I decided on a session during the day today. Firstly I needed to get a sandwich from the bakery so an early start was out of the question. Secondly, I wanted to work out if the river fished ok during the day. Having spent most of my life fishing ponds and canals, I know that early morning and late evening are the best times to go but hear that rivers are more consistent during the day. I have yet to prove that to myself.
I fished peg 3 again. The river was about 18” higher than it was on Wednesday evening and was falling. I therefore had to fish from a higher position.
I setup my lighter tip rod (6lb line) for fishing cheese paste and bread up to the downstream tree/bush. The idea being that this was most likely to pickup Chub and I liked playing them on the lighter rod. I would setup my Barbel rod and fish meat / caster / lobworm mid river (or just this side of the main flow) in the hope of picking up Barbel.
I also used a new technique of supergluing a piece of expanded foam (from some product packaging) onto the shank of a size 8 hook. This would help secure the cheese paste and bread flake and would also counterbalance the weight of the hook somewhat.
I swung out my cheese paste near the tree and started to setup my Barbel rod. The cheese paste had not been in 5 minutes before a very good bite – that I missed! This set my expectations for a good day!
The forecast for today was for overcast cloudy skies and frequent rain. However the first 3 hours were very sunny and quite hot. I am not sure if this affected the fishing but I struggled to get any other bites. I checked the forecast again and it looked like the rain had moved to around lunchtime. Therefore I decided to setup the float rod whilst the weather was reasonable in the hope that I could run some cheese paste or breadflake near the tree and see if they wanted a moving bait. I decided to try a 2AAA Truncheon Waggler rather than an Avon float this time. This did not result in any bites.
The level had now fallen to the point where I could get to a lower plateau that was close to the water line. I decided to move down before the rains came. It is much nicer fishing near the water line. This was a good move as the rain appeared soon after and with no real warning – went from sunny to heavy rain almost instantaneously!
Around this time I started to get knocks on breadflake near the tree. I alternated between flake and cheese paste and eventually breadflake accounted for a good bite and the following Chub of about 2.5lb. Interestingly it had bite marks on both sides and I did wonder if it was the same fish that I caught on Wednesday that came with a Pike attached. In some ways, I hope it was because that proves that the fish survived.
This Chub gave a decent account of itself and was significant in that I set myself a target of 10 Chub from the Ure in my first season – this was no.10 and came within a week of my 1st Chub. So now it’s time for a new target – I think a 5lb+ Chub should be my aim now.
Although I had a few more knocks, there were no more positive bites despite the cloud and rain.
So my thoughts are turning to my next session; I think I will give this weekend a miss as I have been quite tired and was falling asleep several times today. I think that my next evening session will involve roving between pegs because it looks to me like cheese paste and breadflake result in fairly quick bites when swung near a tree/bush if there are any Chub in residence. That will also mean that I can travel very lightly and will just have to risk the odd soaking – hopefully the new Diawa Retex bib-brace and coat with waxed hat will keep the worst of the rain out.
Comments on Daiwa Retex
In less than a year I was very disappointed in the bib-brace. Whilst it was warm and toasty in winter, it turned out to be very fragile. The rear seam came undone, there were holes on the inside of my knees where my legs rubbed together during walking and even the seams in the armpit of the coat came undone. Not impressed.
Steve Townend
