Gauging the River

Thursday I was looking at the gauges on Shoothill GaugeMap, after the recent rain, somewhat puzzled. The gauge immediately above the section I hoped to fish, on Friday, was all over the place. The next gauge upstream showed a falling river, only a few centimetres, and the one a bit further up, a rising river again a few centimetres. The one downstream had moved a few millimetres. From experience I knew the river wouldn't be too bad and I needn't be taking 6oz feeders with me. Although it may seem confusing at first, looking at four gauges over an 18 mile stretch of river all doing something different once you know where the gauges a positioned it makes a bit more sense. The upstream gauges is on a rather narrow section. The next one downstream on a wider section. The next is at some sluices and actually measures something different to the others. While the last one is at a weir. Of coarse, the gauges can't tell you what colour is in the river or how much debris is floating down, but, combined with experience, it will let you know if the river is within your comfort zone.

 








Arriving Friday morning the river didn't look too coloured as I drove over the bridge and didn't seem to have a lot of leaves floating about either. The walk through the woods was as treacherous as ever, slipping and sliding all over the place. Once it's got a good soaking the path really is interesting, not only does it go up and down, but it tends to slope towards the river or a nice steep bank. The swim I choose had a nice slack downstream of me and another across and upstream. Tactics were to be similar to the last outing, caster and chopped worm in a feeder with caster/maggot/worm on the hook and groundbait feeder with chopped worm and a lob on the hook. The far bank slack proved to be a tackle thief, so was abandoned in favour of the main current and this is where all bar one fish came from. It was a steady flow of fish that came to double maggot or half a dendrobena. Apart from a couple of minnows and a ruffe. they were all roach or gudgeon. The roach around the 4-6oz mark, while the gudgeon were all on the small side compared to previous. A total of 17 roach and 23 gudgeon. While there wasn't much surface debris I did manage more than a few sticks as well.

The main excitement of the day came when I had bites on both rods. The inside rod providing the biggest roach of the day and the only fish from the slack and on lob, a fish of 13oz. The other, a fish of 11oz, coming to half a dendro. The other highlight came when a gudgeon suddenly got heavy as I was winding it in. What felt a bit like another stick turned out to be a rather scruffy and underweight perch of 1lb 10oz.

 








Not a bad day given the unsettled weather of late. The fish don't seem to have moved into their winter refuges yet, apart from the minnows thankfully.