It was a somewhat curtailed session on the Derwent this week, but interesting nonetheless. Bait for the day was, hemp, caster and maggot. There was supposed to be sweetcorn as well, but it failed to find it's way into my bag. The 15' float rod was rigged with a 4g bolo float at 12'. A feeder rod was also set up.
Feeding caster upstream of myself and the hemp down stream with maggot on the hook started catching roach after 15 minutes or so before the minnows moved in. A change to casters on the hook resulted in crushed casters and no fish. I had grabbed a bunch of elderberries on the way to the swim, one of the few decent bunches on the tree. The hot dry summer has clearly been a problem for the elders around here. The few decent bunches had very few fruit on them and the other were either very small or shrivelled up. Another half dozen, slightly better roach were taken on the berries before everything went quiet. I would have tried hemp on the hook, but as they were somewhat overcooked they didn't make good hook-bait. A change to feeder fished maggot produced bleak, minnows, the occasional gudgeon and chublet. Also a bullhead, a fish I've not had in a while. After 40 minutes of this I decided to try a swim a fellow angler had told me about.
He'd told me he had been given a right run-a-round by some fish, loosing them in the tree roots or near side weed before going on to take some nice roach and perch. Using the same float statics as the earlier swim I took a couple of small dace before suffering the same fate. The fish just crashed about the swim before diving under the far bank trees and not coming back. A few trots later I took a small perch before striking into nothing. On retrieving the rig the hook was missing, bitten off about three inches above the hook. I step the hook length up from 3.3lb to 5.5lb and the hook from an 18 to a heavy gauge 16. After a series of missed bites I again latched onto some lunatic fish which had me all over the swim before crashing through the weeds in front of me. Everything went slack and as I lifted the rig out I felt a bit of a wriggle on the end of the line. A gudgeon was attached to the hook, none the worse for wear apart form a few scales missing. The hook length had a little nick a couple of inches above the hook. After 15 minutes of silly bites and chewed maggots I dropped back to the lighter rig which produced half a dozen hard fighting perch to just shy of 2lb. A phone call then curtailed the fishing.
The lost fish were a bit strange. They didn't feel heavy, just fast. I assume they were jack pike as the chub or barbel tend to just plod about and feel heavy and perch normally give that distinctive head shaking sort of fight.
Bait for this weeks trip was; two pints hemp; pint and a half maggots and a tin of sweet corn. The intention was to float fish corn or tare over hemp for the better roach and maggot feeder if the former wasn't working too well. After a slightly precarious wander through the woods, the muddy paths all slope towards the river, I decided to try one of the earlier and shallower swims as it didn't seem to effected by the wind.
Stick and pin was to be the first line of attack and with eight and a half foot of water things were quite pleasant. Except I hadn't had a bite after an hour. A change to maggot produced a couple of minnows and a micro roach, before I latched onto some thing bigger. As I got it near the surface it was grabbed by a pike. As I got it under the rod tip the line parted and the whole rig knotted itself round the rod. I decided to move on to one of the deeper swims and come back to this one later, after tossing in some more hemp.
In the next swim I started with maggot feeder, which produced a steady flow of small gudgeon. for a while before the bites dried up. I stuck a bit of corn on the hook and set about the float rod. I still got the occasional bite, which resulted in a gudgeon, but instead of the usual bouncing tip they were now a steady pull as if some weed had snagged the line. With the wind now gusting downstream I decided a waggler approach was probably best, so replaced the 'pin with a 506. After a few trots own to check the depth, I'd st the hook just off the bottom, the line pin decided not to engage. Poking around inside the reel I couldn't see a problem. Having hand-lined the float back some twenty yards I chucked the feeder rod back out and contemplated my next move. As I carefully hand wound the line back on the spool, the tip of the feeder round shot round and the rod took a good bend, before going slack. Thinking I'd missed the bite I finished winding the line on the spool before retrieving the feeder. There was clearly something still on, it felt like a decent gudgeon, but turned out to be a dinky little barbel of around half a pound. Probably the smallest I've ever caught and my first Derwent barbel of the season. Over the next twenty minutes I got two more bites on the feeder.
