Tag Archives: river fishing

Well, after my last post virtually declaring September as a “lost month” as far as my fishing results were concerned, a good fish comes along and gives me a slightly more rose-tinted view of September 2010 after all! I travelled a little farther afield than usual and endured a gruelling day fishing for perch, with very disappointing results. The weather was overcast all day, the river was fairly clear and to be honest, I considered the conditions to be perfect for perch fishing.  However, the closest I came to catching a big perch was a missed take on a spinner early on, which felt like a perch and also felt heavy. Then an hour later I was lure fishing in a shallow, gravelly run when I got an amazing follow. The bow-wave created was huge! It zig-zagged behind my lure and took one final swipe, but missed. I’m pretty sure I saw the mouth of a perch as it made that final grab and I’m also sure that a pike would have had the small lure well down its throat long before that anyway! After a few hours of throwing lures around and failing to catch even a micro-perch, I …

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Since my last post I’ve fished a few times but it’s been pretty slow going.  Just last night I went Zander fishing and ended up with an 8lb pike and lost a good fish, which may well have been a zed, but I’ll never know… This follows an all-day barbel session last week with friends Craig and Kev.  I fished all day on a prolific stretch of the Trent and despite trying all sorts of baits, fining down, stepping up to a 6 foot hooklength and even trying single maggot hookbaits, I didn’t even get a sniff of a barbel.  I caught a couple of dace when fishing maggot (on a 2.25lb TC barbel rod, size 16 hook and 14lb mainline!), which is a species I haven’t caught since I don’t know when. I even spotted a pike swim towards a plastic bag which was fluttering downstream.  It then proceeded to follow it downstream, deciding whether or not to strike at it!  Interesting to see such behaviour, but it was a stark reminder just what harm our rubbish can potentially do to our wildlife and with the pike season just around the corner (come on frosts!), please take care with your …

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Well, after a couple of weeks off – first being away on holiday (rarely, without any tackle!), then attending the Leeds Festival for the August bank holiday weekend – I have done very little fishing of late.  However, during the week before I went on holiday, I managed a couple of sessions which saw me bank a few good fish… Firstly, I targeted barbel and although I managed to lose two fish in a snag, once I’d switched to using “hit and hold” tactics with a single rod, I managed to extract this excellent 9lb 5oz barbel.  Check out the way its tail fin is so long that it arcs over at the top, like the dorsal fin of an Orca Whale! The following evening I had a couple of hours to lure fish for perch – just before sunset – and although conditions were difficult, I did land a few good fish in the shape of a 2lb 12oz perch, a 2lb 5oz perch and – just as I thought I’d spooked the remainder of the fish in the swim – my first 3lb+ perch of the season at 3lb 1oz… Perch shown in capture order: 2lb 12oz 2lb …

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After a few Summers of catching a decent number of 2lb+ perch on lures I decided it was time for a slightly different kind of challenge. I would still visit my favourite Summer swims which took many blank sessions to find, but now I know where the perch are at this time of year they’ve been very reliable and with only a few repeat captures. The main difference is that instead of conventional lure fishing (which I’m fairly proficient at), I would try for them with a discipline which I’m far more clumsy and out of practice with; fly fishing. I asked my good friend and fly fishing instructor, Kevin Miles, to tie me up some flies replicating perch fry, after seeing a good perch spit one out in my landing net a few weeks ago. The resulting flies – tied onto size 2 Nash Fang hooks – were really good too! I should have really taken some photos of them before I started destroying them by hurling them into undergrowth and such like! I was using my Fox Predator XS fly rod, which I bought when it was on offer a couple of years ago and it’s been gathering dust since, …

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I recently captured my best-ever chub brace, landing this 5lb 2oz specimen (left), followed by a 4lb 8oz fish while I was setting up my camera! I risked life & limb to land the latter fish, because I was fishing a peg with a very steep – almost vertical – bank leading down to the water. I wanted to rest the chub in my landing net, in the margins, but as this wasn’t possible where I was fishing, I took the net and fish a couple of swims downstream where the margins were shallow and calm. As I was setting up the self-timer function on my camera, the alarm on my other rod screamed!  I was left to battle the fish in a deep, fast-water peg with no landing net! Standing between me and the net were 3 trees, overhanging the water. There was no way over or around them, so I had to (in the dark), scale the steep bank, test the margin depth with my toe whilst holding onto a tree with one hand and the rod in the other. Luckily there was a narrow, rocky ledge about a foot under the water, so I slowly shuffled along this, negotiated the trees and a …

