Searching

Today I had a proper poke about on a three smallish rivers, looking for dace.

The first one looked great, plenty of flow,  lovely colour and almost too many good looking glides.

What it didn't have was much cover and that, combined with it being in quiet countryside meant it was ideal territory for the dreaded cormorants.  I marked it down as a "maybe".

The second was a very shallow, snaggy stream on the edge of a town. The deeper areas were rare and obvious.  I was sure it would be good for a few fish.  After an hour or so I had nothing except endless minnows, so I sacked it off and headed a few miles north to a narrow, pacy bit of river I knew held fish.

I rigged up an ultra light eight foot rod, due to the overhanging branches that make it difficult for conventional float rods.

Sure enough I started catching decent dace straight away, with the occasional roach and chub for good measure.

Oh yes, several wild brown trout too, they never fail to wreck the swim by thrashing about relentlessly. 

In the last swim, a pacy glide on a bend I had a succession of fish when the rod bent round just a bit further and a chunky dace twisted in the current.  Too big to swing in, I netted it and it went 10 oz on the scales. An absolutely lovely fish.

Still a small fish, but a big dace for round here.

On the way back home I dropped in to the bream swim on the Stour for an hour and quickly had one just shy of 6lb.

I was surprised to see the fish was starting to show spawning tubercles. In February !

I didn't hang around after that, it had been a good day and food was calling, so I grabbed the gear and slid back and forth on the muddy banks back to the car.