First Session Of 2021

The last few days of 2020 had been cold, hovering around zero, but sunny. The first day of 2021 was to be warmer, up to four degrees, but wet and windy. As I loaded up the car in the drizzle and breeze it felt a lot colder than previous days. I decided to head to the river as it was now only one metre up and I thought the still waters may well be still iced over. The carpark had turned into an ice rink and had yet to thaw. It did mean however that the muddy path down to the river was nice and solid. The ings was covered in a couple of foot of water that was steadily draining away into the beck. Although it looked to have thawed the gulls wandering about on it told a different story. I decided to stat at the bottom swim by the confluence of the beck.

I'd got set up and the brolly up before the drizzle turned to rain. A trout went out just beyond the shelf but still in the large slack. A sardine was placed on the top of the shelf by an upstream sunken willow. My intention had been to fish several swims for an hour or so each. The rain put pay to this idea. In a short gap in the rain I had a quick wander with the lure rod. The rain on top over the frozen mud meant a lot of swims were just far to dangerous to fish. I did fin=d a couple of swims with large slacks in front of them that I could move to. The rain stated gain and continued to lunch time. Apart from a sunken branch dislodging the float there was no sign of activity.

After lunch I moved to another swim. The sun came out for a couple of hours and the breeze dropped which made things a bit more pleasant. No action was to be had after a couple of house I moved to another swim opposite Bishopthorpe Palace. A nice backdrop, but it didn't influence the pike in any way. I was blessed with a short view of the local otter though. Frighteningly it disappeared underwater rather close to one of the baits. I don't know if otters take dead fish, but thankfully this one didn't. I also witnessed a cormorant crash land on the ice which was rather amusing. Rather than fish to dark in the hope of avoiding a blank I decided to navigate the icy path back to the car in daylight. Back at the carpark I talked to a chap that had fished here several times in the past couple of weeks. He too hadn't had a run an any of his trips, but had seen a pike taken on the opposite bank yesterday.

 Not the start I would have liked to 2021, but the action cam worked properly. It clearly doesn't like sub-zero temperatures. Back to work tomorrow, so it'll be next week before I get out again.