Slurpin Carp and Angling Gazette Top 10

A warm welcome to this week’s blog update and I am really proud to announce that the blog has made it into the Angling Gazette’s Top 10 blogs for June 2013.  This is the second time the blog has made the shortlist with the last time being when the blog had around 60,000 views.  The Angling Gazette where very generous with their praise and had the following to say on the blog:

Danny’s Angling Blog - Sat on My Perch

Danny’s blog made our list way back in March.  We love his sense of humour and we love the way he writes.  However, what makes Danny’s blog stand out is not just the fact that he talks about his ups and downs of fishing, but that he talks about other things going on in the angling world too (even us !).

He’s a genuine guy and that comes across in his writing and he represents 80% of anglers out there in the UK right now.  If you like to fish, don’t mind admitting when you blank, get excited about hooking a big one and are in angling for pleasure, you will love Danny’s blog.

It is feedback like this and the generous praise I receive form people who contact me via the blogs email address that, not keep you going as I do the blog because I love writing it and of course going fishing, but make it feel like what you do is worthwhile and that people do enjoy reading what I write.  So thank you to the Angling Gazette for their praise of the blog and well done to the other 9 blogs that joined me on the list for this month.

A link to the full list can be found here:  http://www.anglinggazette.co.uk/the-best-10-angling-blogs-weve-read-this-month-june-2013/

There is a big iron in the fire at the moment regarding the expansion of the blog and discussions are on-going but it is looking good at the moment that this will go ahead and mean the blog will be featured on another format but there will be more on that in the coming weeks should the agreement come together.

This week I have to admit I have had little time for all things angling related as work has been so busy and when I have come home it has been so warm I have wanted to do little else than just chill out and spend time with my missus and little girl.  The system I have been working on goes live on Monday so after that point I should have some more time on my hands to get out in the week and wet a line.  I have been meaning to make the most of this bright sunshine and get down the local canal with a floating setup and see if I can nab the odd carp or too, maybe I will do that one night next week or over the weekend.

Away from my fishing there has been little that has caught my attention this week and you may think that to be a strange comment given the fact it was the weekend on the Fish-o-Mania final but the reality is this first year in what I can remember that I have not had Sky Sports to watch the final on.  It is, being honest, purely down to a cost issue with it as it has become so expensive now to add these extra three channels to your existing package that I just cannot justify the extra money to buy them although when I was sat there on Sunday thinking about what I was missing (we all know the International Event on the Sunday is where it is at lol) I was very nearly tempted into a rash decision but alas it will no doubt be left up to the new footie season to start to see me totally crumble.

I did think about easing my pain on Sunday with a trip to the river after those barbel  and chub but given how hot it has been and the lack of rain I just knew the river would be dreadfully low and clear and given I had planned an afternoon session I must admit to getting a bit lazy in my old age and decided against it, but who knows what this weekend may hold, so far so good.

On to this wee’s blog update.

“Waking the Neighbours and Bread Slurping Carp.”

You may have noticed the past week or so we have been avoiding our favourite river the river Dee and this has been with good reason as it really has not been fishing well.  Myself and my uncle spend have spent a fair amount of time on her over the past two years and over that time have built up some really good friendships with fellow anglers who also love fishing this river and all the reports I have been getting in have been confirming what we have been finding that the river is just not fishing at the moment so with that we drew up a shortlist of ideas from the crazy of night fishing to the sensible of having a lie in and fishing a commercial.

We ended up doing a mixture of the two as we came up with a great plan of fishing the tiny River Gowy in the morning and moving onto a local carp pool around 7am to try for a few carp off the top.   This plan would give us an idea of how the river Gowy was fishing by fishing the best part of the day when you would expect any big fish to show up if they were about and also meant that by spending only a few hours on there you were in fact gathering information for free as the water we was visiting didn’t open till 7am any way so we got the best of both worlds.

Arriving at the car park at the nags head we unloaded a single rod and a few essential bits and pieces and made our way down the very overgrown path down the river.  I had decided not to fish and to watch my uncle fish the swim we had chosen this was a decision that was made just because of the little amount of time we had before moving on and also it is always great to see how my uncle would tackle a brand new river for example the line he fished was completely different to where I would have fished, lesson learnt.

We were as quiet as possible setting up and getting into position but still managed to wake the locals up, never a great start on a relatively new venue but thankfully they settled back down.

The fishing was as we thought it would be very slow and for what seemed an eternity the delicate 6 number 4 stickfloat trundled down the swim without any interest.  The one thing I learned from this session bears no reference to the fishing but to our noisy neighbours across the river, I never in my life knew just how much these animals coughed and I mean it sounded like they were right behind us each time they did it.   In between these bouts of bovine throat clearing my uncle did put a few fish on the bank in the form of small perch and a single gudgen.

