Tuesday 17 June 2014

The river is open! A day on the stick float

The alarm was set for 3.30am- but I was awake from 3.00am. I had a bit of a journey ahead of me, with the walk to the peg being more than a mile away from the nearest parking spot, I could more or less guarantee I wouldn't see anybody else on the river. 

Usually on opening day, I get all excited, lob a big pellet in knowing that I'm guaranteed a tees barbel, and end up blanking. So this season, I decided to guarantee some sort of success by fishing the stick. Tackle was a drennan acolyte, Preston pxr 3000 reel, and 4.9lb supplex (as I was hoping to hook to decent chub), to a size 18 kamasan b911x. I had brought 3 pints of maggots and 2 of caster. 



It didn't take long to start catching roach and dace, and this seemed to be all I was catching for an hour or two. I decided to step up the feed, feeding a dozen maggots before, during and at the end of each trot. This had the desired effect, and a nice 1lb grayling was soon in the net. This was released back into the river rather than kept in the net...



This was followed by more dace and roach, and the odd decent perch. 

I wanted some chub, and the maggot didn't seem to be working. I decided to stop casting for half an hour and trickle in a pint of casters gradually. First cast through, and the plan clearly worked as I struck into something solid and determined. A 4lb 3oz chub...



No more chub were forthcoming, so a switch back to maggot soon had grayling, trout, perch, dace and roach in the net. 




A switch back to caster again, after half an hour of baiting, brought 2 more chub, one of them 4lb 3oz the other about 2lb. Fought brilliantly on the float rod. 



And after more dace, perch and roach, I decided to call it a day at about 2pm. I finished off with 22lb 4oz of fish, which to me is a good river weight. Really enjoyed being back on the river. 





The long walk home.....


1 comment:

  1. Hi, could you maybe describe where you are fishing as I am looking.for nee stretches of the river tees to fish

    Tight lines

    ReplyDelete