Sports Direct Dusk till Dawn Lamp Review and more relaxing on the Dee

A warm welcome to this week’s angling blog, a few weeks ago I was approached by Sports Direct to see if I was interested in reviewing some of their products on the list was a whole host of products to review but I decided to go with the product that I thought I could get the most use out of and also therefore write a relevant review about.  The product I decided to go with was the Dusk till Dawn Lamp.  I would just like to add here I receive no affiliation money from people purchasing this product from this review.

Dusk Till Dawn Bivvy Lamp Review

Product info:

The 18 LED Bivvy Lamp is ideal for all types of fishing. The Bivvy Lamp has a built in compass. Included are carrying handles that will fold down for storage. 

Fishing Bivvy Lamp 
> Low glo sleep feature 
> Dimmer switch 
> Takes 3 D batteries (not supplied) 
> 100,000 hours LED life 

Price:  £6.99

Check lamp out here:  fishing gear online

My Review

I purchase a lot of my fishing tackle online and have had my fair share of products arriving broken and late so one thing I find really important since this is how much care a company takes in making sure the item you have purchased reaches you in a perfect condition and in a quick as time as possible, I have to say the product was issued on a Wednesday and reached me on the Thursday afternoon and was very well packaged indeed. 

Once I opened the lamp the first thing that stood out to me was the look of the lamp, it looked really stylish with a nice metallic green smooth feel to the outside of the lamp.  The base of the lamp had a wide circumference which made sure the produce was sturdy when left on its base and this was only added too when the batteries where installed, all that was left was to test it out on the bank.

I gave myself 3 weeks to properly field test the product and the use I had it in mind for it was to walk the river bank when we normally arrive an hour or so before sunrise and also to use it to provide light for me to safely set up my peg and the ultimate test for it was to see if I could use it to thread up my rod in the dark in preparation for the day ahead.   I have to say the lamp surpassed my expectations on its highest setting it was great for looking at the pegs in the pitch dark both on the River Dee and River Ribble.  

The lamps handles fold up for carrying the lamp in hand where sturdy and for setting up my peg before sunrise.  When I put the lamp in the empty boot of my car it provided more than enough light for me to tie my hook lengths which I have to say at size 20 hook and 1lb 2oz mainline it was some feat for a product of this price and it also provided enough light for me to thread my 17ft rod up. The lamp does come with a compass on top of the lamp, for my fishing I did not find much use for this but I am sure anglers that take wind direction into account with their fishing will see this as a great feature to have.

In review, for the price it is a fantastic product that I wouldn’t be without now on the bank of a morning and it has saved me so much time setting up and as a result has meant me spending more time with a float in the river.

A link to what other fishing tackle Sports Direct have to offer is here : fishing gear online

On to this weeks fishing:

Stress Relieving Time On The Bank………..

Recently work has really been getting on top of me the enclosed artificial feel of an office was stifling and I could feel myself dragging my heels as I tried to make the short walk to work from my car as long as possible as to make the most of the sights and sounds of the birds going about their morning rituals, always the highlight of my day.  The remedy to this sickness was clear; I needed a day away from it all, a day on the bank, just me, the river and the wildlife so no sooner had my boss’s feet touched the maroon carpet of our office I was there making the arrangements for the following day, Friday, off work. 

A quick prayer to the angling gods and all I could do was wait for my reply, in my head I was there already trotting a small stick float down a clear river with its crystal clear reflections standing clear and proud uninterrupted by any unwelcome breeze, my day dream slumber came to an abrupt end as I received the email I had waited for, the answer was yes and with that a big thank you to the angling gods and with the found enthusiasm that comes with the countdown to a fishing trip I got about my work.

Its been a long time since I did two trips out in one week and I knew two full days trotting on the river would be too much and also I now had a family to think of so I limited my Friday session to just the early morning with a view to packing in around 1pm, just in time to pick my fiancé up from work. 

The drive to the river had a weird eerie feeling to is as for two years now the seat next to me has always been occupied by either my Dad or my uncle, it was really weird trundling along the same roads with no one to chew the fat with or discuss what our expectations or tactics would be for the session ahead, it is not until you are in this situation you really realise how long it has been.

