a trout. But hang on

It was also likely that the weed would (or at least should) play a part in any tactical decision, though as I really did want to fish the float I decided I would put up with endlessly removing ribbons of weed from the hook. I was to be there purely for the pleasure of running the float through. In the end I bottled it though, and put a light quiver-tip in the bag, alongside the float rod.Badly underestimating the time the sun would rise I arrived far too early, too early by a good half-hour. So I sat in the car waiting for it to get light. I would have quite a wait; there wasn’t a glimmer of the new day. It wasn’t just dark – even allowing for the car’s tinted windows it was pitch black . Dozing off for a while was out of the question – the swim in which I intended starting off, a good trotting swim, was the one nearest the car-park, and if someone else should turn up while I was asleep, they would almost certainly be straight in there (or so I imagined. In the event I didn’t see another angler all day) . Eventually a few optimistic blackbirds began to chirp, and as the black eased to grey, I clambered out of the car, shouldered my load and wandered down through the trees to the river. This was the first roach trip of the season, & I hadn’t yet set my rods up. Once made up they tend basically to stay that way until March 14th, but today I was starting from scratch. It’s not especially easy to set up a 15ft match rod in the dark, especially when your eyes refuse either to focus in half-light, or at distances closer than 2 feet. Need glasses? Who me? Never!!! Eventually the many rings were threaded, the float attached, shotted and the hook tied on. Pinching a small piece of bread-flake around the size 10 hook completed the task. The first cast was made as soon as I felt I would be able to see the float at a distance of ten yards, though even then the cheerful red tip still appeared as a gloomy black – not very optimistic at all. But ten feet into its very first journey downstream the float went down to the pull of a dace. This one was not typical of the dace from this river. Normally they are between 10 and 12 ozs, but this one was only half that size. Never mind – a fish first cast must be a good omen. The overcast windless day, which was now slowly revealing itself, also bode well for the roach fishing. Fourth trot through and the float went again, a bigger fish this time. I’ve never timed how long it takes for your brain to register “bigger fish, might be a roach, might be a big roach, no it’s not, it’s too big, doesn’t feel like a roach, still you never know so be careful”. It doesn’t take long, and soon after that flurry of mental activity, and despite prayers for a flash of a red fin, my thoughts were confirmed when the gaping white mouth of a chub appeared at the end of my line. A three pounder, not of specimen size, but gratefully accepted on the float tackle. After a few fruitless runs through I switched to maggots, and immediately caught a gudgeon. Odd fish aren’t they, gudgeon. I love them though. In the now far-off days of my childhood they were the mainstays of my sport, and a red-letter day would have been a day on which you caught 4 or 5. Any more than that and you were the playground hero for a week. Famous for more than 15 minutes, certainly. Another half dozen biteless trots down meant it was time to move on. The next swim is a quivertip swim. Last winter my son had a lovely roach of 1.14 here, then hooked another which snapped his new Shimano rod at the butt! Big roach eh? Must be something about that spot, for it was exactly the same place where the top inch broke off the tip of my quiver-tip rod last season. That happened as I was threading line through the rings. I cast a small feeder in to settle just where the deep water shelves up. Two very cagey bites followed, both of which promised to pull the tip right round, but never did. Fifteen minutes and I was on the move again, a long walk this time to a swim which usually produces dace on the quiver-tip, but where the opposing flows make trotting difficult. But I was going to use the float, whatever. Six casts brought 2 lovely dace, more typical in size at 11 and 12 ounces, pretty little fish, scales bright as diamonds. Then the float went down rather dramatically. It’s difficult to describe the difference when you are only talking of a quarter inch of stick float tip disappearing, but there was something sudden and violent about the movement, a movement which also showed life, and not just a hook up on the bottom. I suppose recognising the difference in these movements comes with a lifetime of experience, for I was right, and the strike had me fixed into a bottom hugging fish that slowly moved upstream. Once again the microsecond thoughts flashed through my brain, but this time almost immediately writing it off as a roach, and almost as quickly, a chub. Hmmm must be a trout then – nothing else it could be. At this moment a long fish broke the surface – ah yes – a trout. But hang on – no spots. Buggar me – it’s a barbel! The fish dived, but the (now famous?) 