Final Fling

This week would see us heading to the Dane, for the last session before the river season, for us course fishermen comes to an end. We travelled light along the BMAC Manor Farm stretch, dropping in on various pegs, chucking out a few pellets, then casting ledgered meat on top. Toby had a bit of a knock on the first peg we tried, so we gave it half an hour or so to see if anything developed, but alas the tip of Toby's rod stayed motionless. Undeterred we carried on along the river, varying hook baits slightly, changing hook lengths and casting into different types of swims. And we still couldn't get so much as even a twitch.  I have now lost countless bombs, a couple of feeders, a float, god knows how many hooks in trees and branches, about 4 pints of maggots, 3 tins of meat, 2 tubs of pellets and 20 man hours fishing and am yet to see a fish from The River Dane. Yet I know they are there, and I will catch one, but my first river Barbel really will have to wait until the summer now.

Deflated by another unsuccessful morning on the river, we headed down to Border (our local club complex) to fish closer to home for a couple of hours. Toby had been on the Friday and fished the canal again, and had a great session catching some of the fairly newly stocked F1 carp, which he told me "really hang on!"
That sounded like great fun to me and after a quick change of tackle, we were fishing again by half past two.
Unable to get on the peg that Toby had fished on before, we started off on pegs in the lower numbers.
My side has a great knack of being able to put his bait onto fish with his first cast, and yet again he was into a fish with the first chuck on the Meridian. The small hybrid flapped around wildly on the surface as Toby fumbled for his net, then just at that critical second bumped itself off the hook. That little fish must have swam back and told its friend not to bother because we really struggled to get another bite.
I moved round the canal a bit, to a section that was a bit more sheltered, thinking that the ripples on the surface might have been making it difficult to see the shy bites of the F1's, and switched from pellets which I was finding difficult to keep on the hook (no bait bands), to a bit of chopped worm in the hope of nabbing at least a couple of silvers, while the little carp evaded me.

This roach was my only fish of the day and fell to the old faithful chopped worm under a little waggler, on what was a pretty frustrating weekend of fishing. I even went back solo for a few hours on Sunday morning, still couldn't buy a bite. It really wasn't going to be my weekend
I did get treated to quite a performance by the new F1 carp, who paroled up and down in front of me, in big shoals just under the surface. But never once did they get there heads down to feed on my offerings. When they have settled down a bit it's going to be some fantastic angling, if I can ever hook one,  and I'm sure the big resident Perch are already enjoying their new guests, and might even start to pack on a pound or two.
    

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