Sunday 27 October 2013

Calm Before Storm

More river action this week and for the first time in a long while I was greeted with perfect conditions for my intended quarry. Bream have eluded me this year on the river but this time everything seemed stacked in my favour with the river carrying a few inches of extra water, nicely coloured and temperatures on the mild side.

The club stretch I was fishing benefits from being very sheltered when the mild south westerly winds are howling through. Across the river in the distance I could see trees being bashed around, while I sat in a little oasis of tranquility.


I had a good few hours in hand so I gave it the full baiting treatment. Several balls of groundbait laced with casters and some mollasses were plopped into a 10ft deep swim that has thrown up decent bream in the past. I was confident they would show, but it proved to be totally misplaced as I drew a total blank with them yet again.

The coloured water is good for most species and the roach that are often very hard to find to were very obliging. I caught a good number of nice quality fish with the best one falling to a lobworm and just failing to reach the pound barrier at 15oz.


Dace were one a chuck to maggot, but the lobworm sorted out the better fish. The best fish to worm was a perch that went 1lb 9oz, but I managed to make a balls up of the photo. I was trying to be clever with a different angle close to the water and the fish made good its escape.

Despite plenty of fish being caught, I didn't get anything chomped by a pike. I did have one watching me very closely though and it stayed in place for a good part of the session just beneath the landing stage.


One downside to the day was when I was packing up and I heard a splash behind me. I assumed it was a pike, but I was faced with a cormorant. Then another one appeared out of the water. They saw me and flew off upstream. I've never seen any before on this stretch and I'd like to think I won't again. It's currently stuffed with fish though, so I think it's wishful thinking.

With a storm brewing and talk of possible flooding we'll have to see what damage it does to next week's prospects. Hopefully things will settle down by next weekend and I can have another crack at putting my bream hoodoo to bed.

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