15 foot Harrison cushioned the blows on the 2.5lb line, and soon bounced the fish back to the surface, where after a few wriggles, he gave in: a small barbel, about 2.5lbs, but wonderful sport on the float. It had taken a flake bait, and was my first ever float caught barbel. I’ve caught many hundreds of barbel, but always on the leger. I’ve only ever spent about 20 minutes float-fishing for them, to visible fish that just moved out of the way & let the bait pass through. On that day, a switch to link legered caster brought success, and that has been much the way ever since. The fish was slipped back gently with instructions to grow into a double. The swim refused to give up any more fish, so I moved again. I do like to move about on rivers. Every new swim tried gives you new hope, like starting again.It’s a funny old river the is this. It certainly doesn’t give up its fish easily. Often you’ll go into a swim, get a fish second or third cast, and think you’ve found them. This is especially true when fishing for shoal fish such as roach and dace. But time & time again you get a fish shortly after moving into a swim, then nothing. Are these fish now shoaling up in one’s? The next 6 swims produced one dace apiece, and so alike were they it might have been the same fish all 10-12 oz, silver peas from a silver pod. The promising cloudy day had now deteriorated (from my point of view) into a lovely bright nouveaux-greens country walking day, and the dog walkers were out in droves. As usual, one charming little dog cocked its leg on my tackle bag it ain’t lucky you know – it only encourages the others. I gave the bag a good splashing with river water. But then, with little warning, the wind suddenly increased to almost gale force, rushing across huge phalanxes of purple-grey clouds. Within a few more minutes monster raindrops were cratering the surface of the river. Up went the brolly as the purple Gore-Tex clad walkers scurried for the cover of their cars. For the best part of 2 hours I was trapped as the storm raged. I did put out a quiver-tip, which rocked back and forth like a blade of grass bowing and stooping before the wind. This little rod eventually produced for me the last fish of the day, a minnow that hadn’t registered a bite at all. Ah – if only minnows grew to 8 pounds Another week at work crawled by, and at last it was time to fish again. I really must get those mid-week after-work carp trips organised…The week had produced some marvellous trotting weather, and I really looked forward to getting back to the Roach river. But the anti-fishing gods were watching, and sent down torrential rain throughout Friday. My local intelligence reported, not surprisingly, a muddy river – not ideal conditions for roach, or for much else other than barbel, and I’d had enough of them for the time being; in the normal way, anyway. Then I had a silly idea – I would try to catch a barbel, but I would catch one on a float. I would go to the Kennet, which surely wouldn’t be so badly affected by the rain. The trouble was it turned out to be far more coloured that I thought it would be, which in some ways might be good, but perhaps not if you’re float fishing. And after I’d spent around 2 hours without a bite I remembered how this stretch never did fish that well in floods or coloured water. I did try a little quiver-tipping (yes, it was in the bag again!), but to no avail. Things might well have improved after dark, but I had no intentions of staying that long. It also occurred to me that the fish in this stretch hadn’t seen my wonder-bait for 2 years. Would that make a difference? Probably they just didn’t want a moving bait in those conditions. The first fallen leaves of the autumn were being swept down the current too – I don’t think they like that too much. Then I remembered the side-stream – this is actually (or was) on a club ticket which I’d recently renewed. Following that train of thought I then began to wonder why I’d not gone to Hampshire & fished the club water anyway – it does, apparently, fish well after rain. I’d forgotten all about it. D’oh! Anyway, I had some maggots with me – the side-stream might be worth a go. The main pool is really a mini weir pool. The first 8 casts here produced 8 chublets to about a pound. They got a bit more difficult after that. I was really hoping a big old roach might be hiding away there, so tried the slacker water. This produced a 3 oz roach but no more. After three more chublets, a little dace & an enormous bleak it went completely dead, and I presumed I’d caught everything from this tiny pool, a pool in miniature, a chub nursery. Maybe I’d given them their first lessons. What a pool it would be to an elfin angler! I went off in search of more fishable water. Unfortunately I didn’t find any – it’s little more than a ditch elsewhere, with neither depth nor flow. It was now around 4.30pm & with little else to try I went home, trying desperately not to dwell on the thought that I had another whole week of work to get through before I would be on the riverbank again. That’s the trouble with winter…. Hooray – Saturday again, and the weather not too bad, though the strong northerlies forecast don’t bode well for float fishing the Oxford river – it’s one bank only and a northerly wind is generally down and across – right in your face. Still, I’d waited all week, and if I didn’t go I’d have to wait yet another week. Timing my run better I arrived around 8 a.m. As usual, I was the only one there. So far so good. But it was at that very early point things started to go wrong. As soon as I reached the first swim I discovered I’d left my landing net pole at home. The net top screwed into a bank-stick looked woefully inadequate, and would almost certainly prove to be so – in places here even a 6-foot handle would be too short. I fished the first swim, initially with bread, then maggots – nothing. I moved into the quiver-tip swim and had a couple of promises of bites, fishy taps that moved me to the edge of my seat, but which never developed. Moving upstream I persevered with the float despite the unfriendly wind. But for some reason the