Flinging Dead Fish Into A Flooded River

There was a remarkably thick layer of ice on the car Friday morning as I loaded it up. Arriving at the parking spot I was confronted by a rather panicky deer that misjudged the fence, clipping the top and landing in a bundle on the other side. It was quickly up and disappeared over the other side of the field, over the fence and out of site.

 








The level, as expected, was about six foot up which created some nice looking slacks behind the low hanging branches that were now under water. The problem now, though, was remembering exactly where these branches are as I landed the first bait a bit too close and snagged up. By now I'd been joined by a mate who did exactly the same thing. While I stuck with lamprey, smelt and sprat he was using roach and perch dead baits. We both used similar tactics though. Float ledger baits close to features or a bait drifted about in the eddy under a float.

 







 
 








We spent about an hour in each swim before moving. We didn't do the normal leap-frogging. Instead he followed me into each swim to test his theory that coarse baits work better than sea baits. It was about two when we got our first runs. His resulted in a little jack of around two pounds, while mine resulted in nothing. Dropping the partly chewed bait back in the same spot resulted in another run about a minute later. This time I latched into a fish a bit bigger than my mates. Been about six foot above the water I had to net the fish despite the obvious trailing hook. As I got the fish over the net the mesh snagged, the fish flipped out of the net snagging the trailing hock and I was was left shouting for my mate as the net refused to move and the fish thrashed about. As my mate arrived, he'd had another run and bumped the fish, my fish released itself and we spent five minutes wiggling, prodding and poking the landing net before it un-snagged. We tried a couple more swims before calling it a day. The weather was quite unpleasant at this point, sporadic rain and a gusty wind.

 








As we wandered back to the cars we spotted five deer wandering along ahead of us. When they realised we were there they shot away and just seemed to evaporate. When we got somewhere near to the point where they disappeared we had a look around and spotted a narrow well worn track, through the hawthorn saplings, with hoof prints in the mud. Further on was another one that went in the opposite direction into a bit of scrub. Both the areas could easily hide half a dozen or so deer.

 








Next week is the end of the coarse season on rivers. I have taken a couple of days off work, but the weather appears to be conspiring against me. The current weather forecast is wet windy or both. After dropping a couple of foot the rivers are now rising again. Still you've got to be in it to win it as they say. I'm still in two minds over the close season. I like the idea of fishing the lat day and the anticipation of the first day, but some rivers I can fish all year just with just with bait restrictions at certain times.