The end net would have not done the session justice and I suppose we packed in having caught around 12 perch and a single gudgeon for hour short session but we left with the though “where there are small perch, there are big perch”

As we pulled out of the Car park we were greeted by this lovely summer scene of fields upon fields of bails of straw waiting to be collected by the farmer.

We left the river behind and made our way to a local carp pool where given the forecast of a scorching hot day we were odds on to encounter a carp or two.   I committed the cardinal sin of any angler though and had already decided how I was going to fish before I had even arrived at my peg the plan was to fish luncheon meat and hemp seed on the inside shelf and feed it on the heavy side hence the fact I travelled with two whole tins of luncheon meat ready cut into centre metre cubes. 

Pulling into the car park at 7.30am it we already warming up and it was obvious from the crystal clear blue skies we were in for a really warm day so I knew I only had an hour or so if my plan was going to work before all the carp where up on top.  I fed the swim with two big pots of bait and then left it while I set up the rig for the session ahead.

The first put in over this line resulted in plenty of knocks on the float which I instantly knew where skimmer bream and eventually the float buried and my initial thoughts where proved right as a 5oz skimmer graced my palm.  That is pretty much how the swim continued to go for the majority of the morning with a continuous line of small skimmers making a trip to the bank I suppose they would have made up a cracking looking net had keepnet’s been allowed.  I persevered with this line until the bites dried up but I was over the moon to have connected with one of the better skimmers in this bream below which at this point of the day I was more than made up with as the carp had failed to turn up to the party.

As the session moved on and the sun began to rise further in the sky its rays of warmth drew the carp up in the water and I began to see the jet black ghostly shadows of carp cruising just under the surface.  Its times like this in the past I have cursed my luck and thought if only I had some bread with me now but I have certainly been there and done that and I suppose it is only time on the bank and experience of these situations that’s make you think more about the session ahead and with that out came the good old Warbutons Super Toastie crusts.

There are many rigs out there which will swear to you they are the must have item for surface fishing and make you feel like you will not catch without them which I suppose may be true in some situations but in most the good old methods work just fine and you cannot go wrong with a simple hook tied to a good long piece of line attached to the end of the pole, simple and as cheap as it comes and boy does it work.

I took 9 carp in total with the best of the initial group shown above and all put up a really good scrap on the white hydro elastic.  It is always the case with any type of surface or shallow fishing that the fish do wise up, well the better fish at least and and the more the session goes on the harder it gets I find and I guess that’s what separates casual anglers from the greats as they know how to keep the fishing coming.

The best fish on the day was saved till last for me and it was through pure skill I managed to hook the fish as I delicately placed a crust that had been out for some time and was completely saturated with water right on top of a passing carps mouth and she slurped it down like it porridge oats down a sink.  The fish in this place a rumoured to go over 20lb but I have found the vast majority to be in the 3-5lb bracket with a really good fish pushing 9lb and this was certainly the latter as I could not for the life of me get it off the bottom and try as I may the fish just lazily but purposefully swam around the swim at its leisure.  The fist one of these carp you hook your heart is in your mouth but now after catching I few I knew it was time to let the elastic do the work.

The fish must have taken a good 5-10 minutes to get in but I was in no rush to bully the fish, I do use a pulla-kit but believe it is there to give you more control when the fish is in close and not too exert maximum pressure on the fish to get it in quicker, I let the elastic do the work and enjoyed the chess like battle that goes with a better fish on the pole as you guess and counter guess the fish’s next move.  It was soon checkmate and a stunning 8lb 5oz carp was in the net.

This fish topped of a very enjoyable surface fishing session for myself and I called it a day around 2pm as the fish where not playing ball and also I was beginning to flag after over 24 hours without a sleep.

Till next time I wish you all

Tight lines

Danny

We must be mad..................

                                                           

The weekend after my birthday in December is one I always look forward to with gusto as it almost certainly means I will be on the bank with a new piece of kit and this year was no different I am happy to say although this year I had two presents that where fishing related.  The first of these after the bitterness of last year was essential and that is a thermal bib and brace and after some deliberation I decided to go with the Sundridge Retex mk4 bib and brace.  The second was a complete surprise and god knows how my fiancé knew to get me it but apparently she found it by searching the internet for “good trotting reels” and to my amazement I woke up on my birthday to an Abu 706 closed face reel.