Waiting for first light I ditched the Smooth Fm radio station in favour of the dawn chorus and what a chorus it was with all the birds in full voice all playing their part in natures very own daily opera.  Lost in the moment I failed to notice the increasing light levels and I was soon rushing around getting ready for the mornings fishing ahead.  My 17ft float rod, 10 number 4 Dave Harrell stick float and my trust Abu 706 reel where all put into action as I settled into a swim that was alive with fish on the top, not exactly what I was hoping to see as my plan was to catch the fish on the bottom, I had a plan and it involved getting these fish where I wanted them.

In fishing you really do need to learn from your mistakes and a year ago I was presented with the same scenario as this, the fish where boiling on the top at the maggots as soon as they touched the water’s surface so I knew not to feed maggot at all and what I decided to do was to just feed hemp seed for the first hour.

This tactic saw a few bars of silver grace my palm but it was hardly prolific and the fish continued to gorge themselves on the delicacy’s being washed down to them by the flow.  I decided to have a change to a stick float and this gave me more control than the stick float and saw my catch rate increase considerably and I began to put quite a respectable net together.

As with all the times we go fishing my peace and tranquillity was soon broken by the sound of my phone alarm alerting me to the fact it was time to think about packing in and heading off to pick my partner up from work.  After far too many last casts I only had time to take a quick picture of the net and load the car before it was time to leave the tranquillity of the river behind for the fast paced world of a British motorway.  All in all it was a relaxing session on the bank and the perfect tonic to release the build-up of stress in work.

Session Two: Time to Explore a little but always know when to quit

Saturday morning came along and it was time to explore, on the river Dee the hot spots in winter are well known and because of this they are very busy, loud and frantic places and to be honest I can only fish them for one or two weeks at a time before I have to just get away from there as my soul craves the quietness and escapism that comes with being at the bottom of a frost laden farmers field with only the noise of the wildlife as a back drop.

Now it is very easy to keep going to these prolific stretches every week and bag up but as me and my uncle found last year you can just drop on an area that holds fish away from these areas and if you can locate these needles in the haystack they can be worth their weight in gold.  The plan for the day was ideally to catch fish in this location and stay there all day but we did have a contingency that had we now had a bight in the first 3 hours we would move to a more well-known area for the afternoon, just to get a bend in the rod.

Saturday  confirmed one thing to me, I need to start taking my better camera with me to the river bank, my iphone is great for taking point and shoot pictures but when it comes to anything that requires a bit of zoom I am lacking in a big way.  On Saturday I could hear a pair of woodpeckers in my area, one in front and one behind, whilst re-baiting my hook I saw a small movement across the river on the side of the tree, a quick second glance and it was my first ever sighting of a woodpecker in the wild!! Forget the fishing I thought as I laid the rod down on its rest and just watched this amazing creature go about its work, what a special moment and a moment that will live with me for a long time, if only I had a decent camera on me!!

In truth the fishing at this location was a none starter but I am so glad we went, the area just had a great feel to it and it has been a while since I have just downed tools and headed of for a walk with just me and my phone and I thoroughly enjoyed it from a nice sunrise to the first buds on the trees.

After returning to my peg and giving it a good couple of three hours without so much as a knock we decided to call it a day and spent the afternoon on a more prolific venue.  Arriving late we had only a handful of the less fancied swims to choose from and I was left with a swim that was not the best for trotting due to the fact it shallows up half way down the run.  This is where all the time spent throughout the year with the same make of float becomes important as any bites below the point where the river shallows up would not see the float go under but see the float act differently when I had a bite, it is hard to explain on paper but by knowing the float I could tell when I had fish on or not over the shallow ground.

In the short afternoon session I estimate I had around 6lb of dace from the swim which given the short amount of time fishing the swim and fact when we arrived the other anglers had a good 4 hours of baiting up ahead of us I was more than happy with my net.

I hope you enjoyed this update and the variety the product review brings to the table, it is not going to be an every week thing but I am sure it will add some variety to my blog.

Till next time I wish you all

Tight line

Danny

Quality Over Quantity On the River Ribble

Welcome to this week’s blog update and I doubt I have ever sat down to write an update for this blog feeling so emotional about its content.  The introduction to my weekly blog has covered a wide variety of issues over the past two years, some that affect me directly and some I can only hope never will.  This introduction was due to be about the changes I have seen in the past week in regards the seasons changing and wildlife and was supposed to be a nice, relaxing and pleasant to celebrate the fact we are slowly beginning to move out of the worst winter I can remember, that all changed on Wednesday evening as I received news about the fact Warrington Anglers had lost a stretch of the River Dee that holds such a magical place in my heart.

