After fishing the 'shallow end' of the stretch yesterday, I thought I'd have a go at the 'deep end'. Yesterday I was fishing 3-4' deep swims. Today the swims were around 8-10'. The tactics were to be the same as yesterday. Maggot over hemp, but with a heavier 5x4 alloy stemmed stick. I had hoped to get two lines going. One along the treeline and one close to the inside. In the end I had to opt for one line. The river was slightly higher than yesterday and rising slowly. As a result the branches were underwater causing the current to push the float away from the trees. The inside line was a depository for twigs, while putting a bend in the rod they were not really what I was after.
A large handful of hemp was deposited downstream and mid river. 3-4 maggots went in every cast. It was nearly 20 minutes before the first sign of fish, when I retrieved a chewed maggot. The next few casts were the same so I started to shallow up as I assumed they were attacking the bait on the drop. At around 6' I started to get proper bites and a steady procession of little dace and if they missed, the occasional small chublet. Occasionally a micro roach would show up. This continued for about 90 minutes, then everything went quiet. Suspecting the fish may have dropped lower I increased the depth until the bait was tripping the bottom, but there was not so much as a chewed maggot. I dropped a ledgered worm into the swim while I had a cuppa and a contemplate. Several other anglers had arrived so the choice of swims in the 'deep end' was limited.
Having finished my cuppa I retrieved the worm, which resulted in a savage take as it neared the surface. A jack around the 4lb mark. After the initial run it came in quite quietly until it broke surface. It then gave a defiant display of head shaking and bit me off as it dived. Not long after the bites started again. After a bit of twiddling of the depth the bites became more consistent and again a steady flow of dace and chublets started to come to hand. The river now fallen a few inches, but was pushing through a bit faster. A chat with a couple of passers by made it appear that I was about the on angle catching consistently. Those fishing the 'shallow end' had really struggled, or were sitting out for barbel. If there's one way to avoid barbel around here it's to fish for them.
The bites started to dry up again around eight, so dropped the ledger worm over the hemp in the hope of a barbel or chub. When I lifted the keepnet put for a photo of the evenings catch I was surprised how few fish were in it, until one was spotted suck in a larger hole near the bottom. Looked like a pike had been at it and ripped a couple of holes in it, and not for the first time. While it fits nicely in the pocket of my bag this keepnet does seem to be easily damaged by pike. Good job I wasn't in a match. I fished on until dark with out another bite.
A lot better than opening day, but still no gudgeon. There again I hardly fished on the bottom apart from the lob worm on the ledger rig. Thursday doesn't look good with rain forecast for most of the day. While I don't mind rain as such. I hate setting up in it and it can make trotting hard work.
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