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Although I caught my first barbel from the Trent and my second came from the Derwent, my third and probably the next forty-odd were all River Dove barbel. It’s the place I spent my most formative barbel angling years to date and it’s a river which, although a tough nut to crack at times, I will always hold dear when it comes to summer barbel fishing. The beauty of the river certainly helps; it abounds with wildlife and the combination of gravel runs, streamer weed, gnarled overhanging trees and numerous intriguing twists and turns, make the Dove constantly fascinating. It’s a special river. Andrew’s rods await the interests of a Barbel at sunset on the River Dove I’ve held various tickets for stretches of the Dove and I’ve had varying results from them. Some stretches hold numbers of fish in the 4lb to 8lb bracket with the odd larger fish; others are more famed for elusive but hefty specimens. Due to struggling early-season on the Trent and Derwent in recent years, I decided to give the Dove a go at a narrow stretch, which happened to be the first I’d fished, back in 2003. This would “ease me in gently”, …

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How great it’s been to sit by a river in this glorious heat to while away an evening or two!  After such a cold, long, snowy winter I’m not really surprised that the extremes of weather have gone full circle and now some of the reservoirs are dangerously empty!  Normally with such dry and bright conditions the fishing is difficult but I’ve either been doing something really right (granted, I have changed a lot of my setup) or I’ve been extremely lucky (or more probably a bit of both) in my first couple of sessions of the season. I fished last Tuesday & Wednesday evenings on the River Dove for my first sessions of the new season and unusually, I managed to hit the ground running!  The first evening I only had a couple of hours fishing because I was so disorganised, I didn’t cast a line until half past 9!  The very first cast I had some tip rattles on my upstream rod which seemed like a bite given by a chub mouthing the bait.  After the bite continuing for a good few seconds I struck but failed to connect.  Next cast, a similar but more forceful bite resulted in a …

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As day was breaking I arrived at the Reading & District AA car park and was sorting through my worms as Will pulled up. Will Barnard not only has a string of massive perch to his name, he is also the angling development officer for Reading, a bailiff and coach for RDAA and is a founding member of a small specimen group based around Reading called SAS Angling! Over the past year, you may have also seen him feature in one or two of Ian Welch’s articles in Anglers Mail too…  Right from the off I got on really well with Will, who’s a genuine, amiable chap, not to mention knowledgeable! My first glimpses of the Kennet gave me instant optimism and I couldn’t wait to get set-up.  It was slightly couloured and with plenty of perchy features.   We set up in a shady area of overhanging near-bank trees, which provided the margins with some shade as the sun rose behind us. The roots were quite terrifying to offer a bait towards, but they were blatant perch (and chub!) holding features.  Before long, Will was getting bites which he was suspicious of.  Eventually after an aggressive tap on the rod tip, …

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Firstly, I have to say it was great to just get a few days out on the bank at last!  For me, 4 full days fishing out of 14 is quite rare (if only it wasn’t!), and I managed to actually relax into the fishing; not so-much-so that I wasn’t thinking about what I could do to improve my chances (which, incidentally, I mainly concluded was very little!), but enough to actually enjoy just being there. So, on to what I actually did…  I had two days fishing for perch on the rivers before they closed which – I suppose due to a combination of the size prospects at this time of year, the fact that most of my winter fishing revolves around toothier predators and also because perch are one of my favourite species – has become a bit of a tradition for me over the last few years. So far an unsuccesful tradition, but this year had to be different. For starters, last season I baited up a swim to return to later only to find upon my return that another angler had taken that peg (which there is nothing wrong with, it was only through satisfying my …

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Well, the end of the traditional close season is almost upon us. I had the rare chance to go fishing twice last week and for the first trip I decided to follow my own yearning for a return to the Lincs drains (they can be frustrating at times and I hear many reports of fish thefts and that they’re not what they once were, but I just love fishing them!) for a final try for a pike before the rivers & drains close on the 14th. I made the 70 mile trip East and checked a few of my favourite places out, before settling on a very shallow drain, carrying only 18 inches of water down the centre. The weather had turned and was much sunnier than we’ve experienced for months. This wasn’t ideal because bright weather can put fish off the feed. On the other hand, the water was in need of warming up, so surely the sun couldn’t do too much harm for my day fishing. Plus, there were clouds dotted around and I have noticed pike and perch launch attacks on sunny days, just seconds after the sun goes behind a cloud – as if they have been patiently poised, …

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