Slow Progress

Denis and I have stuck at the rivers determined to find some good fish. It would be easy to get the boat out on the big lake and fish productive areas where we could be sure of latching into some doubles and the odd twenty but that's not what we do. It's easy to stagnate when you find good fishing, milking it for all it's worth and ignoring everything else but then what do you have for the future? ...and what do you have when your good fishing comes to an end?

The other approach of course, the one which many many people take, is to keep an ear to the grapevine and jump in on the going water. Hmm, not much attraction there. So we keep plugging away at likely looking stretches of river until something happens.

Two trips out this week. We had a couple of days on the new river, finding out more and more about it, and a day on the Severn. The new river produced a few fish, a low double to Denis on day one and two doubles to me on day two. We fished two different stretches some fifteen miles apart and found them to be quite different in character. The day one stretch was quite fast with only odd places where a pike might hang out. It poured with rain for most of the day and despite our waterproofs it started to get in.

Day two was a much brighter prospect with clear skies and some sunshine but of course there was always the threat of rising water which we knew would put the fish off. I settled into a swim at first light and had half an hour's lure fishing before dropping a deadbait in. The lures produced nothing despite covering a fish on the far bank which appeared to be rushing a shoal of dace from time to time but it was a different story on the deadbaits.

I packed away the lure rod and dropped in a legered sardine around five yards from the bank. Just five minutes later it was away and I pulled in a hard fighting fish of around thirteen pounds. Unhooked and a quick pic. before putting it back then I put out a second sardine. Once again this was taken within five minutes and I pulled in a fish of similar size. Indeed I'm quite sure it was the same pike once again since it didn't fight at all, probably still tired from the last fight.

The day ticked by and no more fish came our way despite fishing many different swims. It's becoming noticeable even this early that the fish in this river feed early but then don't seem to show later in the day. We'll be back there in the coming weeks I have no doubt.

Later in the week we had a trip to the Severn, to the same stretch where I fell in last week, though not to the same swim. This part of the river is baffling. There are two text book swims which look like they should hold some good pike but so far all we've had is jacks and so it proved on this occasion. I had all the fish, one on a lure and two on deadbaits but the largest would only have weighed seven pounds or so. I expect we'll stick at it for a while yet as there is sure to be something better but it had better put in an appearance soon!