How did you get on?

[@Clive]

I was a bit stiff and achy this morning. Not in the Oooh Matron sense I might add. We had the covid jab yesterday, but as Little Wife pointed out I had spent all morning wrestling an 8 metre ladder around a tree that required pruning right back to each bough. So who knows?

Anyway, I set off for one of the big lakes near here. I had used dead rubbis (deep red) gozzers to good effect a fortnight ago and hemp and casters to a lesser effect last week. I had thought that my adding bait using a catty was responsible for them feeding higher in the water column as the days had progressed so I started out with live rubis gozzers on a Drennan maggot feeder rig. Initially I got no bites, but by casting more to the left the roach obliged my double red maggots.

I had put in some ground bait using a catty and added loose maggots to the feeder that was partially taped off to slow the discharge. In the end I didn't need any maggots in the feeder. They were taking the hook bait a few seconds after the empty feeder had landed.

Ended up with about 20 small roach and one skimmer. Some of them jumped out of the net before I took the picture. I couldn't be bothered to put the pike rod out. Early night for me.

 

[terry m]

After several short sessions on the Avon that produced either the odd Jack or nothing at all, I settled down for a few hours this afternoon more in hope than expectation. First rod with a whole herring went out on the crease between the slack and the flow. Before I had set up my second paternoster rod, the pencil flipped and disappeared resulting in a rather nice fish at 13lb 9oz. A second take was dropped, unusual in my experience, but it felt like a worthwhile 3 hours.

 

[chevin4]

I went down to the small stream last week but left the barbel gear behind. I decided to use a maggot small feeder approach and because there was little wind it was nice to be able to break out the trotting rod and fish further down the swim thereby alternating between the two methods. Despite the pleasant conditions it was surprisingly quiet and with a choice of swims i selected one which has produced big roach and dace. I finished up with around 25 fish of 5 different species ie barbel chub dace roach and perch. The roach and perch were alas very small the dace were decent at round 8 to 9oz. The best chub went 4lb and the biggest barbel went 6lb 13oz which gave a good encounter of itself on my 6 weight converted fly rod. Having sat behind 3 behind three tench rods for much of the spring/ summer it was great to float fish again with a free spirit 12ft rod and a centrepin. The centrepin in question is a Seldex and was given to me by an old friend so it was nice to try it out. The reel is not the best for trotting so will probably put some thicker line on it and use it for legering. All in all it was a most enjoyable session no specimens but plenty of action.

 

[Skoda]

Had four days fishing the River Severn last week with a couple of mates. The trip was booked in September and there has been much rainfall since then. I’d been keeping a close eye on the river levels and rainfall forecasts in the Welsh hills and there seemed no respite from near flood conditions. On the brighter side the overnight and daytime temperatures were very good for late November.

Micky, Glen and I arrived midday to a spot a few miles from our riverside accommodation and had our first look at the river; it was ‘hossing’ through. Naturally many of the swims were unfishable, but we settled into ones with a bit of slack water and fished the edge hoping not to get snagged too many times. It rained all afternoon and we blanked.

Next morning, we checked out the river near the digs, still high, probably carrying an extra six foot, and there were only two decent swims in about half a mile of bank. We stuck Glen in the best swim, I took the next one downstream, and Micky roved a bit to try and find something decent. We were all fishing luncheon meat, with loose fed pellets and meat. Surprisingly, Glen caught two barbel around five pounds each in the morning which filled us with renewed hope. I felt I was fishing well but hadn’t had a bite all day, there were no other swims to move to and It would be dark by 4.30, so I hung on.

About ten past four I stood up to throw a few bits of meat and some pellets in. I had my back to the river but, out of the corner of my eye I thought I saw the rod tip jerk over. Dropping everything I picked up the rod and struck. I could tell it was a decent fish as it hugged the bottom dispensing with the usual mighty first run. Normally one of the lads would come to my aid but they were a long way upstream so by the time I was ready to land the fish they were only just turning up, all packed up for the day, it was getting quite dark, but I managed to get the fish in the net and weigh it. 9lb 1oz. The camera seemed to make it look as though it was lighter than it actually was.

The next day we swapped swims, the river was dropping; about a foot over the course of the day, and we felt conditions improving but there were still only two good swims. Micky decided to move from the good spot he was in and fish a dark, slack eddy under an oak tree still in full golden leaf. Glen and I were fishless, but Micky lured a 4½lb chub late in the afternoon.

The final day dawned, and it was my turn to fish the hot swim; it still looked good. I fished hard for three hours alternating small and large pieces of meat, single 8mm pellets or occasional larger 14mm ones. It was a lovely November day, about 13 or 14 degrees.

