 |
| Tim was catching lots of these nice little perch and a few roach of similar size |
Tim let me through the gates to our private stretch of the river (Sorry, can't help rubbing it in!) and I parked up in front of his garage. The drive is only just big enough to get the Transit round the corner at the bottom of the ramp - I told him to get a bigger place. No point in having private access to the river if I have to work hard to get the van in there... I dunno, can't get the brother's these days!
First job was to walk down the road and buy some maggots. Yes 'walk' down the road, the tackle shop is a few hundred yards away. If I had written a brief for a place to live, this would have been it. We strolled back to the river and put the maggots to one side to warm up while we got the dropshot gear out and had another go at fooling the perch. Again, just like the last time, straight dropshotting off the jetties was not working. We were getting knocks but I think we need to try some smaller hooks. I had lots of ideas I wanted to try out but, I think I had confused myself and decided to keep it simple. After all, we have plenty of time to experiment.
We spent a good few hours fishing the river, while listening to the Footie. There was hardly any flow on the water and at times it was like a mill pond. Lots of fish were showing and several jumped clear of the water. After the dropshotting I decided to have a go at slider float Fishing. I was playing with that while the other bloke opted to try the waggler in a spot he found that was only six feet deep. The slider float was a bit strange and did not sink as I thought it should. Thinking about it, maybe I should have used a heavier ledger weight. Some more research prior to the next session is required here, me thinks.
Cheesed off with the slider float fishing, I tried catching up-in the-water using a float and a slow sinking bait - single maggot. I could see the fish but they were just looking at the hook bait. I then thought I might as well have a go at feeder fishing using a swim-feeder stuffed with maggots. I have never tried this before. I persevered with this for most of the afternoon, changing my hook length from time to time. I discovered that if I dunked the feeder in a tub of water before casting, the maggots quieten down a bit and fewer were skydiving in a bid for freedom on the way to their destination.
Tim was catching fish, I was not. It was so hot, even in the shade, that the magic was wearing a bit thin as Tim was continually announcing "Got another one!" It is hard to smile and congratulate while grinding one's teeth.
Around 19:00 we wandered in doors where Tim's better half had cooked us some dinner. Fish and chips! I am wondering if she thought this was funny. After dinner we wondered back out into the garden (as you can when you have a river at the bottom of it - jammy beggar!) and decided we would try a spot of dropshotting again. Again, neither of us caught anything except a really nice snag that broke my hook and kept my wriggly plastic worm.
It was so hot out there that we did not get around to fishing off the concrete jetty and to be honest, the footie was distracting us somewhat. At the end of the day, I tried several different techniques and while Tim was catching fish, I was not...
Plenty of time to get this sorted. In the meantime, Tim will be feeding the swim regularly to encourage the fish to come and play. Next time, I hope it is a bit cooler as it was very warm there yesterday. So much so I was not feeling 100% at one point and went back to the garage for a cool off! Roll on next time.
Ralph.
