How did you get on?

[jon atkinson]

Having not fished at all in December, I've been taking advantage of being off work for the first 2 weeks of the year - mostly lures on the canal, which has been disappointing with only a few jacks with an equal number of blanks, but today is another day so fingers crossed.

Yesterday, the stars finally aligned for a river session with my occasional fishing buddy & former work mate, Thomo. He's a fluff chucker by choice (a discipline that I intend to get back into this year) and we went to fish one of his club's stretches of the upper Ribble at Sawley, which is a spectacularly beautiful part of the World.

The plan was to trot for Greyling; armed with maggots, worms and waders, the river looked spot on, it was chilly and overcast and there was nobody else in sight. Started on maggots running through at about 3' without so much as a sniff for the first hour so switched to worm, but they weren't having that either!

Finally, Thomo got one - a brownie of perhaps 1.5lb, but then nothing for either of us. After another half an hour & having seen a couple of trout taking off the top, Thomo succumbed and went back to his car for the fly rod that resides in his boot. I switched back onto maggots and shortly after he returned I had a Greyling of about 1lb with a small brownie shortly after.

Nothing for Thomo on the fly rod and the Siren call from the Spread Eagle (pub) was getting louder when on my second to last run through a had a better Brownie, maybe a little over 1lb, so not a red letter day, but very enjoyable none-the-less.

I was trying Edge Tackle's 3lb floating mono on the 'pin for the first time - I'm no expert when it comes to trotting, but I thought that it 'behaved' really well in conjunction with a 4g Drennan loafer.

 

[nottskev]

Good for you, Jon! A bit of weight like that helps a pin work well. I won't be surprised to read you're looking to buy one; they're quite addictive and not just for trotting. Iirc, you can get day tickets for below the bridge at Bangor on Dee at the Post Office on the same road - less than an hour from the Wirral - and you can fish for grayling from the bank.

 

[jon atkinson]

Good for you, Jon! A bit of weight like that helps a pin work well. I won't be surprised to read you're looking to buy one; they're quite addictive and not just for trotting. Iirc, you can get day tickets for below the bridge at Bangor on Dee at the Post Office on the same road - less than an hour from the Wirral - and you can fish for grayling from the bank.

I purchased an inexpensive model from someone on here a few years ago Kev, just don't get to use it on a river as often as I'd like. My club has access by affiliation to a lovely stretch of the Dee just downstream from Bangor on Dee which has plenty of Grayling as well as some decent Chub & Dace but it's a 3 hour round trip and the host of gates that you go through makes it better visited with a companion, both factors limiting the opportunities to visit.

The club has also just purchased a stretch just outside Holt, but this is more Chub, Dace & Roach territory, with hopefully a few Barbel too... I might have to relocate!!

 

[nottskev]

I was going to settle for watching Everton/Villa when I thought, given I can record it, it would be a waste of a still, mild afternoon. If the snow they keep predicting ever arrives, I won't be out fishing so carpe diem (nothing to do with carp). The fish on my local small river are clustered around the z bends that punctuate long shallow, empty stretches (if you plan to rove it, you need a car) and there's one double bend covered in hawthorns that screams fish, but it's guarded by a herd of dodgy-looking cows that hang around the access - a motorway underpass - like teenagers, smoking weed, graffiti'ing the tunnel etc. I reckoned with the recent floods, they'd have been moved, so I headed there. The field was indeed empty, but there are still pools in the field and the churned up mud was just impossible to get through. I was on my backside twice before I got near the underpass. So, it was back to a couple of less promising but drier swims.

Fishing flake or bits of flavoured meat on a 2AAA link leger rolled into all the likely spots got me three bites. Two chublets and one modest but immaculate chub

All this, and two matches to watch, and the beef stew I made yesterday just needs warming up.

 

[jon atkinson]

Had a couple of hours on the cut at Maghull with the lure rod yesterday afternoon - 2 small jacks which given performances thus far this winter is a result!

 

[riverman]

had a decent day at raker lakes (near york) on saturday,fished highbank lake peg 19.fished legered luncheon meat and set pole up with maggots.ended up with 25 roach and 5 perch on the pole and 2 carp on the leger biggest being around the 5lb mark.when the sun came out it was quite pleasant.so nice to be out on the bank as my previous outing was last september.

 

[nottskev]

The little brook that turned up a couple of roach and chub at the height of the floods was a foot down on that level yesterday, and I'd found another swim I wanted to try. In a long stretch a foot or less deep, this swim has three feet running down to a huge raft like a stork's nest. Must be a fish or two under there, surely?

With the 7' rod fitting under the branches I could run a little clear Loafer right to where it was stopped against the raft, but neither bread nor worm got a bite. That's got this year's blank out of the way, he said hopefully.

 

[jon atkinson]

That's fishing Kev! We're only just over 2 weeks in & I've had at least 3 blanks with the lure rod already!!

 

[jon atkinson]

Make that 4... although the canal was largely frozen over so can't really count that as a proper 'session'! Decided to try my luck on the Alt seeing as I was out anyway. Not an easy river for someone with my lack of balance to fish at the best of times, but with the steep banks still very muddy, there were precious few spots were I could safely access, so my ongoing blank with my local river continues!

 

[Hugh Bailey]

Good effort though. Sort of glad I have to work in the warm at the moment- not sure I would be venturing out if not!

 

[Alan Whitty]

Still, you could be open water swimming like some morons on anglia news this evening, absolute fffffffing madness, I suggest they try it tonight across the channel, humph....

