Had an absolute cracker on the river today in terms of the silvers.
I was picked up by a mate at 6.15am and we were on the river around half an hour later and a new stretch to both of us which was a bit of a hunch that eventually, after some work, came good.
I took a downstream swim where I trotted double red maggot in an eight foot gulley right off of the rod tip in some extremely pacey water and my mate was two swims upstream where he sat it out on his usual two rod barbel approach which, unfortunately, resulted in a blank for him last weekend.
I was quite surprised by the depth and given the pace of the river in that particular area a bit daunted too as I wondered how on earth I would get loose fed maggots down to feeding depth within a practical trotting distance and I almost didn’t even bother setting up the light stick float rig but I did anyway, opting for an 8 x no.4 Dave Harrell dome top wire stem shotted throughout with no.4’s instead of the usual lighter droppers over the last eighteen inches but this rod stayed on the bank in preference to a 4grm Avon on the heavy float rod with 3 SSG bulk shot around eighteen inches from the hook and a BB dropper halfway between.
The fish certainly weren’t there in any great numbers to begin with and a few trots through produced no response until the regular feed began to make an impression but bizarrely for this type of swim a change to the lighter stick float rod made an immediate impression with a “chub a chuck” succumbing to the lighter, finer presentation.
I should actually say “chublet” instead of chub.
After some faffing with depth and feeding as far upriver as I could throw I found that the fish were taking around six rod lengths from where the feed was going in and around eighteen inches off bottom at that but once I had got it right it was several hours of silver bliss as even the stamp size of 2oz put a bend in the rod extending into the middle section, such was the pace of the flow.
Barring a handful of other species which included a couple of perch, a dace and a handful of roach I must have had three hundred chublets and along with a bonus chub of around two pounds which really gave me value for money I think I easily had 40lb of silvers off the river.
I did hit one fish which I suspect was a very big chub except there was no head shaking at all, just a casual kite into midstream where we then played a game of deadlock as I was maxed out and the fish was just pumping and holding its own in the strong flow before I got impatient and put a bit too much on it which resulted in my size 16 pulling out.
As for my mate?
Well, he’d had a slow morning and had invested heavily in feeding via a bait dropper for the very first time and he ended up with seven barbel to 9lbs and his best day on the river this season which I was absolutely made up about as I sensed he was becoming a bit dejected after his blank last week and a lean period prior to it.
Fish galore, an altercation with paddlers reported elsewhere on the forum, a river rising rapidly towards the end of the session and the icing on the cake after I had packed up and made my way to my mates swim and produced two cans of San Miguel which were an impulse addition to my bag earlier that morning, to say the look of disbelief on his face was similar to that of a parched man in a desert is an understatement.
It’s never dull, is it? :w
mg
