For my final session of the river season I went down to a local river which was at a very nice height for pike fishing. Plenty of slacks to fish. I fished four of them with float-fished deadbaits. Herring, sardine, and roach were used. None of which were attractive to the pike. Like most last sessions it was a bit of an anticlimax.
Not the best of pike seasons at all. All jacks not even a double. The stats are as follows.
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I spent the morning invertebrate sampling for the River Monitoring Initiative. Along with quite a few sticklebacks and bullheads the usual suspects turned up in the samples. Plenty of Cased Caddis, Caseless Caddis, Baetis, Gammarus, and a couple of BWO. Stonefly and Mayfly are occasionally found but Heptagenes aren't found in this beck at all.
Saturday I was at another lake at daybreak. One man and his tent was in one corner carping. I setup in another corner with the same rigs as last time. The sardine plonked by an overhanging tree to my left and a roach over to the tree to my right. As the day wore on the floats were moved about. The sun got out and made for a pleasant day. Three other anglers arrived at various points. None caught while I was there. Nor did I either. The bright sunshine, clear lake, and very low overnight temperatures probably weren't the best combination. Still it was nice to be out on a sunny day and not be getting wet.
After a bit of a lay-off from fishing do to the appalling weather and not knowing if the rivers were going up or down I was ready to get back to it. I'd planned a couple of sessions on stillwaters over the weekend, but a change of plan meant I could also get out on Friday 13th. While the weather over the weekend was predicted to be quite good, including the threat of sunshine, Friday didn't look so clever. Luckily for me the drizzly sleet eased off as I arrived at the empty carpark. By the time I'd setup camp the sleet and drizzle had returned.
With the rivers rising steadily on Thursday after the previous days rain It seemed like a bit of barbel fishing would be a good idea. Common sense would be to head to one of the known barbel spots, but not wanting to be common I headed to a stretch I'd only ever caught one barbel from.
The river hadn't risen as far as I'd expected it to when I got there, but was moving through at a fair old rate. I suspect sluices were being opened to run water off. Ledger rigs baited with a pellet were dropped in close to the nearside bank. One upstream, one down.
The upstream rod was soon abandoned as the debris coming down, mainly leaves, just dragged the lead back towards me. Even with 5oz of lead.
That was it for the day. Once the lovely sunshine disappeared the big coat was out. I fished on to dusk but just added to my collection of leaves.
As it was a glorious sunny day and the river was nearby I had a couple of hours chucking a feeder into it. A few maggots, turning to casters, and some hemp all left over from last week were to be used up. One thing that puzzled me was the bank side vegetation had been nibbled at but there were no beats in the filed. Nor had there been for sometime. This was solved as I tackled up the feeder rod. Three cygnets swim up and when I offered them nowt they started munch on the vegetation before making their way up stream. Strangely there were no adults in sight. It's not very often I've seen cygnets with out the adults before they get their adult plumage.
During the lull that followed a family of swans swam sedately upstream.
Followed a little later by a cygnet that seemed to be desperately trying to catch them up.
Thursday was a fine autumnal type day. Sun with a chill wind. Too warm for a woolly, too cold for a t-shirt. I'd ventured down to another deep stretch that's kind of defeated me over the years, apart from winter pike fishing. Others do well on it with some nice bags of roach. Some of us, though, tend to spend our time scratching about for the odd fish here and there. The swim I choose, for no good reason, was around twelve foot deep. With 1 fifteen foot rod I could have fished a fixed float, but a breezy day and high bankside vegetation can make casting such a rig awkward. I, instead, set up a 6g Dave Harrell slider float. For a large rather bulky looking float it is remarkably sensitive.
Having had a few trots down with out any bait on to see if there was any snags of whatever. I then lobbed in a few balls of groundbait laced with maggots and chopped worm. While I left the swim to settle I had a cuppa. I then had a couple of casts with a maggot feeder to get some maggots in the swim. I'd misplaced my bait-dropper and this was the only way of getting them down to the bottom with out the minnows and bleak intercepting them.