 

[John Aston]

Why call them morons? It's increasingly popular, harms no-one and apparently gives real health benefits. Good luck to them .

 

[Alan Whitty]

I think trying to encourage the general public into swimming in water around 1.5°c is moronic, there is no health benefit of a heart attack last time I looked, one lady when asked what she gained replied she felt refreshed afterwards, she didn't tell everyone she was wearing a dry suit, the benefits are there for relatively fit people, who is going to health check them to see if they could survive the ordeal, also a statement from a good longstanding mate of mine, 'everyone is a moron until they prove different', something he brought up during covid, i thought it was harsh, but after what I saw then I had to agree...

 

[nottskev]

It was the hardest frost yet this morning, but I reckoned, with the heated gilet and some new Japanese thermals, it would be tolerable in the sun between 11am and 3pm. I really wanted to go up into the hills where the Derwent trout and grayling are more abundant, but the forecast temperatures were even lower up there, so I went just topside of Derby. An EA team was hard at work, apparently removing flood debris from around a bridge

I set up about 200 yds upstream. I chose a swim on an inside bend with a nice crease to have the option of slower or quicker water.

I started, optimistically, with a little maggot feeder with chopped worm and worm on the hook just into the faster water, but that didn't get a bite, so the rest of the time I fished straight lead, 2AAA, around the crease, loose feeding maggots. It was hard going and most of the bites came when I picked up the catty. Or blinked. If you've fished this style, you'll know what I mean. I started with worm on a 12 to .14 - there are some big trout - but swapped to an 18 on .10. I finished up with 4-5lb of little grayling, trout, roach and chublets, not much, but it felt like a triumph, given it was so bloody cold and the bites were completely unpredictable. These were the outstanding specimens

 

[Ray Roberts]

I fished the Medway at Hartlake Bridge. It looked good but the water temperature was down to 2.5 degrees, which is probably the coldest I’ve fished. The air temperature was hovering around zero for most of the day. Not one bite between my mate and I. I fished hard for the entire day for zilch. I bumped into two other anglers who also blanked.

On the plus side my new boots were good, my feet were warm all day, Grubb Snowline 8.5.

 

[John Aston]

I think trying to encourage the general public into swimming in water around 1.5°c is moronic, there is no health benefit of a heart attack last time I looked, one lady when asked what she gained replied she felt refreshed afterwards, she didn't tell everyone she was wearing a dry suit, the benefits are there for relatively fit people, who is going to health check them to see if they could survive the ordeal, also a statement from a good longstanding mate of mine, 'everyone is a moron until they prove different', something he brought up during covid, i thought it was harsh, but after what I saw then I had to agree...

Well, it obviously makes you feel better to sneer and belittle other people's pastime ,one genuinely enjoyed by increasing numbers of people . As for your friend's comment on the human condition ...it perhaps says a little more about him than his fellow citizens.

 

[Alan Whitty]

I liquidised some bread today with the thoughts of going, but in reality the water temperatures are too low for the effort required....

 

[Alan Whitty]

Well, it obviously makes you feel better to sneer and belittle other people's pastime ,one genuinely enjoyed by increasing numbers of people . As for your friend's comment on the human condition ...it perhaps says a little more about him than his fellow citizens.

If you cannot see the foolishness in the general public being encouraged to swimming in such conditions it would be better to ignore me as I will you please...

 

[@Clive]

Not me, but I thought that I would share my friend's last session on Saturday night. He had set up to fish all night in a quiet part of the Humber estuary. It was -1C so he was a bit surprised to encounter a spice addict in gear more suited for summer apparently looking for someone. Less than an hour later another one appeared. Then he was approached by someone simillarly ill clad who was off his head with drugs and demanding that my mate call the police. Alex sat him down, gave him a cup of coffee and made the call. The operator told him to keep the bloke with him and not to ldt him leave. Apparently there was an air / sea search going on for him as they thought that he had gone into the water. Within minutes a RNLI RIB was churning up his swim, followed by the Coastguard helicopter with its Night Sun light shining down. That was followed by half a dozen bobbies who had to climb the wall that Alex takes a ladder to negotiate from where he parks his car. At least the ladder was on the right side of the wall for them to get Laddo over on the way back.

He only had one bite, missed it then tripped and fell flat on his face on the concrete jetty.

 

[nottskev]

I've got things to do tomorrow, Wednesday and Thursday (cat-sitting, pub lunch with friend, hospital apt) so it had to be today, gusty winds notwithstanding. It was several degrees warmer than Friday's outing, so I drove up into Derbyshire to a deep stretch in a steep-sided valley. It was 50/50 if the stretch would be sheltered or funnelling the wind worse, and luckily, aside from a few hang on to your hat blasts upstream and downstream, it wasn't too bad. People usually leger or feeder the stretch, but I've been fishing like that all month and enough's enough, so, with 11'or 12' of water pushing through under my rod tip, I set up a 15' rod and a top and bottom slider. The float was a vintage item - a 5AAA balsa that I've been carrying around unused since I bought it in 1995. So if anybody asks, why do you need all that gear, you don't even use most of it?, the answer is, get it in perspective; it can take up to thirty years to know what you need.

The logo on the float's a bit faded, but I think it's an Ultra. Was that Billy Lane's brand?

A 4.5g olivette and a couple of droppers cocked it perfectly, and I was impressed with the way it bossed the conditions. The fish were less impressed, unfortunately. No grayling today, and no coarse fish. If only this river hadn't lost it's coarse stocks. I got six bites in three and a half hours, and they were all trout (I'm not complaining - lovely fish) and the top one was the biggest, the bottom one the prettiest