I fished a previously quiet bit of the tidal Trent recently, which, thanks to Facebook reports is now much busier, with long stay carp anglers fishing for barbel, bivvied up for days. Two rods, ten ounce leads, buzzers, boilies, bangers and units.
I got talking to a really knowledgeable angler, who told me of a stretch further downstream, massively more tidal, more coloured, very deep and most importantly seldom fished.
I followed his directions and got deeper and deeper into a landscape that reminded me of the Fens. Scattered farm buildings, big fields and tiny unmade lanes. The track became narrower and narrower and I reached the end of the road where a handful of big, slightly ramshackle houses stood next to a wide, powerful river.
It was absolutely silent, even the farmyard was quiet. No voices, no vehicle noise, just the sound of a lone crow in the distance. It was a bit strange.
There were only two places with access to the river and whilst it was muddy and slippery, it was well fishable.
There was probably twelve to fifteen feet of water ten yards out with an extremely fast flow everywhere apart from the margins. It looked great, but I fished all day without a touch, making regular trips to the van for tea and the new favourite ham, cheese and onion toasties.
As it got dark a wet mist descended, leaving the trees dripping. Totally moonless, it turned pitch black very quickly.
It was a little creepy. The van was parked right next to the river, in normal circumstances an ideal place to stay, but I felt a bit uncomfortable and drove off to another more familiar park up.
It was definitely a place I'll be fishing again though, you don't get many places that quiet and practically untouched in Old Blighty these days.
Locally, I've been fishing several small lakes for perch. Perch that may or not be present to decent sizes, so a punt. A punt that is so far not paying off, but you've got to try because one day you could hit gold.
It's very exciting fishing places that are for the most part ignored, because you really could catch anything. Or nothing of course.
No pictures of big perch, but here's one of a very small pond.
At the moment I'm struggling to catch much of note and haven't really got my teeth in to anything.
I really need to pull my finger out.
