Three weeks have slipped on by since my last post and my fishing has been very much on hold. I fell foul of a very nasty bug a couple of weeks ago that completely wiped out a whole weekend for me.
Around the same time my Mondeo developed an engine management fault completely out of the blue. The repair costs are too high for what the car is worth, so it's being written off. For now I'm relegated to car sharing with my wife which means that I can't just head off when it suits me.
With the car situation I was in, I decided to avoid last week's sleety/snowy conditions, despite the river being somewhere near normal. I decided to get further ahead with decorating the house, which is time well spent if it frees me up for fishing when some half decent weather eventually arrives.
The thought of having three weekends off fishing was a bit too much to contemplate, so I managed to squeeze in a quick session at Ryton Pool. Prior to the session I'd been down to the fishing show at the Ricoh Arena. Once again it was a very decent show with a good range of goods and I stocked up on plenty of smaller items. A fair amount it will no doubt end up in the River Wye later in the year!
Back to the fishing and I had been dropped off by my wife on her way to visit family in Rugby. It was a weird feeling as it's the first time in my life that I've ever been dropped off for fishing and just left to get on with it. When you normally have the scope to drive to another venue at will and to choose when you leave, it's a culture shock to know that you're in one place for a set time. On this occasion the weather was good and the session was only going to be 3-4 hours, so I knew I'd be happy enough anyway. I really want another car soon though!
Given the short session I decided to go for Pike. Ryton can be a tough nut to crack and my two previous efforts to catch one of its big Pike have failed miserably. This session was to end in the same fate. I worked hard and alernated deadbaits between 2 rods, working my way around a large amount of water over 3 pegs. I didn't have a sniff of a fish.
Barry the bailiff popped by and took delight in showing me various pictues of upper double figure Pike he'd taken this season. It's good to talk to someone with reliable information and just knowing that the pool does still hold fish into the low 20s is a confidence booster. He did say he'd blanked on his last 3 visits though, which again shows that the pool is not easy to crack.
Looking at the week ahead it looks like we're heading into a slightly drier period for once. As I write this, the river is already starting to fine down (about 1ft up on the stretch I normally fish) and it should be bang on at some point in the next few days. Hopefully it will be in decent nick for next weekend, as time is now running out for the rivers.
I can't recall such a lengthy spell of dire fishing conditions for quite some time. Looking back at my posts, I've only managed 4 sessions on the river since the end of October. I managed more than that in January alone last year!
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