line on the centrepin kept digging in on the cast, and going back around the reel. The result was that in mid-cast the float would suddenly fly back towards me. Even if I got it onto the water, it would keep stopping, as again the line dug in. The combination of this, and the strengthening wind made it almost impossible to keep the float on line, and it kept dragging across to the near bank. In the end I decided to take some line off the reel – I wasn’t sure exactly how much line I had on there, though didn’t think it was much more than 75 yards. Only one way to find out . I had two options – the first to go upstream to one of the straighter stretches where I could let the float run right down-river, letting out all the line. But that stretch was a half-mile away. The other option was to run the line out along the bank. There could be a problem with this if any dog-walkers showed up. I scanned the horizon, up and downstream. No-one in sight. I took the float and quickly ran out the line, about 70 yards. Not too much, but I decided to remove 20 yards anyway. Cutting the line between butt ring and float, I removed about 20 yards and was just about to re-knot the main line to the reel when I spotted a family approaching. Worse – a family consisting of three young and very loud children, and 2 huge and very frisky Labradors! Oh no! They were I suppose about 80 yards from where the float lay in the grass, but the dogs were making ever-widening forages. In my ensuing panic I was completely unable to tie a knot. Closer and closer they came until I knew I would have to ask them to detour around my tackle. I rushed up to them and quickly explained the problem. Thankfully they were more than happy to avoid the area, but as I walked back to the rod, unknown to me the line tangled around my waders. When I picked up the rod there was no sign of the line, and it took me some time to find it, and even longer to disentangle it from the bankside shrubbery. And then I had to thread it through the multitude of rings on the 15 footer. In the end, it didn’t make any difference – still the line (4.6lb Silstar Match) kept digging in. It was now around midday, and as yet I hadn’t had a bite to strike at. I had now formed the opinion that this was going to be one of those days, and that I’d be very lucky indeed to catch anything. I wasn’t the only one having problems – E was supposed to join me (and to bring a spare net handle) later that morning. But around 11 a.m. I got a call from him to say his water tank had split, and he was sitting in his waders waiting for the plumber! Most of the swims here are edged with a long belt of reeds, and you have to stand among the reeds to get anywhere near the water’s edge. This is particularly important when the wind is in your face and you want to hold the float on line either far bank or midstream. But now I had another problem. My waders, which had been perfectly alright the previous week now sprung a leak – water gushed in and I was unable to get within 15 feet on the river. This made things really difficult, if not impossible. In the end I gave up on float fishing altogether, and resorted to quiver-tipping. Even then I was severely restricted – I couldn’t get near the river, and landing a fish with a bank-stick as a landing net pole would have been virtually impossible. So I moved downstream, back to the first swims I’d fished that morning. But again, all I got were promises of bites. I fished into dark, fishing 2 quiver-tip rods, one on flake, the other on crust. All I got were encouraging pulls which refused to develop into strikable bites. I’d had a feeling around 11 am that I wasn’t meant to catch that day. My instincts were to pack up there and then, and indeed, had I not to wait another whole week before I could get out again, I would have gone at that point Unfortunately my instincts had been proved right. Work eh – forces you to go when you know conditions are crap, then condemns you to watching perfect fishing weather through office windows. Even when I got back to the car, the fates hadn’t finished with me. Somehow, when putting my bag in the car, an unseen hook dangling from my bag pulled right into my finger, beyond the barb. I had to pull it out, which resulted in much bleeding. It was probably the worst day I’ve had in years. You get them like that though, don’t you… Right now I’m looking at the weather forecast for the rest of the week. There’s a lot of blue on the map – and bitter cold, strong northerly winds coming, getting worse as the week progresses. Great. Maybe I’ll get the pike rods out. Maybe not… “When the wind is in the North, then the angler sallies forth”. I’m wondering what for…. I bet it’ll be perfect on Monday!

Well, that was almost the last trip, but not quite. The forecasts were right, so I missed my normal Saturday trip, but noting the cold winds had dropped slightly on Sunday, I took myself off to a stretch of the Colne, my local river, armed with a trotting rod and a loaf of bread. This stretch is by no means prolific, though is rumoured to produce a 2lb roach about every 5 years. I wasn’t really encouraged by the dry nets of the resident quiver-tippers, but sent my float through the short runs anyway. It proved to be the best choice on the day, producing several chub to 3lbs, and 2 roach, the best a sparkling fish of 14 ozs. I was so pleased with it I took its picture. Having got my Christmas shopping out of the way during Saturday’s bad weather (and hopefully amassed many brownie points in the process), I’m now looking forward to some good fishing between now and Christmas. I’ll tell you about it…