Thomas (Tommy) Ruffe

Normal service appears to have returned on the weather front. T-shirt then fleece time, raining long enough to get the brolly up before it stops and all in an hour. While I don't like sitting under a brolly, especially when float fishing, I'd be willing to put up with it at the moment. While the river level is holding quite well, the flow appears to be slowing. Although the rain really needs to be up on the moors, as rain in the Vale of York does precious little except keep the dust down.

 








Plumbing up showed there to be nearly 12' 6' of water trundling along sedately. I set up a 4g+ avon, as the bolo floats had wandered from the tackle box, with a 3g olivette and a few locking shot 18" from the 9" hook length. A feeder rod was also set up. Bait for the day was to be hemp, caster, maggot, and sweet corn. The first few trots down produced the occasional gudgeon to maggot, but nothing to caster or corn. After a quiet spell I picked up a small perch on the feeder rod. This was grabbed by a little jack Which tenaciously hung on to it right up to the net before letting go. Surprisingly this was to be my only encounter with a pike during this session.

 








 

 








After this encounter I picked up a tommy, my first of the season, on the float rod, before a few more gudgeon. Alternating between feeder and float I managed to extract gudgeon, bleak, chub, roach, minnows and the occasional perch the largest of which, at 2lb 4oz, came to corn while the rest were all on maggot.

 








The fishing was very erratic with the fish never settling. I'm assuming it was the perch activity that caused this. Strangely no dace showed up.
 











This maggot drowning, fishing for owt that bites has been rathr good fun, but soon I'll be back to chucking lures and dead fish about for predators.