Making Hay....

We headed to the upper reaches of the local river. It was painfully low and clear.

In many places just a few inches deep, with the very occasional deeper pool, harbouring gudgeon, perch and a few dace and roach. Nothing of the quality we've had in better conditions though.

The highlight was when two kids on the way home from school saw us catch fish, and then sprinted off, only to return a few minutes later with their tackle and set up a few yards downstream.

One of them was lure fishing and immediately got snagged up. I showed him how to pull for a break , wrapping the braid around sizeable branch and slowly tightening the line. Under pressure, the lure catapulted out the snag, landing at the kids feet.

"Thank you, Sir" he said. I checked the date, just to confirm it wasn't 1895 and I wasn't a character in a Dickens novel.

Nope, 2025, just a polite little chap. Good lad.

As the light started to fade, we jumped in the van and went a bit further downstream, to a short stretch also suffering from low water levels. Not through lack of rain, because of a broken sluice.

A handful of maggots chucked in at the head of the glide, two maggots on a 16 hook and the float gently swung out into the ( hopefully) kill zone.

It travelled a couple of feet and disappeared, as a cracking roach flashed silver in the flow. 

For next hour and a bit I had a bite almost every cast, mostly roach, a few dace and three clonking perch. Brilliant fishing.

TCG wandered downstream to some ultra shallow water in search of dace and was rewarded with a couple of real crackers and unfortunately lost two others, both very good fish.

It's still really cold, with daytime temperatures not exceeding three or four degrees and that combined with the fact that I've still got a poxy cold means I've been a bit of a grumpy git.

I was therefore well pleased when the forecast promised ( yes, I'm holding them to it )  double figure temperatures by the middle of next week. The bstards better be right.

Plans have been made, oh yes.

Roll on spring.