                                                

  As is the norm in my job my birthday also signals the start of my years allocation of annual leave and after a few months without a break from work I booked a few days of towards the end of last week with the hope of getting on the bank to wet a line and also spend some quality time with the missus which is always important if you do as much fishing as I do throughout the year. 

  To say winter arrived last week was an understatement and for Thursday and Friday my pike spinning rod lay dormant in the boot my car with the gale force wind, rain and hail all battering down all day long.  The rivers on the EA site where all running high and the dee especially was at a all year high, any trip to the river at the weekend was doubtable and on Friday afternoon I decided to take a trip out to the River Dee to see how she was looking and it wasn’t  good to say the least as you can see on the video below from the Warrington Anglers Stretch at Almere Ferry.

           

 In the same trip I decided to visit the River Dee at Farndon and it was totally unfishable as shown on the picture of the swim a fished a few weeks ago the difference is mind blowing.

 before:

after

  With our weekly trip out not planned until the Sunday it gave the river a few days to fall but even with no more rainfall  the river Dee would still not be fishable but I knew from experience that the tributary that feeds the river Dee at Almere Ferry, the river Alyn, is usually fishable and can at times produce the goods when the main river is in flood and with that we made plans for an early start on the river Alyn on the Sunday.

On to this week’s fishing:

When I started the blog back in February I promised myself two things, one I would do my best to get out fishing and a report done at least once a week which so far I have done and secondly to be open and honest about what I catch and not fall into the trap some bloggers do of only posting the good times when they come along.  Angling is as much about the lows as it is the highs and you learn so much more from a hard day on the bank as opposed to the days where you can’t do anything wrong and I would hate my blog to give the impression that I catch fish every time I go because angling just isn’t like that, for anyone, even the famous anglers you see in the papers fail to catch and are not afraid to say so if you follow them on twitter.

  The forecast for the coming day was dreadful the rain was already falling as we left the house and headed on our way to the river and all the signs where there telling us to knock it on the head and at best get a few hours kip and go for a trip to our local Bridgewater Canal but as always the draw of the rivers was too strong and we headed off into the drizzle bound for the small river dee tributary the River Alyn.

  We arrived on the banks of the river at first light and set up in the first swims either side of the bridge and as the video shows below the river was as low as it is in summer, a far cry for the bloated confluence where this river flows into the main river and low enough for me to stand in the river.

  As you can hear on the video above the young calf’s in the opposite field where in full voice and obviously mistook me for the farmer that feeds them around the same time we arrived on the river and to say they didn’t shut up was an understatement from the moment they spotted me trotting the river till the time we departed their calls where constant but it is all part of what I love about the river seeing how animals react to your presence is one of the things that always amazes me and these young calf’s were so funny to watch as one by one they grouped till they had the confidence to come forward I just hope they remember that I pose no harm when I share I field with them next summer when they are twice the size and have horns lol.

  The fishing was tough as we thought it would be and the rain that had departed when we arrived returned with gusto and for a good hour and half it proper belted down with a mixture of rain and hail and a memory of the day was seeing four runners go over the bridge to my right and I remember thinking how much other people watching me fishing and them running in such conditions would think we had a screw loose, in all honestly I think they may be onto something as the only return from the river from three hours of trotting was a few small grayling shown below, as Stewart Bloor says “at least I am not a blanker”.

                

  At around 11.30 am we got together and my uncle was having the same amount of action as me with only a few grayling and dace to show for his efforts and we decided to pack up and as it was on the way home we decided to spend the afternoon on the banks of the River Gowy, a river we have never fished before and with the day being so bad it was decided it was better to try this river on a day like this than on a perfect day when we could be bagging on the Dee.

  We arrived in the car park at the Nags head pub and was greeted by another animal of the bovine variety and I was so glad that my angling journey so far hasn’t crossed paths with one of these shaggy animals without the safety of a barbed wire fence between us.

                                

  A quick check of the river showed it to be clear and at some points clogged with streamer weed and apart from where we set up devoid of any bank side features, any bites where going to be at a premium so we baited lightly and had a small competition to see who could catch the most fish.  The bad weather had not followed us from wales and we were treated to a clear if not bitterly cold afternoon on the bank.

The fishing as said above was really hard and it was well gone 2pm when my uncle connected with his first fish after a lot of gamesmanship about so called “snotted maggots”.

 I must admit I succumbed to the pressure mounted upon me and unfortunately I was on the wrong end of a 4-1 hiding with the roach above my only capture and I don’t think I have ever enjoyed a day on the banks of the river and caught so little fish.

Here are a fe pictures I took of the river gowy and when I get the chance I will be adding both the River Gowy, River Alyn and River Severn to my rivers page.

Till next week tight lines

danny