In a quiet moment the day before I had spent a bit of time digging up a few worms, mainly small but one enormous lobworm. To be honest I’m never very confident with worm, but a change of bait always restores hope, so I pressed on but had no takers; probably didn’t leave it long enough?

For the last hour, in the spirit of desperation, I changed hook link down to 6.4lb fluorocarbon size 14 and hooked the tail of a medium worm hoping to nick a last-minute chub or perch nearer into the bank. I reeled in after fifteen minutes thinking I’d got some leaves on the line only to discover this little fella!

I’ve been fishing for over 55years and never caught a Miller’s Thumb; I’ve estimated it at a quarter of an ounce and is my latest PB. Wikipedia says they are indicators of highly oxygenated water and grow to a maximum of half an ounce. I imagine this one might be struggling given the amount of brown foam on the surface of the river which suggested to us that Severn Trent might taking advantage of the extra water to discharge a bit of emergency sewage.

Three barbel, a chub and a Miller’s thumb. Not a great haul for three blokes, four days on the Severn but the weather was good, and we missed the big freeze-up that’s just started. I’d go again!

Andy

 

[Steve Arnold]

How quickly conditions change on a river! Looking back on my last few posts I caught four barbel when the winter flood dropped a couple of feet (November 20th), then I saved some tiny barbel from a dried-out pool when a section of river drained to the lowest I have seen it in the six years I have lived here. Almost immediately the rains came back and the river is up and running (like a train!) again.

So yesterday fishing buddy Alistair and myself took a look at a few spots along our local stretch of the Lot. It's winter but the sky was blue, though the frost never cleared from shady areas. No rain today!

But we would not fish......

The flow in the main river channel was immense! Should this river state continue much longer I made a mental note to return and fish the top end of the canal that bypasses the Cenevieres weir, I think a deadbait here might get me a pike or silure.....

So no fishing but a plan, that will have to do for this day.

As we returned homewards up the narrow valley of a lovely stream, Le Girou, we took a short detour to its source. Normally there is a bare trickle of water here, though about a kilometre downstream trout are stocked in the Spring. It looked wonderful but I doubt there would be fish there, maybe I should try next year?

The source is about 50 metres above the path in the video, but far too slippery to reach today.

The old source is close by but suffered a rock fall. The cavern had an unfortunate name......

Trou Madame, I think translates to Madams Hole!

No fishing report, but a plan made and an enjoyable mini-adventure on a winters afternoon. Alistair stopped off at my home for an hour and we swapped fishing stories and put a dent in a new bottle of malt whisky.

 

[no-one in particular]

How quickly conditions change on a river! Looking back on my last few posts I caught four barbel when the winter flood dropped a couple of feet (November 20th), then I saved some tiny barbel from a dried-out pool when a section of river drained to the lowest I have seen it in the six years I have lived here. Almost immediately the rains came back and the river is up and running (like a train!) again.

So yesterday fishing buddy Alistair and myself took a look at a few spots along our local stretch of the Lot. It's winter but the sky was blue, though the frost never cleared from shady areas. No rain today!

But we would not fish......

View attachment 28733

The flow in the main river channel was immense! Should this river state continue much longer I made a mental note to return and fish the top end of the canal that bypasses the Cenevieres weir, I think a deadbait here might get me a pike or silure.....



So no fishing but a plan, that will have to do for this day.

I think the bloke swimming with a bucket on his head would have put me off but it is France I suppose, funny old lot the French

 

[@Clive]

That's his pike float.

 

[no-one in particular]

That's his pike float.

Strewth, must be big there.

 

[Ray Roberts]

I set out this morning to fish a nice looking bit of the Medway that I looked at a couple of months back with my granddaughter Lexi. I fished it with lures shortly after but it was quite poor and I only had four perch. It did look nice for float fishing though and there were a few chubby looking swims. With this in mind I took myself off there this morning with the intention of fishin for a few hours into dark. Disaster, the river was raging through and very coloured. It looked like they were doing work on the lock/weir system upstream too. I took this set back stoically and returned to the car. When I finished crying I drove to a different section, but it really didn’t look much better.

I thought I would fish a club lake instead. As I arrived an old boy was in the process of unlocking the gate he had planned on fishing the Eden but thought better of it too. By the time I was set up it was now just after midday. You have to be off before dark so I planned to fish through until 15:15. I had the lake entirely to myself. Bait and gear was a bit limited as I was intending to fish a river for chub. Fortunately I had a couple of insert wagglers in my box and a fixed spool reel. I also had a couple of pints of maggots, which was handy. In just over three hours I had 25 crucians and 19 tench including a small golden tench, which I didn’t know was stocked in there. The crucians were all small as were most of the tench, the best being around the 31/2 pound mark. Forty four fish in three and a quarter hours wasn’t too bad, the air temperature was 6 degrees and the water 5 degrees. I was surprised they fed as well as they did. The old boy fished the adjacent lake. He fed hemp and sweetcorn with sweetcorn on the hook and landed a 22lb carp on his river float rod, 4lb line and a fourteen hook. So at least we both caught something each.

