A warm welcome to this weeks blog update in a week that saw
the England team win the Fisho-mania Home nations match at Cudmore Fisheries
for the second year in succession. I
didn’t watch the Fisho-mania Final as I mentioned last week’s update I was out
on the bank while that was on but I made sure I was free the following day to
watch the Home nations match.
I really think the commentators did a great job over the
course of the event to keep it interesting and informative as lets face it live
match fishing does not have great prospects of being spectator sport for
television viewers but as I have said I thought they all did a great job and I
picked up loads of little hints and tips from listening to what Tommy and Keith
had to say during the match. I could
think of only one idea to improve what sky sports do in this event and it is to
have a few anglers available on the Red button where you can just watch that
angler for the entire duration and see exactly how they feed and go about
fishing a match of this calibre.
Match fishing is not something that has ever interested me
to the extent where I would want to take part in one but I do love seeing these
anglers applying their trade and it was great to see that a lot of the anglers
on the commercial scene actually started their fishing on rivers with one of
the Welsh lads holding the River match record of over 300lb of chub!!! What a
haul that is a catch of unimaginable proportions. I look forward already to next years fisho-mania
final as it’s a great event to have in the calendar.
On to this weeks fishing:
To be honest this weeks fishing was really tough, there
where times where I just felt like knocking it on the head and heading home to
watch the fishomania final and writing the fishing off completely, it was tough
both mentally and physically the toughest days fishing ive experienced since
writing the blog.
All week the river had been running off nicely down to a
level that would finally see us on the better stretches of the river fishing
some of the lovely dace glides we discovered last year. All week the texts where full of the joys of
last years trips where we bagged up on fat dace and stream lined grayling and
our thoughts turned to this years tactics and trying to lure some of the chub
shoals we know also live there, in our minds we were already there on the bank,
our plan was set and with only Friday to go we knew our day on the river wasn’t
far away.
Friday morning and I set off from my house with that Friday
feeling we all get that there is only one more day till two days of freedom. A
joy that was cut short abruptly 10 minutes from work when from no where the
heavens opened and it started raining quite heavily. I at first just thought it would be a shower
but it rained and it rained and it rained and before I knew it, it was 4pm and
I was leaving work with the soul wrenching persistent tip tap of rain hitting
my umbrella, each drop making that trip to the river even more and more
unlikely.
The EA river level site was my constant companion all through
Friday and it wasn’t till gone 1pm
that the River Dee showed the levels increasing and that was only a minimal
increase at that. Work finished and with
another update in levels due around 5pm it was off to buy the bait bought in
the form of a pint of castor and maggot, that done and I was all set baring the
task of cooking my hemp seed.
The next few updates showed an increase to around 5.8m and a
quick check of other levels on local tributaries showed them all to be flooded
so a fair amount of water was entering the system, the next morning we set off
into the gloom not knowing what we was heading too.
We arrived at the tributary we fished 2 weeks ago to find
the river running through fast and the colour of chocolate but we decided to
set up and give it a hour or so to see what it fished like, in hindsight we
should never of entertained the idea the flow was far too fast and although the
levels where fishable with the river rising the flow was ferocious and after a
hour or so we decided to move to the much wider and deeper part of the river
hoping to find some slower water or a slack where the fish might be holding up
out of the flow.
I quickly set up on a peg I had done well on in winter that
I knew was relatively shallow but the flow could be relied on to be steady as
it is situated between two trees with the flow running gently down to a tree at
the bottom of the trot. As you can see
from the picture above the levels where up and rising with the peg already
under a few inches of water.
The river as I imagined was quite shallow compared to the
deeper sections and the trot was delightful with the float going down and a
lovely pace that just screamed bites, as you can see on the picture above a dream
of a trot but what it made up fro in looks it lacked in fish.
What became noticeable from the off was the river was rising
and it was rising at an alarming rate with it almost now reaching my footplate,
this was certainly not going to be a swim I could fish all day. I continued to persevere hoping to pick up a
few fish and both me and my uncle did pick up some small roach holding in the
slack like the one shown below but was certainly nothing to make it worthwhile
fishing a river that was certainly on the rise and we decided to call it a day
and pick a still water venue for the rest of the day.
As you can see from the picture above the river had rose
significantly since my arrival and with my uncle fishing an even more
precarious swim upstream we decided to admit defeat on the river and headed for
High Legh Fishery on the Warrington Anglers Card for the rest of the session,
no one can say we don’t try!!
When you arrive at high legh you go thorough a farmer’s gate
and the fishery is in the middle of the field, there is a gravel track covering
half of the field and the rest is across rough ground. The rough ground is exactly that and we
decided to park the car half way to the fishery and not risk the path. Anyone who wants a true idea what to expect
from access tracks to Warrington
anglers waters need look no further than this picture below, deep ruts that
would certainly see your car stuck and need pushing or pulling out, no wonder
the fishery was empty.
We walked the small distance to the fishery and I decided to
set up and fish a method I had not fished in a long time in the waggler and my
uncle fished the pole to some reeds in the margin. Feeding castors regularly over the top via
the catapult with the odd pouch of hemp I was straight away into rudd both on
the drop and on the bottom.
The greedy rudd kept me busy for the whole day greedily
hovering up my free offerings as they kit the surface. As the swim progressed I began catching some
lovely small tench and I fully expected the swim to keep developing and for the
carp to move in but alas it just never materialised for me but I thoroughly
enjoyed my dad fishing for bits on the waggler.
The one strange thing was I didn’t catch one roach or bream all the
silver fish where rudd.
My uncle, also on maggot and castor, was picking up small
fish but was also hitting the odd carp which, on his light gear was making
short work of his hook lengths so he stepped it up with impressive results with
him taking 6 carp in total with the best ones shown below.
That was it for the day really and I have to be honest one
of the hardest days on the bank for me I really cannot wait to get back
trotting on the river I just hope this weekend we have a change of luck and we
can get into those dace shoals on the River Dee.
Till next week
I wish you all tight lines
Danny
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