ICE ICE BABY.........

                                                

For a few weeks I have been harbouring a special secret from both family and friends and believe me it has been so hard not to tell anyone our little secret, especially over the festive period.  But this last week the time finally came to tell all that I and my Fiance are expecting the birth of our first child towards the end of August.  Today was the day of the first scan and was easily the best day of my life so far and such a moving experience and of course the rest of the day has been taken up speaking and visiting friends and family so understandably this week’s update has been a little more rushed than I would normally like.

  What will happen to the blog!!, no more fishing for you!! Where the calls from all that knew how addicted and dedicated to my angling exploits I am and of course the arrival of a baby will affect my time on the bank, it is bound too, but I think this will only become a problem next winter when the evenings draw back in and I won’t have the luxury of long warm summer evenings to sneak off to my local commercial for a few hours carp bashing but come winter I will be doing my best to at least get out once a week but that is a long way in the distance and there is a lot of time to spend on the bank between now and then.

On to this week’s madness!!

Everything about the week leading up to this weekend said don’t go fishing and stay in bed, first of all the predicted -9 temperatures should have put pay to any trip but no we decided the trip was still on even after the second sign came of 5 to 10cm of snowfall during Saturday we still thought stuff it and decided a trip to the river Dee was just what any sane person would be doing come Saturday J.

Arriving at our chosen destination on Saturday morning the in car reading was a barmy -4 degrees yet upon leaving the car and walking the bank you wouldn’t have thought it as it actually felt quite mild as we walked the bank to our pegs.  On the way to the bank we bumped into a young lad who was on the river bank for the first time ever trotting.  I had to admire his dedication but dressed in only a hoodie and trackie bottoms I had to question quite how long he would last on the bank.

 I set up in a swim I had fished earlier in the year and started to get a few fish from the off and was beginning to think my barmy decision to come fishing on such a cold day might just pay off with a bumper net of fish when I hit a problem that had actually popped its head up a few weeks earlier on our frosty blank on Almere, the problem being the tip rings on my rod freezing as the water from reeling in the line froze solid in the bitterly cold air. 

I have been told many tricks over the past few weeks for sorting this out and this time I was armed with Vaseline that I was told on good authority stops the water from collecting on in the rings and hence the problem is solved.  I can see this working in temperatures just around freezing but in the really really cold temperatures all that seemed to happed was the water froze solid before it could run off the Vaseline.  The next tip I tried was when the line began sticking I quickly dipped the tip of the rod in the river hoping the river water may be slightly warmer that the air temperature and would either wash the frozen water out of the tip rings or thaw it and this proved the most productive if not unusual was of keeping this problem at bay.

Of course no angling blog entry would be complete without the ever present swan picture and this week the swans where in a less approachable mood and did not stick round long at all and probably sensed the bad weather that was making its way towards our location.

I had started the session fishing caster and was picking up the odd decent dace and at some points had the fish going so well they were one a chuck but all that changed when a finger-tip chilling wind howled down the river and brought with it sleet and hail that forced me to put my brolly up to protect me from its icy blasts.  The instant warmth this brought me was I have to say more than welcome.  The downstream wind really played havoc with my bait presentation and made long trotting almost impossible so I decided to make a massive change in my baiting approach to draw the fish to me and that saw me catching fish again at a steady pace.

  My uncle, fishing no more than 20 yards away believe it or not had ice coating the full length of his rod, the temperature difference in the two pegs was remarkable and it totally put pay to any trotting possibilities for him and he stuck it out on the pole off a sunken tree in his near side margin.  Big respect to him for sticking it out in such tough conditions on a day where it would have been all too easy to knock it on the head and sit in the car.  My uncle being the accomplished angler he is still managed a respectable net of fish on the pole but nowhere near the net he could have had, had he been able to trot his peg like he had intended too.

One fish at this time of year you can put your money on showing up in you swim is the grayling, these fish that I am sure where left in our waters from the melting of our glaciers many many years ago thrive in the coldest of temperatures and Saturday was no different when the float buried right over my hemp and the fish glided into the flow straight away I knew I was connected with a grayling.  These fish fight like no other fish as they twist and turn in the current using there brightly coloured dorsal fish as a sail in the flow to exert maximum pressure on your tackle and like a pike they give there all in the fight and will often need a few minutes held in the landing net to recuperate fully from the fight and like all fish should be shown the upmost respect and deserve this extra attention from ourselves for letting us have a close up glimpse of their majestic beauty.

To give you a few ideas of just how cold it got on Sunday I managed to capture a few pictures throughout the day as it went along.

Third place goes to the picture of my brolly at the end of the session which was frozen solid with ice.

Second place goes to my landing net picture that when turned upside down still held its shape in frozen form!!

And first place goes to this shot looking down my keep net which was full of icicles!