 

[mikench]

A red letter day Ray bearing in mind past and current weather.

 

[Ray Roberts]

Yes Mike, when I saw the state of the river I was half minded to come home. The lake is a nice little fishery there are only crucians and tench in there. I was the only angler fishing it. The fish must have been ravenous.

 

[peterjg]

Last week my son bought me for my birthday an Acolyte feeder rod so last week I fished a small lake to try it out. The fishing was very slow, eventually managed two roach, best bait was dendras.

Yesterday I went pike fishing using deadbaits. One rod legered and the other drifting a small deadbait in 8ft of water just off the bottom. I tried 3 different swims, had no action at all and by 2pm was thinking about packing up when the float rod roared off! I was using my old Century Mk1 Armalite rods with ABU 66 Cardinal reels (one of which I bought new 48 years ago). It was great to feel a decent bend in the rod and I thought that this must be a really big pike, it took ages to land and when I saw it imagine my surprise when it was a linear mirror carp weighing 16lbs 14oz which had somehow got the line tangled around one of its pectoral fins, no where near the trebles! Good fun but not what I was after!

 

[no-one in particular]

Yes Mike, when I saw the state of the river I was half minded to come home. The lake is a nice little fishery there are only crucians and tench in there. I was the only angler fishing it. The fish must have been ravenous.

Hi Ray, I might have shown this before but I cannot remember, it is the Gov river level site for the Medway at Maidstone, this is the level shown this morning but you can see where it was yesterday and it has come down a bit, I actually use one for another river but I often check before fishing to get an idea of the state of the river. I imagine the medway is the same, between .3 and .5 is OK but it starts to get a bit dodgy after that. Now you have an idea of when it is unfishable you can relate that to the chart, here is the link, nice fishing by the way, I have had one tench this year from the canal, struggled all summer so well done. https://check-for-flooding.service.gov.uk/station/1083

 

[Pete Shears]

Nipped up to the local reservoir with the spinning gear after the frost had lifted. All the rain had coloured up the water but there was gorgeous sunshine. Eventually had a jack of about 4lb on a silver Toby.

 

[Ray Roberts]

I checked the river level site for Tonbridge the day before and it looked not too bad. The work they were doing upstream may have had an effect. At least my day wasn’t a complete waste.

 

[Steve Arnold]

With the Lot still at full strength my trips down the valley have been in more of an exploratory nature than for serious fishing. Today Alistair was available with his Freelander so we looked down some tracks along the river that were "out-of-bounds" to my old Peugeot.

But we did wet lines for about two hours at the only sheltered swim I was sure we could get a line into. Even here there was so much debris piling onto our lines you could only keep a bait in for a few minutes before needing to reel in and clear the leaves and twigs that had collected.

Fortunately my double lobworm on a size 4 was taken just a few yards out and a feisty barbel gave me a run around for a few minutes......

This poor fish had taken a battering! Bruised all over (photo is of its good side!) I could only think the floods have washed it over the weirs.

Alistair fished boilies to no effect. I guess the fish have been used to a worm diet with the river up and down several feet many times this last month.

We then looked further downriver for spots we could fish in these poor conditions. Eventually found one at the top of another canal section, that will be explored properly another day.

 

[nottskev]

I've been cowering inside for the last week or more, but I could see the prospects of getting out next week weren't good so today I bit the bullet. With the river in the fields and the level reported as 2.9m ( normal around 1m) I drove down with some trepidation, thinking I might have got up early, defrosted the bait, packed the car and driven 15 miles for nothing. I was relieved to find the marina wasn't entirely underwater and the one fishable swim was empty.

The forecast said 8 or 9c, which is comfortable, but it wasn't that warm at 8.30 am, and the high water was very cold, a mixture of snow melt and yesterday's pouring rain. It took an hour or so to get bites from the swim fed with groundbait and maggots, but I caught a few nice perch over the next hour, while dripping hemp and tares further out for the roach. When I went out after roach at 10.30, they were there but hard to hook

Swapping between hemp and tares 3 rods out and maggots down the side, the session limped along. But the wind was chilly, the fish weren't too keen, and when it started to rain at 2pm I opted to call it a day

 

[flightliner]

Lovely catch kev, well done!

 

[Peter Jacobs]

Nice session Kev.

 

[peterjg]

That's a really gokd catch in these difficult weather conditions. Even darn sarf on Tuesday the water temperature was only 41F.