Penultimate Day Of The Season

The river had risen a lot higher than expected when I looked at the gauge this morning. It was at the height I expected in the afternoon and didn't look like it was going to ease off. My mate was just setting off when I rang him. As he said "It's easier to give up than get started." Despite misplacing himself he still arrived at the same time as me. Our first thought when we saw the river was that we should have brought worms and not dead-baits. Still there were plenty of slacks in evidence so we picked the first two and got underway.

I'd just finished plumbing the depth when my mate shouted frantically. I whipped down to his swim to find him trying to keep a decent jack out of the semi-submerged tree and get his snagged landing net out of the tree roots and brambles. I untangled the net and soon a feisty 5-6lb jack was on the bank. Apparently it had taken the roach on the drop. This gave us some hope.

We gave each swim about 45 minutes before leap frogging along the swims. As I walked past him in his second swim the float shot away and this time it was a lot smaller fish about half the size that had taken a smelt. Like me he was using up whatever he had in the freezer. Buoyed up we continued along the bank but had had no more as it came up to lunch time. We were now both in front of a couple of large slacks/eddies and get two rods out. We stayed here a bit longer while we had lunch. Wind had got stronger and gustier so you had to make sure everything was nailed down.

The only other anglers we saw all day arrived on the opposite bank just after lunch. One of them was obviously well sheltered as he managed to get a brolly up, something we couldn't do. It would have been nice as the periods of rain were getting longer and heavier. We slowly worked our way back fishing the swims the other had fished on the way down. By the time we got back to the top of the section the river had risen a metre and showed no sign of slowing.

Two fish to my mate and nowt to me was not what I really wanted but under the circumstances was better than we'd thought possible at the start of the day. What to do for the final day I don't know. I'm thinking a spot of barbeling may be on the cards, but I'll wait until the morning to make a descension.