River Dane Troubles and Daughters Second Trip

A warm welcome to this weeks blog update i hope i find you all well and your nets wet.  A little change to the update this week as it will not be broken down into an introduction and then the fishing i am just going to use the beginning of the blog to talk about my fishing and where i feel i am with at it at this moment.  This will include what type of fishing and the blog and will be more of a ramble than anything but i am sure we will come out of the other side with a lot off my chest and hopefully a clear sense of direction.  So no script or brain storming with this update i am on my break and lets see where it takes us.

A Wee Ramble.....

The past few years fishing for me i have always had a set goal, a finishing point, a place i wanted to end up and was working towards.  These goals have changed from starting on a complete river and going out each week trying to work out the best spots and methods for finding and catching the best possible nets from a river to my pike fishing where i was learning from scratch.  In all these pursuits there has been a fitting ending with my first 20lb net on the river dee on the stick being a huge milestone and last year catching my first pike on my own trace or going form not knowing what i was doing dead baiting to being able to go out alone without garry or ste and feeling confident i could tackle it, these where all huge milestones and places i had worked hard towards and these where, not so much a fitting ending, but a nice closing point to move onto the next part of that adventure e.g first dead bait double, first wobbled pike.

The river dane has been our latest challenge and when we first tried this river i was full of expectation we could work this river out, find the hot spots, and then go from there with plans to work out best baits and places to go in winter for good sport on this river.  We knew starting out then it would be a hard road but with double figure nets being the norm we knew the target was achievable.  Winter came and we travelled out to this river time and time again only for it to be unfishable or the fish to not be feeding and it was a long hard winter struggling for a bite never mind a decent net on some trips.



We came out the other end and into the new season and we expected nets to again be improved as fish moved and fed in the warm sun, like last year.  To a certain extent this has happened this year but working out this river has been a slog to say the least, a river you walk along alive with fish topping can die once you fish it in a hour or so and die as in a light switch going off its a bite a chuck then boom dead as a door nail.  I cover a lot of things in this blog but i have not really been going into much detail as to my tactics on these sessions and boy have we tried them all, ground bait, feeder with corn, meat and even trying for a pike to see if one is moving in with all not working.   It has left me facing something i have never experienced as an an gler before and that is a feeling of being beaten by a challenge, i find my self becoming unmotivated to visit this river and when i do i know what will happen, bite a chuck then nothing and you winkle out fish over course of the rest of the day bit for the amount of fish in the river you know it should not be that hard, maybe we just need a break from this task and a move to somewhere different if only for a change of scenery.

Away from the fishing the blog continues to tick over, even without much pushing on social media, but with two kids and a 9-5 job i am finding it harder and harder to devote time to putting my all into writing these updates, i love writing my blog, it means a lot to me as it holds so many memories of great times so hence my want to put stuff fount there that is the best it can be.  I think as time goes on it is only going to get harder to do so maybe the format of the blog will have to change to where i update it just with the fishing or find a different way of putting it together, maybe like this in my dinner hour in work.  This may not be a healthy alternative though spending my only free time in work still sat at my PC.

So far this has been as bit of a doom and gloom rant but i am already feeling better for getting it off my chest.  I do still have plenty of ideas for the blog with plans to maybe do some videos when the pike season starts.  I do also have an idea to start taking a more specimen approach to my angling from time to time and maybe taking my barbel rod and big baits like luncheon meat and corn to trips.  I really would have nothing to lose as my uncle on the stick would certainly guarantee some fish on the blog that week regardless if i blanked or not and would serve to mix things up a little for myself.   As i have said before though i find it so hard sitting and waiting for a big fish when you can hear your uncle bagging up on the stick upstream.

Well i think i have just about got it all out and off my chest,  Hopefully it gives some insight as to where i am with my fishing at the moment, reading back the word lost is probably a good way of summing it up.  I have faith in angling that something will come along at reignite a spark that sends me off on another amazing adventure.  Till then all that is left is to plan this weekends fishing and i think a change of river is a must maybe a spot of chub fishing to get a decent bend in the old carbon.

With that it is on to this weeks fishing that See's us fishing the river Dane and then a trip out the next day with my daughter.

Same Old Same Old On The Dane....

