Avoiding Otto

On Wednesday it was announced that storm Otto would be making it's presence felt on Friday and it would therefore be a tad windy. I can occasional show a bit of common sense and therefore chose to fish Thursday. There was a very pikey looking swim on a local river that I'd been wanting to fish but the water levels had been too high for some time. I'd had some nice perch from the swim in the past and recently some half decent chub had come out. It was at a point in the river where it widened out and thus slowed down. The far bank had some nice over hanging trees and the near bank was lined with aquatic vegetation. I was, however, rather deep being nearly ten foot a yard from the bank and dropping to nearly sixteen foot down the middle.

 

The river was a sort of oily green colour which is it's normal colour when it's cold. I've no idea why it turns that colour but still it had never been a problem before. My intention was to fish a paternoster bait close to the near side bank and a ledgered bait under the overhanging trees. So a smelt was attached to the paternoster and a trout to the ledger and out they went. I'd already tossed a few bits of fish soaked in oil about the swim. I intended to stick it out in this swim as there was a fair bit of river and several features I could target. Every hour or so I moved the baits adding a bit of oil to them every couple of hours. My first capture came after a couple of hours when I wound in a manky old lure. The next came an hour later when I snagged a small branch on the paternoster rig. This also nicked my bait so it was replaced with a roach.

 

By mid-afternoon I was beginning to think maybe I should have moved about  through some different swims. I'd moved the paternoster about quite a bit. Changing the depth it was fished at with out so much as a sniff from a fish. The ledger rig had been under several trees with nothing to show. Just as I'd poured the hot water into the mug for a cuppa the float bobbed and sunk away. A very feisty jack of 80cm had taken the roach and proceeded to stick very close to the bank gathering various bits of vegetation around the line and itself. As I got it to the surface it shook most of the vegetation off and dived for a rather nasty snag to my right. A goodly heave kept it out and into the net in one move.

Despite staying until dark that was the only run and fish of the day. Despite catching my intended quarry I was a bit disappointed as the swim had always looked to me Iike it would hold several pike. Maybe it's not a spawning spot and they've wandered off to there.