First Day of the Season 2021

For some years now my preferred start top the coarse fish river season has been a spot of stick and 'pin on the River Nidd. I'm not bothered what I catch it's just nice to do. A pint of maggots and some hemp was all the bait I took. I rarely fish rivers early morning as I've never found it to be as productive as the evening.  I arrived at the car park at three to find it empty, apart from the remains of a bonfire in the middle. While the arrival time was nice for avoiding the traffic it wasn't the best for humping tackle along the bank as it was the warmest part of the day. The breeze was a menace though as it was blowing the grass pollen about. By the time I'd selected a swim my nose was dripping profusely.

This swim I picked was around six foot deep, one of the deeper swims at the top end of the stretch.  I had hoped to run a float under the tree down stream, but it was very saggy so just stuck to the middle of the river. A couple of handfuls of hemp were chucked down the swim and half a dozen maggots every trot or so. The hemp was topped up every few casts. After a few casts and some chewed maggots the first fish in was a small chublet. It then took while for the next fish to turn up. A bleak was the next in. I suspect these were the ones responsible for the chewed maggots. For the first couple of hours I only got the occasional chublet of bleak. Around sixish the first of the dace showed up. By now I was getting more bites. While not a fish a chuck the bites were steady.

I was getting a few chub then a quiet patch then a few bleak then the dace would show up. The dace seemed to be at the top of the swim, while the chub came a bit further down. The bleak would just show up anywhere. The bites continued until nineish when everything went quiet. I fished on until I was struggling to see the float. Apart from the odd chublet I did manage to bump off a couple of decent perch rather annoyingly.

A pleasant and generally stress free start to the season. The fish were nothing to write home about, all very much a similar size. Previous seasons I've had more species, but that didn't matter. There is just something rather satisfying about trotting on a river.