Sunday 7 December 2014

A cold biting wind and low temps - grayling time

Woke up this morning, with my alarm going off at 6.00, with a killer headache, blocked nose and sore throat - man flu....."potentially life threatening" I thought, so went back to sleep. After a good sleep in, I earned some brownie points by making a bunk bed for the kids and, at 1pm, left for the river. After getting there, I realised that my bait was tucked nicely away in the bottom of the fridge - crap. Drove back home, then back to the river, now 2pm.

Set up and wading for half past 2, I was using a drennan floatmaster, cheap centrepin, 3.2lb drennan floatfish, to a size 18 kamasan animal. Tactic was to wade a couple of feet downstream after every trot, with a pint of maggots in a bait pouch. For the short space of time I was there I was getting a bite every other cast or so, nothing special but a bend in the rod at least. I had about 15 grayling in the end (by the time it was too dark to see my float), with not one dropped. I'll be back after pike or chub next week (or even carp if the temps are decent), just fancied a quick change with a few bites after getting one fish in the last two sessions. Wind by the way - was awful. My hands were hurting by the end of it 







4 comments:

  1. Hi I am looking for some advice on where to grayling fish on the tees around darlington, please could you give me some advice

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    1. Hi thomas. At this time of year the grayling are well spread down to about Middleton one row area. Trot a float down any decently fast run and you should get a grayling or two. They tend to shoal further upstream in the oxygenated water during summer, but migrate down to deeper mid reaches in winter.

      Are you in any clubs? If not, the free stretches at croft and broken scar should produce for you. Trickle in plenty of bait, and use a float suitable for the flow (bulk the shot down in fast water).

      Cheers

      Jim

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  2. Cheers Jim, I have just joined the darlington brown trout club, but have yet to fish any stretches, keep up the blog really enjoying it,hope to see you down there

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    1. Ah well that's ideal! I'm in DBT myself, you won't go far wrong fishing the bits near coniscliffe. Have you tried lane fox at all? I was wanting to give it a try for carp, but don't know how many are in there. You'll have to give me a shout sometime, get out grayling fishing before season ends

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