As usual things hadn't gone as well as I'd hoped. Thirty three fish, plus a few minnows, for five hours fishing. I will get the better of this stretch one day.
Thursday wasn't looking great weather wise. Overcast, drizzly, windy, an easterly at that, but you just never know. I wandered down the stretch a bit to just above a large sweeping bend. The wind wasn't too bad but gusting downstream. A bit of plumbing showed there to be nearly fifteen foot of water. With this in mind I rigged up a 5SSG sliding waggler with a 5g olivette a couple of feet above the hook. The weight should get the double maggot bait past most of the bleak and minnows that tend to appear. Half a dozen tennis ball sized balls of ground bait laced with chopped worm and maggots were flung in with remarkable accuracy. The gudgeon were the first to move onto the bait after a little while.
It was a fish a chuck with a couple of dozen soon amassed. Three or four dace soon followed before it it went quiet. A couple more balls of ground bait wee added. After some adjustment of the depth so that it was fishing over depth a steady precession of hand sized roach. Again as the bites tailed off I put out a couple more balls of groundbait. The next few fish were tiddlers and minnows, before the roach returned.
I then put the kibosh on matters. Having thought to myself that it had been nice not to get pestered by pike the very next roach was grabbed by a pike. After a minute or so of battle it let go of the roach. With no more bites even after fiddling with the depth I hurled in the last of the ground bait. Sone after a rather fine Ruffe turned up.
A bit more depth fiddling followed as I was not getting any more bites. With the bait an inch or two off the bottom. Some thing a bit bigger took the bate. The thump thump as I played it suggested a perch. A rather nice fish of 1lb 7oz. Next cast produced another a couple of ounce bigger. A couple more trots down I hooked another which felt even bigger. Unfortunately it came adrift.
So far this season I've caught the following native species in Yorkshire rivers: Barbel, Bleak, Brown Trout, Bullhead, Chub, Dace, Grayling, Gudgeon, Minnow, Perch, Pike, Roach, Ruffe, Silver Bream, and
Stone Loach.
Those that remain to be caught are: Bronze Bream, Eel, Rudd, Stickleback, and Tench.
I must admit I was surprised I'd not caught a Bronze Bream or an Eel. Although I did hook and eel while nymphing for trout but it dived straight into a morass of weed and never came out. There are a couple of spots that have Rudd in them and Tench can turn up anywhere on most of the rivers. One local river, that I've not fished this season, contains a good head of Tench. First up though was a Bronze Bream, so Thursday i headed out with maggots, worms, and groundbait to see if I could catch one.
I'd made up half the ground bait previously so hauled out a dozen balls, laced with chop worm and maggots, into the river after having had a cast about with a lead to see if there were any snags about. I set up a feeder rod and a waggler rod. I would be mainly feeder fishing but if things got boring I'd have a run through with the float. The first hour was remarkably quiet with jut a couple of very quick bites on the feeder. A change to float quickly produced half a dozen roach and a couple of gudgeon.
Things then went quiet again, so I tossed out half a dozen more bails of groundbait and had lunch leaving the swim to settle. The first bit after lunch came from a 1lb 9oz perch before things went quiet again. Alternating between float and feeder produced the odd bite and chewed maggot but nothing came of it. I'd tried both live and dead maggots, worms, and worm maggot cocktail. With an hour to go before I had to be of the tip pulled round. Something solid had taken the worm. I thought it may be a chub but something felt odd. When I got it to the surface it was a large bream that had got itself wrapped in the line. The little landing net I'd recently acquired wasn't much bigger than the bream. Hauling the fish in sideways and trying to get it into the landing net the hook came adrift. The fish lay there far a little while just beyond the landing net before swimming away. I'm not sure it whether it was foul hooked or not. A little while later the tip pulled over again. This time a it felt like a bream. A reasonable one at that. This time I made no mistakes getting a similar sized fish in to the landing net. 6lb 10oz of bream. one more from the list.
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.
