A Wander Along An Old Stretch

Tuesday I fished a stretch of river I'd not fished for years and years. Nor had anybody else by the look of things. I did eventually find three or four accessible swims, but none them really had room for a spot of float fishing. The trees growing out into the river meant I couldn't see very far down stream, so I resorted to feeder fishing maggot. As I'd finally acquired a lighter 1oz tip for the rod it would be a useful to see if it would be as useful as I'd hoped. It was. The minnows would whack the tip round like a barbel bite.

After battling through a succession of minnows a tiny dace then an equally tiny roach showed up.

These were quickly followed by a brace of the perch. The largest being 1lb 6oz.

 

Things went rather quiet after that. I stuck it out for another fifteen minutes with out a bite before moving to the next swim. This too produced an awful lot of minnows to start with.

Eventually a shoal of bleak moved in grabbing the hook bait is it dropped through the water. You could see the tip bouncing about as the bait fell. 

After a little lull the next fish to take the bait as it dropped was a small jack pike. Not what you want. More minnows followed before a little bullhead grabbed the bait. I was then bitten off twice by small jacks. So decided to move on.

The third swim seemed to be devoid of minnows as I proceeded to catch several gudgeon before things went quiet for a while.

I then got bit off by another very small jack. This was immediately followed by half a dozen reasonable sized dace. Another little jack grabbed the maggots as I wound in. It proceeded to cause havoc as I unhooked it. It managed to flip as I got the hook out and catch my left hand pinky. It then flipped again and cleared the net landing back in the water. I managed to get a plaster on the half inch long cut which continued to bleed profusely.

The next time I wound in a larger jack grabbed the feeder and bit me off. That was it. I only had a handful of maggots left anyway. Time to back up. The expense of the extra tip for the feeder rod has been worth it as I hit a lot more bites than I had with the heavier tip. I think another trip later in the year, when the vegetation has died back, may be on the cards.