Return To An Old Haunt

I suppose I really should have used 'Few Wot a Scorcher' as the blog's title. If the headlines were to be believed, the country was going to catch fire Thursday and we'd all be dead of skin cancer by the end of the week. The fact that today is also my day off means it's also fishing day, so an early start was called for, despite the fact I'd not fished here for some years. More for my benefit than the fish as I've not found early morning to be particularly better than most other times of the day on rivers. With the river starting to rise again as I arrived and as I was on the Wharfe, a river that can rise at a spectacular rate, I picked a swim not far from the car and a reasonable level above the water. As it was the river only rose about four inches while I was there.

 








Legered pellets were to be the tactics. One rod in the crease two thirds of the way across, the other as close to cover as I could get on the inside line down stream. By wandering down the bank I was able to toss a few free offerings around the willow. In the far swim I used mesh bags and catapulted  offerings about over a largish area. The first sign of fish, apart from the odd one topping, came when a pair of pike ploughed into the shallows chasing some small stuff which scattered everywhere. I was amazed how much was hiding in the weeds on the near bank. One problem I did have was the amount of debris coming down and snagging the line dragging the baits away from the area I wanted to fish.

 











The first bite came nearly five hours after I'd started, a classic three foot twitch. This resulted in a hard fighting barbel of 5lb 5oz in near perfect nick. It did the standard small barbel trick of chasing all over the river before being landed. Surprisingly it didn't seem to need much time to recover and was trying to drag the landing net in after a couple of minutes, I gave it another five before releasing it. The next bite was nearly two hours later. This fish came in with relative ease until it got to the shallows where it woke up and made it's displeasure known looking smaller but chunkier I was surprised when it weighed 5lb 1oz. That was it for the day.

 















Not a bad day and a nice breeze got up for a while which made it seem cooler than it was. When the wind dropped, though, I knew it was time to leave. The water, thanks to the storms earlier in the week, was still very cool. A quick word about the rods I've ben using over the past few weeks for chub and barbel, apart from the Nidd. They are a pair of ProLogic MP Detek Twin Tips at £23 a piece from GoOutdoors. I can highly recommend them for the sort of rivers I fish, up to 30m wide. I do a better review later. So, barbel from the Derwent, Nidd and Wharfe so far. The Ouse, Swale and Ure Next, although the Ure has never been very kind to me as far as barbel are concerned.