Moving To The River?

Since my last post I have been enjoying my fishing so much that everything else has taken a back seat including my youtube and this blog, to which a apologise. My predator fishing exploits have been gaining in frequency and as I said in my last post they have been all I can think about. One thing that has changed however is I am no longer only thinking about Pike, my obsession is growing at a extreme rate and has moved on now from Pike to all predatory fish, I have even found myself wondering about things like Wrasse. That being said I have found myself wanting nothing more than to get on down the river and have myself a lovely river fish, as many of you may know river fishing is really only something I tried for the first time last year, it was something new to me and for that reason it was something I was really enjoying but at the same time frustrated me no end. I was struggling to come to terms with a lot of things I find basic when targeting a still water, even things such as plumbing up and feeding were something I had a hard time getting my head around, this to many of you might seem a bit ridiculous but I'm nothing but honest about these things. The main reason for the need to go river fishing and the obvious one is that it is now June and to many that is the month they are all waiting for and the 16th in particular. For me this day meant the opportunity to fish for all sorts of different species and as a budding specimen angler the pull and attraction of these fish was massive. I went out on the magical day in search of a big Roach this however was brought to a swift end due to a inconsiderate thunder storm that decided to roll in and spoil the day resulting in things starting were they left off at the end of the season and me drawing a blank. Only 2 days later and I was off down a different stretch of the river and this time I had a bit more time on my hands so decided to spend a lot more time practicing to plum the depths and concentrate on feeding, this did the trick and seen me catch a wide array of the rivers smaller species as I was doing last season, although I was catching things such as Bleak, Minnows and very small Chub I was still left with a slight feeling of disappointment as I had hoped to be able to bank something a bit bigger this time and not really start the season this way, don't get me wrong I had a great time catching and looking at these fish but could not help but feel my river fishing skills still needed massively improving.

         This leads me nicely into yesterday evenings trip back to the same stretch of river I started fishing on the opening day of the season, this time I made the journey carrying only my spinning rod, some spinners, a landing net and most importantly my unhooking mat, I'm sure many of you have felt the same excitement during the day I felt waiting for the coming fishing trip, for me however this excitement was a bit different this time, I was getting butterflies in my stomach, I found myself at random intervals getting vivid images of Perch and Pike in my head and the buzz that was growing was immense. As any of you that read my last post will know Pike are something I have found myself falling in love with and the thought of getting one as my first fair sized fish ever from a river was one that brought great joy to me, with that being said as I mentioned in the beginning of this post the obsession has moved on and in all honesty any predatory fish filling this slot would make the evening a success and make it a landmark day in may life as a angler.

           Although I have caught a couple of pike now it was only the other day I caught my first one on a lure, with that I spent a lot of time thinking and going through my lure box, any lure anglers are now all looking at that and asking 'only one lure box' and at the moment I'm afraid to say yes only the one, however my collection is growing. Anyway after a few hours of mulling over it in my head and going backwards and forwards to youtube and magazines and things to check out best ways to use which lures I have I decided I was being a fool, I finally decided that if I was that unsure of what lure to use and how to use it why not use a spinner. It was settled then the spinner it was, so off I went back to the lure box to pick out a small selection of spinners to take with me, I got the rod ready tied on a trace and off I went. Once again on this trip I had Dan Locke or Lockey for company, he like me is also learning lure fishing and a few other types of fishing, he if you ask him would call himself a Carp angler more than anything else as I probably would have done this time last year. We have been Pike fishing together a couple of times now and as you would have seen last post I was very grateful to have him there last time to photograph my personal best 15lb fish from the reservoir just down the road from where we were now heading. Up until now Dan didn't actually have his own spinning rod so it was a very good job I have enough stuff to stock a small tackle shop in my garage as do many of us I'm sure, so it was just a case of tying on a trace to a second rod and off we went.

I did not have many spinners to choose from but the ones I decided on taking were a set of 4 from Shakespeare these I picked up for something stupid like £4.50 from my local Go Outdoors store, one thing I have to say about this style of fishing is that it is by far the cheapest and for someone starting out I have been able to acquire most things I need without spending much money at all. So now we have rods ready we have decided on a venue and we are on our way down to hopefully bag our first river predators, when we arrived, unlocked the gate a headed in to the waterworks we both commented on the fact we could not believe we were the only people there, especially as it is only 4 days after the season began and on the first day we struggled to find a parking space, this was not something we were about to complain about though and we wasted no time at all in getting signed in and getting the gear out the car.

       The first pool we headed over to was one I had spoken to a guy about before and he had informed me that there was a lot of Trout and Perch in so it seemed to me like the best place to start. After about 4 casts I had a take and it felt half decent unfortunately though it dropped off before I had a chance to see the fish hopefully it was not a sign of things to come, we decided to have a few more casts in the swim before heading off as nothing else had happened and we had a large amount of water in front of us and wanted to give as much of it a go as we could, so we now took up position in a smaller pool round the corner one that I see people drop shotting in from time to time, after once again maybe my third cast I was once again into a fish this time however I was getting a lot of frantic head shakes and small erratic jolts so there was no doubt in my mind it was a smaller fish, I could not have been happier though to have another chance at landing a fish and was even more excited when I seen it was a small Perch.

 

It was now mission accomplished for me, however I would not be able to call myself a angler if I stopped here I had to get myself another, same as before a few more casts in this pool and after no further action we decided to move off to the last section we wanted to cover this trip, it was a faster flowing area I'm not sure entirely what it was but there was a gate type thing that was letting water through that was absolutely crashing out the side we were on but there didn't look like any movement at all the other side. Not knowing anything about river fish at all I was not sure if we would catch in this fast flowing water or not but what I did know was that we had been fishing slacker water and only had 2 takes and landed a single Perch so for us it was most definitely worth a go. After a cast or two we realised the section was a whole lot deeper, it was around 10foot deep on the edge but after about 4foot down it was extremely thick with weed, this meant luckily for someone with a shocking memory like mine I was counting the spinner down for around the same time as I was in both previous swims. It was only a couple more cast and I was hooked into something that felt a little more substantial, this time I banked my first river Pike a small Jack but for me now the session was really coming together and my mood was growing with every cast just wondering what was coming next.

After I released this fish Dan was having a bit of trouble with the reel on the other rod, I had packed another reel in my bag just to cover anything that could go wrong so gave Dan my rod to use while I checked out the other and decided to change the reel over as the handle had seized up for some reason. Once I had done this I cast in to see how the reel felt (as it was slightly bigger) on the rod and in this retrieve I felt a smash on the spinner and was hooked into something in a different ball park to what I had caught on the session so far, after playing it for a few minutes the fish finally came to the surface and I got a glimpse of a Pike that was a comfortable double, I actually screamed like a girl in excitement to Dan to ask him to grab the net for me and he came running, however the fish did not like the sight of the net and gave it one massive thrash and went hurtling towards the bottom and unfortunately the spinner pulled free. One thing I find with fishing is that no matter how happy you are felling up until the moment you loose a fish it all disappears immediately.

         The rest of the session went by, we headed back to the pool where I had caught the Perch Dan managed a couple of Jack Pike and I didn't get anything else, I could not be upset at all with the trip as I had done everything I wanted to do and much, much more.