Silver Monsters

Once again I was on the river before dawn.

For the first hour I was getting pecks and taps that I put down to small fish, probably incorrectly. 

The first proper bite resulted in a beautiful silver bream of 2lb 4oz, a cracking fish in mint condition.

A few minutes later the tip pinged back and what felt like a larger fish bored away in the fast water. When it surfaced I netted it first time and I could hardly believe my eyes, it was a truly monstrous silver bream. Massive.

On the scales it went. 3lb 7oz.

I'll probably never beat that.

What an extraordinary fish. To put it in perspective, my biggest in UK is 1lb 5oz ( the British Record is 3lb 4oz ) and anything over a pound is a corker.

These fish are in different league entirely. 

After that, a few bream and ide were landed, but then it was back to the weird bites. The corn was removed from the hook four or five times on the trot, before I rigged up a bit of fake corn on a push stop. That'll keep on the hook, if nothing else.

The feeder hit the bottom and about five seconds later the tip whacked round ( whacked round, pinged back, dropped slack, how many ways can you describe a bite ? ) and I was in. The fish surfaced in the slacker water and was scooped up in the net. A big roach of 2lb 10oz. Blimey.

More fish fell to the plastic corn, mostly bluenose and bream, the biggest bluenose going a respectable 2lb 10oz. 

Although the bream can be pests, they are in pristine condition, are beautifully coloured and fight like mad. Obviously,  you get covered in stinking snot.

What can I say ? Another fantastic session on The Mighty Waal.