All anglers have venues and places that hold dear to themselves,  a special capture or the sight of an early morning mist lingering ghostly over the water’s surface can be only a few reasons a place can become special to an angler, the stretch Warrington have just lost was that stretch for me.  It was the place I first cut my teeth on the "proper" river having started my angling life on one of the small tributaries of the Dee and I will never forget that first walk to the river the grass glistening with dew and the smell of fresh flowing water in the air and the only sound to be heard was the gentle soothing sound of water flowing over shallow gravel, I blanked that day as I did so many times on this venue whilst learning its moods and hot spots but it was always a pleasure to explore its mystical depths.

This location also put me in contact with some of the nicest, genuine anglers I have ever met Gordon Munro, gave me a pint of his maggots he had left over at this venue on only our second time bumping into each other, Gordon Ashton, barbel expert, spent a good 2 hours showing me the ropes on how to fish for barbel here and I also remember fondly long chats had this year with Richard Jones and Neil, all genuine river men who were a credit to this sport and a credit to Warrington Anglers and this venue.

Unfortunately these people, like myself, my Dad and Uncle and all the other genuine river men who I didn’t have the privilege to meet will all now have to suffer the pain of losing a stretch we all hold so dear and its all because of the actions of a minority of so called anglers that don’t have the decency to go about their sport in a respectable manner.  I heard rumours about 6 months ago that WAA where to lose this stretch due to so called anglers making noise and driving around the fields as if it were a rally track on the opening weekend at an obscene hour, thank you so much for your actions, well done!, you are a disgrace to the club and the sport, I am a firm believer in what comes around goes around, we can only hope.

In my mind I don’t think these people where serious river men as I remember that weekend fondly, after all it was the magical June the 16th, the opening of the season and a day I had waited 3 months for.  I distinctly remember it as I remember being frustrated that it rained the whole week before and actually put the River Dee into full flood and unfishable, no serious river man would have even considered fishing a river in such a state, never mind driving a car around the saturated fields, the car parks on this stretch are clearly marked out as well so a clear sign or disrespect and appalling behaviour.

One or two people have pointed the finger at the residents but in reality how can they be blamed, if the shoe was on the other foot I certainly would not have been happy at all.  I am feeling a mixture of emotions at the moment an unrelenting feeling of loss mixed with bouts of happy memories and annoyance that the stretch has been lost for something that should never ever be a problem!!  Maybe the WAA is too cheap to purchase and thus opens it up to the non-desirable people of this world who think they can treat everyone with disrespect and abuse. 

For me personally, I have spent countless hours researching this venues past history and more hours than I care to remember fishing this venue and learning the good spots to fish, not only that but when writing a weekly blog you have plan your future trips weeks in advance and I had already drawn up plans of what I wanted to try on this venue in the coming season, all now a waste of time.

What this will do is make me refocus and go again on another venue, I WILL find other spots and other locations to find these special fish and I WILL put in as much effort as this venue to succeed, onwards and upwards.

River Ribble – “Quality not quantity”

We have fished the River Dee now for around two years solid and over that time we have begun to learn her moods and how she fishes in different conditions, looking at the EA chart on Friday for the River Dee we knew she would be a tad too high for us to try seriously and would also be carrying a fair amount of colour so we decided to move out attention elsewhere.  The river Ribble was looking good but with only one trip to her under our belt we had no idea what conditions we would be arriving too but she was dropping and had a day or two where she had continuously fell so we decided to travel through on Sunday for a second visit in 3 weeks.

Before that visit I had a date with work as I had put my name down for some overtime on the Saturday and on the way in I crossed paths with a sight that screamed one thing to me, spring! As I turned the roundabout towards my work I had to slam on the breaks hard as right in front of me stood without a care in the world, in the middle of the road was a duck and two drakes.  These animals starting to compete for females is a small sign there is change on the way and after the winter we have just endured it is not a minute too soon.

With my endurance and patience tested to the max on overtime it was time for some relaxation and it was with great excitement we headed off to the river Ribble.  We arrived at our chosen destination and began to set up using my new lamp from Sports direct that I am reviewing to set up in the dark and first impression are its great value for money but more on that in another blog post.

