Another early morning session on Thursday, but this time somewhere deeper than the Nidd. I opted for my other favourite river, the Derwent. It's a lovely looking river and just screams fish, but it is rather deceptive. Despite being only 40'-50' wide it's often around 10'-15' deep and with a good bit off current. The swim I choose turned out to be 11' so I opted for a 4.5g avon with a 4g olivette 3' from a size 18 hook. I had quite a few trots through with out any hook bait as some swims can be seriously snaggy. This one appeared to be alright on that score.
I loose fed half a pint of maggots, in the hope of feed off the inevitable minnows, before my first trot down with double maggot. After a few trots down I started picking up the odd gudgeon before I managed to find a snag, a large twig. In fact I ended up hauling for of the put of the river by the end of the session. Why don't they show up when I trot down with out a hook bait on. Constantly feed handfuls of maggots eventually attracted a few large fish in the shape of roach, chub and perch. These seem to come entirely at random. In four casts I had a perch, chub, dace then roach.
While I had a cuppa tea I tossed out a feeder on the same line, but this seemed to mainly attract minnows. How to they get a size 14 in their mouths and rattle the quivertip so much for such a tiny fish.
For a while I watched a young raptor chasing a parent about, squeaking pathetically for food, I assume. The fishing had been steady until the full brightness of the sun broke through, then the bites tailed off. I took the hint and headed home.
On Friday I tried a short evening session on my favourite little river, the Nidd, rather than a early morning session. The usual trotting set up, with maggots for anything that turned up.
The first four swims produced nothing. The fifth, though, produced a couple of little chublets. Retrieving a third, a huge bow wave followed it in. Lifting it out of the water quickly it flipped off the hook and landed right next the pike, which just turned and ignored it. Retrieve the next trot down the bow wave appeared in the same place and the pike just followed the spinning maggots at about a foot behind them before turning away. Intrigued I just cast down stream and retrieved, again the same thing. I tried this a couple more times at different speeds all with the same result before the pike got bored.
By now it was into the 'magic hour' before dark so things had to look up, surely. I decided to stick to the last swim and after a few minutes started to catch gudgeon, after gudgeon, after gudgeon. With half an hour to go before dark I moved on. There are only so many small gudgeon you can catch with out get bored, unless it's a match. The final swim produced just one chewed maggot.`Should have stayed catching gudgeon.
On the way back to the car a small owl swooped past me only a few feet away before turning back into the trees.
Despite monitoring the levels on GaugeMap, I was still surprised as I wandered along the Nidd how the water level is holding up. I was also surprised by a barn owl as it swooped towards me from round the back of a willow. Today's plan of action was to fish the swims I hadn't got to on my previous visits. To this end I chucked a few handfuls of hemp in half a dozen of them and intended to float fish sweetcorn or meat through them I as I headed back.
The intention was to give each swim 30-40 minutes. Despite giving each swim it's allotted time only two produced. The second one produced a couple of tiny chub to corn and the last one a couple of small chub to meat. I must admit I've never done well in these last few swims early season, they always fish better in autumn.
Apart from pin fry and a small shoal of tiny gudgeon, these were the only fish I saw. On the way back to the car I watched the barn owl, through he trees, grab it's self, or maybe it's chicks a meal.
