Last Session of the Year

The last session of the year went much as expected, not particularly good. A wander round with a lure rod produce a small jack and after a couple of missed runs a slightly bigger jack came from the margins on smelt. Even the camera decided to let me down by producing slightly out of focus pictures.

Lets hope next year is a bit better.

Winter Walk

With only a couple of hours available to fish, I decide to take a walk along a stretch of river I hadn't fished in a long while. With jerk bait rod in hand the only thing I discovered was the fact it was a lot more snags than I remember. I spent nearly as much time bending hooks out of immovable objects as I did fishing. Still it was a proper, pleasant, windless winters day.

Dead Fish at Dawn

Arriving at the syndicate just before light, I soon had a popped up herring flung out along the bar in front of my chosen swim. A popped up eel section was dropped at the bottom of the bar and a sprat  in the margins. Some hours later the sprat bait was taken and a jack of exactly 5lb landed after giving the impression of a far larger fish. With the sun out it was now warm enough to remove may big coat. I had been moving the baits every 30-40 minutes, but this had failed to attract any pike. Two more runs occurred on the sprat, mid-afternoon. The first resulted in a waterlogged branch and the second left just a small bit of flesh on the hook.

After Sales Quickie

After entering one of these evil tackle emporiums that was having a sale and parting company with far more money then I intended, I headed down to the syndicate for a quick session with the lure rod.
A line through roach was tried first, despite the fact it really did look like a real fish it failed to attract any attention. I then moved to the other extreme with a fire tiger jerk bait which produced the goods in the shape of a 3-lb jack.