The sun was shining, the early morning chill was off the air and there was nothing on my jobs list that couldn’t wait another day, all in all an ideal day to go fishing!
I have been driving past my river fishing spot over the summer and as it is very overgrown and I usually wait until the winter when the nettles have died down. However, work has been going on to clear the undergrowth and on my last drive by I saw that the vegetation had been cut right back to the edge of the river so I decided to give it a try.
I loaded my gear into the car and was soon at the river. As I approached I could see that despite the recent rain the river was very clear and shallow. I could see shoals of fish darting away as I got near the bank, the sun behind me showed them up beautifully but also revealed my presence so stealth was going to be the name of the game.
I had a walk along the bank for a while and found several shoals of fish, all under the cover of banks of weeds and under trees, winkling them out was not going to be easy. Sitting well back from the edge I fed the swim with a handful of maggots which I could see in the stream. I then carefully cast my float out, trying not to catch the far bank or go into the weed banks. I quickly realised that I was fishing way over depth and pulled my float down the line so that I was fishing at about eighteen inches depth. Even this was too deep so I adjusted to about a foot and was soon into my first fish, a small chub. This had scared the fish but they were soon back and I had my second fish. Then things went quiet so I decided to move.
This swim was next to a tree which had several trunks and again I could see the fish but could I get to them? Getting down on my hands and knees I crawled up to the bank with the aim of just dropping my bait into the water as there was no room to cast. Unfortunately, I was fishing with a ten foot rod and it was not reaching the fish so I had to improvise some sort of sideways cast to get into the water. This worked and I soon had another fish, this time a small dace. Then the inevitable happened, I got snagged in the bushes and broke the hook length. I decided that as I was fishing in such shallow depth and could see my bait I could do without a float, which might be spooking the fish. Of course just casting a hook and maggot is not easy as it has no weight but I did manage to get it into the water and catch another dace.
By now, time was getting on and I had said that I would be back for lunch. I packed up my gear and took a walk up stream and was surprised to see that it had been dredged for about 50 yards before going back to its weed filled self. I could see the bottom but no fish, with the weed gone and their bankside cover removed they had gone elsewhere.
Driving back I was thinking of how I could fish this river more effectively and decided that I must venture into the unknown realms of whip or pole fishing which would enable me to lower my bait into the exact spot where the fish were. When I got home I looked up Whip fishing on Youtube and watched a few people so that I had some idea and ordered myself a five metre whip and rig for £19.99 from Amazon which arrived the next day. In the meantime I had planned for a return to my regular lake as it closes for fishing at the end of September and I wanted to fish it one last time so the return to the river would have to wait.
Sorry, no photos this week as I forgot my phone!
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