Leaving my house to head off into the night to pick my uncle up i crossed paths with a rather large hedgehog, i have seen a number of these over the years but like most normally having met their end in the road or a fleeting glimpse as they trundle into a hedgerow.  Saturday morning was different as in the dark i looked down to see i was literally about to stand on one.  There it was rolled in a ball i waited a few moments and like a jack in a box up he popped and off on his merry way.  I can honestly say i have never heard so much noise in my life as he greedily ate all manner of food in the hedgerow, put it this way you knew he was there!  I left him at this point to go on his merry way and off i went to pick my uncle up.  Funnily enough it must have been the night for hedgehogs as he had one in his yard as i arrived!

Arriving on the banks of the river dane she looked dreadfully low and gin clear, walking the banks you could see the odd fish on the sand banks and there was already one or two topping.  I set up in a swim i had fished a few weeks earlier when i had stood in the river and my uncle set up in a new swim slightly upstream of myself.  We both knew setting up it was going to be a frantic mornings action till the sun got on the water and it would go quiet on the bites front as the fish spooked and seek the safety of cover during the day light hours.

The swim i was in i felt confident of a few bites and from experience i knew the fish would move over the far bank tight to the reeds.  With this in mind and knew i had a hard fish coming up i started off easy down the middle and from the off was picking up fish.  The first fish of the day was a dace, i love it when i catch a dace early on,  they are a shoal fish for one so you know where there is one there is certain to be more and secondly they don't seem to spook as easily as the roach do, one big roach and the shoal can be gone for a while.

A run of dace followed this fish and then came the Roach.  They started off literally as eyes with tiny fish coming thick and fast but eventually a better stamp of fish got their heads down.  This river is unlike any i have fished before with shoals moving in, you will be catching dace one minute and then roach the next but never a mixture its either one species and the same goes for perch.  The perch push all other fish out and for a while you just catch perch, its weird but interesting at the same time.

You learn how to change your approach for what is in your swim, dace like it to go though normal and will normally fall to you holding back right on your hemp where as the roach like it dragging bottom and the bait edging through the swim where as the chublets up in the water at the top of the swim like you to hold back as soon as your bait hits the water.  Its fascinating to learn and really keeps you thinking all the way through the session.

The fish, like i predicted, where coming thick and fast between 5am and 9am, but not settled if you get me? The bites where all over the swim almost as if the fish where in a feeding frenzy.  Trotting you ideally want to get the fish feeding where you want them, right on your hemp.  This way you can feed the swim to keep them there and also you can pre empt the bite and hold back to induce a take.  When the fish are all over the place it makes it hard to work out when you will get a bite.

As 9am approached we both knew it was going to slow down.  Looking at the clock i had just placed a nice roach in the keep net and gone back in and my uncle arrived behind me.  He was in a really shallow swim and it did not have the cover from the sun mine did.  I was not surprised to hear he had started off like a house on fire but had gone the last hour and half without a bite when the sun had come up. 

I was already chasing the fish over the far side and i knew my swim was on the same time line as his was as i could already see the bottom quite clearly 2/3 the way across my swim and as soon as sun reached mine it would be good night Vienna.  We gave it another half hour but then decided to call it a day, both nets testament to a mornings fishing, if only we could find the answer to catching all day it would be some net of fish.

my net

uncles net

We decided to call in on a pond on the way back home for a few hours, we caught a few fish but we spent most of the time chewing the fat trying to work out the river dane.   We left after baiting up a swim for my daughter the next morning as i planned a quick trip for her second foray into the world of angling.

Second Time Out In A Week.....

A week after our first fishing trip and my daughter was all up for another go at this fishing lark.  Picking her up on Friday afternoon after work we nipped through to the bait shop to pick up some bait for my trip to the river and for her trip on the Sunday.  She insisted on holding the maggots haha

Sunday came around and it was time to head off to a little pond close to us.  I thought it would be a really nice touch to ask the man who taught me how to fish to come along for the hour or so, that person being my dad.  You know what it was so special to take a step back and see my dad showing my daughter how to fish and all the memories came flooding back.

I must admit she was not as good at concentrating as the first trip out but as my dad said i have to remember she is not even 3 yet.  This into account she is doing really well and i am made up she shows such interest in both fishing and also admiring her fish as she catches them.  Again seeing her face when she caught her first fish on Sunday was amazing.

Again she got snapped by a carp! i bet if i went solely for these fish i would blank.

Well that sums up another week on the bank, till next time i wish you all tight lines

Danny