Using the spare spool from the feeder reel I had another go with the waggler setup. This wasn't the best reel for trotting as it has rather a long stem and even with the spool all the way back it was still a stretch to the lip. Still I managed three, pound plus perch on corn and one on maggot along with a few dace. The perch in this stretch fight like fish twice the weight and you could become slightly disappointed when they surface. The largest at one and three quarter pound had me believing I was onto a new PB. This came to an end when another pike appeared and grabbed a fish I was reeling in. This time it let go and I retrieved a rather sorry looking roach. Which, after a quick photo, swam away quite strongly leaving a trail of blood, which I saw the pike follow. I assume the roach would be a goner.
After this I didn't get any more bites so moved back to the first swim. It was equally disappointing this time around as well. Again it just produced a couple of gudgeon and minnows. I even tried brambles as a bait, with out any success. though. Time to go home.
One thing I (re)learned - don't tweet a photo when there is a very weak signal, it doesn't half drain the battery. I had a right pastime getting it charged again and restarted. I ended up having to do a factory reset and restoring everything, which meant I lost a few of the day's photos. Inspecting the 506, at home, I found a short piece of very fine wire trapped in the mechanism, so that's back functioning. Don't know where the hell the wire came from.
I'd intended to fish down stream of where I'd fished last week, until I got to the tackle shop Thursday morning. I conversation in the tackle shop suggested upstream was fishing better, with some nice bags of roach coming to maggot. Apparently the tactic was to fish a heavy stick, down the middle, with the shot strung out over the bottom half to get the bait past the minnows. They'd tried fish bolo style as well to avoid the minnows , but this hadn't worked quite as well.
On arrival I plumbed up the swim and found twelve foot of water, which is all well and good, but I'd picked up a twelve foot rod, not he fourteen footer so life wasn't going to be easy. Feeding a handful of maggots every trot I was soon into small 2-3 ounce roach with the occasional dace or chublet on the drop. After an hour of getting a fish every other trot a pike moved in and took a fish as I was winding in, biting me off. As I was putting a new hook length on I chucked a feeder out and like last week was rewarded with several minnows and a few gudgeon. This minnow thing puzzles me as I'd only taken a couple on float.
Eventually I started to get roach again on the float and this time they were somewhat larger, up to a pound. The bites weren't as often as earlier and often on the drop so I may not of seen some. Fiddling with the depth and/or tell tale shot didn't seem to make much difference to the bites either. Again a steady flow of fish was brought to a halt by a pike moving in. While I retied the hook an had a cuppa I popped the feeder rod put again, only this time I started to pick up tiny little roach rather than minnows and gudgeon. A last forty minutes on the float produced a few larger roach, but bites were rather sparse and I was about through my three pints of maggots si called it a day.
As with the previous week there was the plaintive squeak of a young raptor, I do wish I was better at identifying these things. This time though they occasional appeared in view, in what appeared to be simulated aerial combat.
As I was going down to the Derwent again, I double checked the fourteen footer was in the quiver and not the twelve. It was a good job I did as I noticed one of the rings had the liner missing, so it was out with the Technium 450, an old and slightly heavy rod, but not unpleasantly so. That's four rods with damaged rings now, time I did some repairs I think.
Choosing a swim a bit further downstream on a slightly narrower and faster bit of river with about twelve and a half foot of depth, I opted for a10x4 alloy stemmed stick. Feeding large handfuls of maggots I was quickly in gudgeon and dace, before a jack interrupted proceedings. This set the pattern for the session, every 30-40 minutes a jack would appear and grab a fish I was retrieving. One even took a maggot feeder on the drop and hung on until it was a couple of feet from the landing net. I had a few goes with various lures, but only got one follow. After a bit of a lull when the wind got up and it threatened rain I latched on to a couple of hard fighting perch of 1lb 5oz and 1lb 11oz before bumping a third and scaring the rest away.
I'd brought a keepnet with me this time just to give me a better idea of what I'd caught. When I hauled it out of the water it didn't seem to have as many fish in it as I thought I'd caught. This was not surprising really as there was now to largish holes in the bottom of it. I thought I'd seen it twitch about at one point. I'm assuming a pike had had a go at it as there weren't any holes in it when I'd got it out as I'd given it a thorough check over. What was left weighed just shy of 5lb 8oz, which along with the perch gave 8lb 8oz for a six hour session fished through the middle of the day. Which was more than the winning team managed when the national was fished just upstream of here. The individual weight was 2lb 2oz 8dr by the legendary Leeds angler J. H. R. Bazley. That was in 1910 mind you.
One thing I haven't seen before was dace coughing up little pin fry as I unhooked them. I know most fish can be predatory, but his surprised me.