Regular readers of this blog will be looking at the above picture and thinking they had stumbled on to the wrong blog but I assure you that your eyes are not deceiving you, that is ground bait on my side tray.  I arrived at the river with a plan and that was to fish a closed cap feeder on maggot ground bait and hemp.  My uncle being a good float man was determined to stick to his guns and prove you can catch close in on this river.

I made a few quick casts to get some bait down and then left the feeder a bit longer and it was not long before the tip of my Shimano purist rod rattled round and I was into the first fish of the day a small dace.   This dace was quickly followed by a small roach and a few more dace before I missed a real wrap round of a bite that just had to have been from a better fish, I was gutted but at least I was doing better than I had last week.  I re-baited my feeder and back out it went, at this point we were a good hour or so into the session but it felt like it had gone by so fast.

The fact I had not fished the feeder much really showed, when I got the cast right i was normally rewarded with a bite but those cast’s where few and far between and it showed in my keepnet.  My uncle was starting to pick up a few fish on his float line and it was noticeable the fish fed in spurts before moving off and then moving back in very slowly a few more fish and the process was repeated.  It was while watching my uncle land a small chub I felt a hefty pluck on my finger and my natural instinct to strike saw me latched into a much better fish that felt really big in the fast flow, I was certain it was a nice chub by how hard it was fighting, I eventually got the fish under my feet but it was keeping really deep so I still had no idea what it was I was connected too!!  What felt like minutes passed where in reality it was no more than a few seconds but I felt every shake of the fishes head as it began to tire and eventually it gave up its identity as it slid over the landing net lip and made its mark in this week’s blog update, a bream, and a first ever river bream for myself.

The fish didn’t quite reach 3lb as much as I tried (weighed it 3 times lol)

The fish safely into he keep net I quickly got back to the fishing and from this fish on it was as if a light was switched off in the swim, the quiver tip remained set in stone with only the rhythm of the river causing it to occasionally pull round and slowly settle again.  I tried everything I could think of from longer hook lengths to just feeding maggot in the feeder.  My unce started to pick up a bit more action on the float line but my swim remained dead.

Hein sight is a thing in fishing you get good at using and looking back I stayed on the feeder too long as soon as the swim had died for 20 minutes I should have moved over to the float rod but the reality is I wasted a good 2 and half hours trying to make something happen.  This could have been down to me being tired from a long days overtime the previous day and looking back I have to admit I had a tad bit of a case of “lazy-i-tis”.

I decided to stretch my legs and visit my uncle for a bit and refresh myself with a strong coffee,  there is something about watching someone trotting a float, especially someone who is quite good at it, the way they control its decent down the river and almost drop the bait into the fishes mouth is a true art.  While I was stood with him he was going through a slow patch and in the best John Wilson fashion we began to talk up a bite “got to be a chub there Azz!”,  “yeah, got to be “ was my uncles reply and with that bang the float disappeared and my uncle was into a fish that certainly wasn’t a dace and with my uncles drag set looser than a porn stars belt buckle there was no chance he was losing it and in came one of the best cub we have had form the Ribble so far, but bot was he a warrior with a pike bite on his lower back and another bite above its dorsal, this was one lucky chub.          

I returned to my peg and quickly set up my 17ft carbon active float rod and I decided to fish a bolo type set up to see if it gave me more control in the fast water and it wasn’t long before I was happily running a float through the swim.  At first it was all quiet but I soon struck into a fish and it felt a nice fish to boot, in the fast flow of the ribble you never really know what you have got on the other end size wise till the last moment but I was over the moon when the shiny mirror like scales of a big roach slipped over the lip of my landing net, I was pleased as punch at this capture, 1lb 3oz and made the trip worthwhile in my eyes.

I continued to pick up a few more dace but I didn’t get the chub I had hoped for but in reality I had left it too long before moving onto the float rod and had I done it sooner then who knows and its that unknown that will get me out of bed this weekend chasing the dace and chub shoals on the river. 

The river ribble, for ourselves, is proving to be a river where you have to work for every bite and it is rewarding us with quality fish when we get them.  To put it into perspective my uncle caught 8lb of dace last time out on the River Dee which I guess was made up of about 50 dace whereas on Saturday my uncle had 8lb of fish and it was made up of around 15 fish.

Uncles net

My net

Hopefully this week we will find the rivers in a nice state which should see up picking up a few dace.

Till next week thank you for reading

And tight lines

Danny.