limit their time out of the water as much as possible, get our photos and rest them fully before releasing them, it is amazing how long a pike, that fights so aggressively will lie in the margins with you holding their peacefully before giving their big paddle a lazy kick and moving off.

The pike released I moved back into my swim and chanced my luck for another pike and I was not to be disappointed as after only a few seconds the float went for another soaking as it descended, this time towards the snags!! This was going to test thr line for sure so I quickly struck and applied as much side strain as I dared and I was amazed how the line gave me the strength to turn what was a decent pike  and which turned out to be slightly bigger than the previous one.  My target was one pike in the snow, two pike had me in dreamland, a dream land surrounded by a winter wonderland.

The pike is more than equipped for its role in the food chain.

That was it for the action and we reluctantly left the banks, a personal best perch and two pike around the 10lb mark, I still can’t believe I am catching pike of this size regularly and taking them in my stride, a few years ago a fish of around 10lb would have been a dream fish but I never take them for granted in my mind I know we are only a pollution incident or fish disease away from this great river going up in smoke, the fishing on the dee right now is up there with anything I see in the weekly rags and long may it continue, I am proud to be a River Dee angler.

my second home:

This weekend, if the conditions hold, we have a new destination on the cards, it’s a brand new fishing destination for us and will be a whole new learning curve, we may well blank, in fact I am sure there will be more than the odd blank as we learn this new place.

Till next week tight lines from one happy angler,

Danny

thick line or just plain THICK!!!

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

The dangers of river fishing

They say two of the most stressful things you do in your life are having a baby and moving house so with our baby due some time this month there was no better time than now to move into our new house, what a week its been, very tiring and non stop but at least its all done now and I even managed to get it all done with Sunday to spare for a few hours on the river!!

On to the fishing:

All week there have been high tides showing up on the level stations on the Dee so we travelled to the Dee knowing the river would be dropping and due to rise again around 2-3pm in the afternoon. With the water levels due to be so changeable through out the whole session I decided not to trot a float through a swim but settled in a swim where I knew there was a decent slack behind a sunken tree that I could easily reach with 3 sections of pole.

This type of fishing can bring some real surprises and can on certain days see you really bag up and can out fish the float rod in some instances. My plan for the day was to fish the pole for a few hours and then pack the gear away and try a pike spot that has been good to me over the years in the afternoon hoping to pick up an odd jack pike or two.

In the dark setting up I could hear all manor of rodents rustling around in the undergrowth but it was a large animal swimming across the river that caught my eye. In the dark I could not make out what it was only that it was really large, certainly not a mink. It was a few moments later my uncle came down the bank saying he had seen something on his peg but like me couldn’t make it out. We will never know for certain what it was but after looking on Google it does seem from time to time seals make there way up the estuary above the weir chasing the salmon runs I can only imagine it was one of these as it was too big to be anything else. If anyone reading this fished the Dee a lot leave a message in the comments if you have witnessed anything like this before on the Dee.

​As the morning broke we were treated to some glorious sunshine I started to feed the slack with castor and hemp and it wasn’t long before my efforts paid off and I was into some dace and small roach. I did hit one fish that was solid on the strike and went straight out into the flow when the hook pulled which was more of a relief than anything because there was no chance of me landing it, it was a serious fish judging by the power of its run.

Surrounded by a dense patch of nettles and other flowers it at times felt like there was a whole swarm of bees and wasps behind me as they both worked the blooming flowers in vast numbers, it was at time quite deafening.

The fishing after the hook pull went really quiet as can be expected but after feeding the swim for around half an hour without a bite the float buried and I was into a decent fish that had the elastic really stretching as it made dive after dive for the tree roots. I managed to turn the fish and it came to the surface and revealed itself to be a beautifully marked perch which I was more than pleased with.

After this perch the small silver fish seemed to return and I continued to pick up dace, roach and the odd small chublet and I thoroughly enjoyed the change from trotting. I packed the gear away around midday pleased with my morning efforts on the pole and I feel I improved as the morning went on with my presentation.

The gear packed away and my keep net drying up the bank I decided to take the opportunity to just relax and have a coffee on the bank and I for a good 20 minutes just sat back and took in the sights and sounds of the river, after a few hectic days sorting out the new house, ringing energy providers, building and moving furniture it was bliss to have a few moments to relax and in my opinion there is no better place than by the river bank.

After finishing my brew and watching the resident king fisher scurry back up river it was time to make a move myself and I made the short walk to my uncles peg to store the gear behind him and see how he was getting on. He was having a good day on the float rod picking up some stonking roach along with the dace that are so plentiful in the river dee system now.

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I decided to take a wander onto the gravel bar that was no accessible with the low tide and I was amazed to see all the fry that was a bout, the place was teeming with small fry. I did manage to catch one and it was certainly a chub fry judging by the size of its mouth. This bodes really well for the future of the river to see so much upcoming life and also goes to explain the presence of some nice perch in the stretch which would make short work of these fry.

After watching the fry for a bit I decided to get my trust pike rod out and began to wobble dead bait in a spot I know holds a few pike. It is always a great feeling when you get it right and a plan comes together and after a few casts I could see the silver bait fluttering in the clear water before a massive bow wave rolled in behind the bait and a sharp tug on the rod tip registered the pike was on and I struck into a real feisty pike that did everything to throw the hooks giving me a right display of its aerial capabilities.

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Pike in summer can be really full of energy, more so than winter where there fights seem to be more hard runs than tail walking leaps from the water. I know I mention this a lot in my blog but giving the pike time to recover in the margins before release is even more important in summer for these fish and great care should be taken to make sure they are ready to go back.

The pike safely returned I joined my uncle for a bit watching him catching some lovely roach and dace that moved into his swim late on in the session. After while I returned to my pike fishing and managed to entice another, much bigger pike, but thankfully it threw the hooks as when I looked at my feet the tide had started to rise around me and I was stood in a foot of water with it rising fast. I quickly grabbed my gear and made my way to the top of the bank looking back to see the plateau where I was stood 2 minutes earlier covered in water. This goes to show the dangers of fishing the rivers and how vigilant you need to be at all times.

I had lost track of time, I should have know that at 3pm the tide would come in and I needed to be off but I got complacent, it is so easy to do. Arriving at the top of the bank we could hear loud rumbles of thunder approaching so we quickly grabbed a quick picture of his net of fish which for the swim was really impressive.

We literally packed hi gear away as the heavens opened and in the space of 10 minutes we were both soaked to the bone as was all the gear. We quickly loaded the car and got on our way and already the roads leaving the beat where approaching being impassable with flood water. We made our way along the B road towards Chester and at times it was approaching dangerous with water literally flowing off the fields and into the river, I can honestly put my hand on my heart and say in my 7 years of driving so far it was the most scared I have ever been in my car. The water in places covered the whole road and we had no idea just how deep it was. Thankfully we managed to navigate our way along the road, safely and continued on our way home through the torrential rain.

I can honestly say I have never experienced weather like that, as you can see form the pictures the morning was glorious sunshine and even when the thunder was rumbling we where still in the warm sunshine, yet less than 30 minutes later we where navigating completely flooded roads. It certainly opened my eyes to the dangers of fishing the rivers.

Till next time

Stay safe and tight lines

Danny