All in all it was easily the coldest day I have spent on the river bank and although my body was warm and toasty in my thermal gear the same couldn’t be said for my finger tips that where at times beyond numb!! The constant putting of my hands in a frozen slush of hemp seed and water added t this problem but when it was time to take a picture of my net of dace I was more than happy with my efforts and it was well worth getting out on the for.  My fingers where so cold I didn’t weigh the net but estimate it to be around 13-15lb of dace and goes to shows the fish are there if you are willing or mad enough to go out in such bad conditions.

My net:

Video of net

Till next time one absolutely mad angler wishing you

Tight lines

Danny

Winds of change blow hard on the Dee......

  Driving along the dark country road towards the river Dee my head clogged with the memories of last week and the delights that lay in front of me, talk along the way from my dad and uncle of past trips to the Dee in years gone bye in the pursuit of monster of the deep only fueled my imagination as in my mind the day would pay out like I had dreamed in the week.  The swim would be the same as last week and the fish where as ravenous as ever, crawling up the line and into the keep net, today just had to be another dream session on the Dee.

  The headlights cut through the dark country lane illuminating my path to the river bank and before I knew it we where pulling into the car park and the lights slowly lit up the pegs only for the pegs from last week to be taken and a pike angler bivvy'd up on the peg I was on last week!! my midweek dreams up in smoke in split second but not to be dismayed we knew that the whole stretch was fishing well and we set up on some of the more less fancied pegs.

  With the days getting shorter every day travelling to our destinations during the hours of darkness is essential and will become even more so the deeper we get into winter.  With that in mind I decided to purchase a decent torch for setting up in our chosen pegs as soon as we arrive and as others waited it out in their cars for the first rays of dawn to break through we where busy setting up our pegs and the torch was even enough for us to thread up out rods in its glow, by day break we where all set to cast in.

  The forecast for the day ahead was for some small showers and moderate winds and for once the weatherman was correct.  The swim I chose was the same one as two weeks ago and I knew from that trip their was a bad snag further down the swim so today I would have to try and get the fish where I wanted them and I knew from past experience this can be a all or nothing tactic and I set myself a target of twenty fish.  Sometimes you have to be realistic about the swim your fishing and accept you can only catch what is there in front of you on that day and with that in mind I began to lay my trap of hemp.

  The swim I chose shown above has a tree upstream and a overhanging tree downstream and the flow can be reached quite easily around two rod lengths out but that line was out of the question today due to the snag downstream and the wind which was blowing into my face.  The church in the distance not only beautiful to look at also serves as a reminder of the time and really doesn't help you judge if you are overfeeding or not putting enough bait in.  As you can see on the far bank the cold weather of the past week has already began to claim its first victims of the year with a lot of the bank vegetation turning a dead brown, roll on the first frost which will open up the swims further and make viewing your float a lot easier as it travels downstream.

Vegetation dying back:

  As I said earlier the wind can be a real problem on the river when trotting and can really be the kiss of death and the only way you know how each stretch will be in certain conditions is to get out there on the bank for example I knew from experience that the "bull stretch" would be a no go on Saturday due to how open and exposed it is to the elements and although the river level was spot on for that particular stretch the wind there would be really blowing downstream and would make trotting impossible.  The other side of the coin is we knew the stretch we had chose to travel too would be calm in comparison due to the high rock formations behind the pegs which shelter it from the worst of the wind and although not ideal at least here the wind was manageable.

Protection from the wind:

  After the success of last week on castor's I decided this week to go with an all out castor approach and purchased a pint of castor instead of my usual half pint and only took along a pint of maggot in case they were not having it on castor.  The swim was slow to begin with and it took a while for the fish to start coming with any regularity but what I was catching was a lot of very fat gudgeon, one after another and being an all round angler as long as that floats going under I am a happy man.

Plump Gudgeon 

The gudgeon seemed to be holding a line closer to the bank in the slacker water and every now and again the wind would subside and the trot would hold a better line, when this happened I started to get dace of all sizes and with great regularity until the wind returned and it was back to the ravenous gudgeon.  During the day I always like to take in the wildlife around me and sometimes get caught up in the moment and forget to grab the camera but when two swans strutted upstream wings puffed out with aggression looking to dominate a younger swan which still carried a great deal of brown down I quickly grabbed the camera.  The two groups of swans where swimming head on till the smaller swan got the message and then swiftly turned on its heels and made a break for it.

  The session again flew bye and before we knew it it was time to get together and see how we all had done, my dad had said he had caught a few decent dace but had missed countless bites on the feeder, both me and my uncle trotting knew why as we were catching a lot of this years dace fry which would be nearly impossible to hit on the feeder where they give lightning bites but with our floats dotted right down we were managing to get them on the float, my uncle had also been catching some nice dace and gudgeon but also mixed in he had caught a few perch on the pole while myself had a mixed net of gudgeon, dace and a nice roach.

uncles stripeys:

My uncles net:

My net of fish:

One picture that for me sums up a good days fishing is the scene of your keep nets drying out after you have finished fishing and today was no different.

  Next week we have already decided that we are visiting a new venue, after weeks of fishing the river Dee a change is definitely overdue, of course this decision will depend on the levels of the river we have our eye on but fingers crossed.

till next time

tight lines 

danny