Jorvik Angler: Dead Toads and Wet Wipes

With rain and storms about I'd been watching the river levels from the beginning of the week. It only takes a good deluge in one of the dales for the rivers to come up nicely further down. The rivers had risen and fallen a little bit all week, but the Wharfe looked like it would be rising slowly from Thursday afternoon. When I got there it was a nice sunny afternoon and the river, rising slowly, had a nice bit of colour to it. Hope fully it would rise as fast as it did two ago. With only 8-10" of extra water in at this point the Gully swim by the island was probably not going to fish so I had a look at a swim I'd prepared ages ago, but never fished. As I wandered down there I spotted a dead toad. Dead, that is, until I took it's photo. It then made a pathetic attempt to hide itself under some torn up turf.

I had a bit of trouble finding the route down to the swim as the vegetation had grown back up and flood debris had disguised the flat area of bank at the bottom. A careful decent and some rearranging of the flood debris rendered the swim habitable. I'd noted that at around the the height the river was at there were a couple of nice slacks and creases close to the bank up and down stream. The only problem was a small willow poking out into the river that looked like a handy refuge for a barbel to dive in to last minute. A bit of poking around with the action cam showed it wasn't as bad as it looked.

The banksticks were carefully placed so as to mark the boundary between bank and river, just in case the water came higher than expected. Blockend feeders full of well soaked pellets and double 8mm pellets for hook baits. The upstream rod had four foot hook length and the downstream rod a three foot hook length. Tossed just inside the creases into the slack water. It was about an hour later that the upstream rod tip sprung back. A sweeping strike met with solid resistance and a fish hurling upstream until I realised I'd not tripped the baitrunner. A quick turn of the handle and whatever it was came to a halt and was quickly wound back downstream and into the net. A feisty little barbel around the 2lb mark. Within minutes of recasting the tip sprung back and another little 'un was quickly in the net. Virtually the same size, but a tad darker than the first.

Again, not long after casting in the tip dropped back. This time, however there was no resistance. Instead I ended up with a wet wipe on the hook. To be honest when you see the number that pour out of sewage plant upstream I'm surprised I don't snag more. Although the outfall just up from me, while running, didn't appear to be releasing anything other than treated sewage. It was added to the bag of flotsam and jetsam I'd already collected.

As I topped the feeder up the downstream rod lurched over. This was something a lot bigger than previous. Taking line on it's initial run it then sat in the current not overly keen on coming upstream. A slow dogged fight ensued and surprisingly it was hauled into the net at the first attempt. None of the classic last dash. A fish of 9lb 1oz in splendid condition apart from a chunk missing from it's tail fin. Probably from playing with an otter. As previous, the feeder had hardly hit the bottom when the tip went round. A similar dogged fight followed, but this time it made an epic performance of getting in the net. The battle under the rod tip was longer than the battle to get it in front of me. A slightly smaller fish of 8lb 10oz. A had thought I'd videoed the fight, but I'd forgot to clear the SD card and only got the first minute of it.

With the river still slowly rising I hoped for more, but that was it despite fishing into dark. The biggest battle of the evening, though, was getting back up the bank and out of the swim. Sliding down on your backside is al well and good, but getting back up while clinging onto handfuls of nettles in the dark really isn't fun. I'll have to find the original path I created as it was an awful lot easier.