Tough Day on a New Waterway

After some very contrasting temperatures of late and some rainfall, myself and Mark Erdwin decided to rove a new waterway. This particular one I have been rather keen to wet a line on for a while. My chosen tactic to begin with was my bog-standard breadflake approach with a small cage feeder, as the river was carrying a nice green tinge. We worked our way upstream until reaching the end of the section - this consisted of a nice bridge structure leading into a pool which looked a perfect holding area for chub. I casted my breadflake offering towards the slack and let it swing midstream. As expected with bread, I got a pretty instant response. A few proper jaggedy taps on the tip and I struck into a perfectly marked little wild brownie. Not the target species, but a start on the new waterway. We ventured on downstream, typical roving style, and realised the river's colour was dropping out by the minute. It now seemed as if conditions were far from straight forward, coupled with a very narrow river consisting of soft banks. I followed Mark's lead and switched to the link leger to trundle about in some of the deeper swims sticking with the flake approach. Mark had fished some very likely looking areas with his lobworm offering, and it wasn't long until I heard him calling me just downstream. I ran into his swim and heard his drag absolutely screaming. It turned out to be a lovely marked little pike which had sucked in his lobworm. 

A toothy surprise for Mark!

After roving some nice swims, we reached a nice deep bend which Mark informed me he had sighted some roach on a past recce. Mark kindly gave me a couple of lobworms, and after missing a bite which was a few sharp taps on the worm, I casted out again and had another delicate bite. The culprit was a tiny little, very lean perch. After leap-frogging a few more pools and glides, with no response of any sort for either of us, my eyes were suddenly greeted with a lovely looking pool. I had a good feeling about the swim instantly. After throwing in some liquidised bread, I casted the link leger into a nice slack. As I was putting the rod on the rest, I felt the rod thud violently. I struck and was into a very nice fish indeed. Unfortunately I was a bit slow to adjust my drag and after watching a gold flank wallow on the surface the line parted at the hook. It was pretty wounding as that was my first full blown take of the day and I was sure I had lost a good chub. After casting a few times back into the same sort of area and missing three bites on the bread, on a switch to cheesepaste I connected with a good fish. The same gold flank broke the surface before lashing on the surface and diving back down. It was at this point, I knew what I had hooked into. It was a stunning and rather large brown trout.

A Stunning 3-14 Golden Brown Trout

As people who know me will know very well, I am not a great lover of catching trout on coarse tackle, but I felt as this one was an absolute stunner, that I had to go and get Mark. It was no surprise with how greedy trout can be to have found the size 10 hook in its lip that I lost, as I unhooked the fish. We very quickly put the fish on the scales and took a few lovely photographs of this absolute stunner (Mark doing the honours with his lovely camera) before I safely returned her to her watery home. We carried on trying all the likely looking areas up until 7pm, but apart from one vicious, uncommitted enquiry on Mark's rod, it was one of the days where the chub eluded us. Although it was slightly disappointing that we didn't see a single sign of a chub, nor connect with one, this is, I feel, what makes small rivers so exciting: the uncertainty of a new waterway, how the certain day and its conditions may have affected the fishing, as well as the overall populous of chub in this certain section of water, as well as distribution and recruitment of the fish in general.

Even though the target species did not make an appearance, it was nice to have caught some fish between us from the waterway, and as always, enjoy fishing with Mark's great company.

Tight Lines,

Tom Aldous

Would certainly love to have this one on the fly rod!