Tale of Three Rivers

I hate the winter, but I love winter fishing.

If it's not freezing, flooded or peeing down, then it's a great time to be out on the fishing.

Last week I managed to fish three different rivers, two of which were small streams. It's dace time again.

The Chubmeister General is a big dace fan and on a still, dull day we headed to a grubby Essex town where we fished two different rivers.

The first was on parkland. Shallow and snaggy for the most part and barely two or three yards wide, there was the occasional bit where you lost sight of the bottom and by running a small float down we managed to find wild brown trout, roach, chublets and some nice dace. 

Moving venues and into the town, we watched people feeding bread to ducks and fish taking bread off the top. Obviously we had to give it a go.

We had maybe half a dozen fish each, roach, dace and gudgeon, before they just disappeared. 

Despite it being clear and almost devoid of cover we totally lost sight of them and bites dried up.

A few days later we headed north to a lovely section of river where TCG told me he'd been catching big roach and dace. All the fish were crammed in to a thirty yard stretch he said.

I wasted an hour confirming what he told me was true. Couldn't help myself, it all looked so good.

Meanwhile the TCG was getting a fish a chuck in a little swim fifteen inches deep. We took it in turns, three fish each before the other had a go.

It was incredible fishing in such a tiny, shallow bit of river, with several roach well over the pound mark and decent dace.

I waded upstream to a beautiful glide and immediately started catching some clonking dace. No photos, as I was too keen on catching the next one. Plus I was standing in the river which makes it very difficult. 

I really don't know how many I had, but it was a bite a chuck for over an hour before dusk encroached and I went back to see TCG, only to find him still catching.

One more trot through his swim and I was rewarded with nice roach, a great way end another cracking day.

So far, we've been lucky this winter, not too much rain and just the occasional very cold snap.

Let's hope it continues.