Barbel forays and more commercial perch

On Sunday I conceded and spent the four hours that I suddenly found that I had free barbelling on the River Soar. The temperature was well up and the river was just about within it's banks, so I was told, plus I couldn't think of anything else to do at short notice so I went for it. Pulling up at the road side I looked across towards the river beyond the lake that the field had become and it looked like I could make it to the bank, Once I'd got within twenty yards of the lake I started to have my doubts but I found a fairly narrow crossing point that just about failed to swamp my boots at full tip toe.

Just about within its banks

 Starting at the top of the stretch I worked my way through a swim an hour most of which required five ounces of lead to hold steady, but of the whiskered ones there was not a sign. What I did see though were some tracks running along the bank in the freshly deposited silt. It would be very unusual for a dog to be in the area and I suspected that it was an otter which I confirmed when I compared them to some pictures on the internet. Sightings are now being reported on a very regular basis on most of the stretches of river, only time will tell what impact they will have.

It looked the part

The far bank snags looked a bit iffy!

The warm spell continued into the week inspired I was not but eventually the need to fish persuaded me to visit another commercial fishery to try for a perch or two. This particular fishery had been kind to me in the past and in fact was where I had caught my biggest stripey to date at 3lb 11oz's several years previously on a day which had given me another three captures in excess of 3lb's, I say captures and not perch as one of them visited me twice in the space of half an hour or so.

Was this fella still there?

I arrived at dawn to find the place empty which was not unexpected to be honest seeing as it was midweek after a holiday. My mate Rob would be joining me later but until then I had solitude which was some compensation seeing that the water isn't what I would call scenic, more functional in the normal fashion of this type of fishery. I started off on the windward bank and float fished a prawn down the edge in four feet of water over a bed of chopped prawn and maggot. After an hour and a half I got wander lust and wound in to have a look at a swim in the opposite corner that covered the largest reedbed on the water, it certainly looked good. As I was debating the move Rob pulled up behind me and after five minutes of chatting I had convinced myself that it was the place to be, Rob was going to drop in further along the bank towards where I had started.

Once I had got myself reorganised and had plumbed the depth in my new swim I started to feed a pinch of maggots every few minutes along the reed lined margin while I set up another rod with a live bait rig. Within twenty minutes I had the odd fish boiling sub surface, this was starting to look good. I decided to give it half an hour on the prawn before trying to catch some bait but that didn't produce any positive bites so it was time to get the maggot on. Straight away it was a bite a chuck, a couple of micro perch first, then a 6oz roach that I returned as being a bit big for what I wanted, then a small carp of some description, possibly one of those F1 hybrid type things, it certainly didn't look quite like a true carp anyway. The bites kept coming but very few were from my perfect bait sized fish. Eventually I had three small roach in the net and gave up at that, I stuck a prawn back on the float rig after I had swung out the paternostered roach on the other rod.

This time the prawn was getting more attention, mostly nibbles from small fish but I had two more small carp and a bream of about 2lb's, no sign of the decent perch at all. A shout from down the bank told me that Rob was getting a similiar result, he'd just been given the run around by a carp of 3 or 4lb's. I gave the lure's a go for an hour before dusk and thought I felt one possible hit but it could have just been debris. The method was very productive on the water previously and I was starting to think that maybe there was no longer a head of larger perch present. I don't plan to return any time soon to try and find out to be honest, it was a days fishing and it was nice to get a few bites in these hard times but I do find many of these commercials to be soulless places especially in the depths of winter.

I needed to get back on the rivers, levels were almost back to normal on the Soar and with the weather being incredibly warm for the season I decided on another barbel trip. The stretch that I had in mind had been difficult to get to for quite a while due to the floods and I wasn't certain that I would be able to park in the usual area, there is a layby that can be used but memories of broken windows from years gone by puts me off of that one if at all possible. I drove slowly across the first field avoiding the main ruts and it was looking good, then I saw a very soggy looking patch of grass ahead and no way was I going to risk that so I swung the motor off into the rough grass and carried on towards the second field. Within a hundred yards I could see that I wasn't going to make it and decided to park where I was and carry on by foot, the field was a mass of mud made worse by a heavy vehicle of some sort that had been through making walking tricky and driving suicidal.

As I suspected the banks hadn't seen much traffic since the flood had receded and as I also suspected the going was tough, it was slippery as hell and great clods of mud stuck to my boots making every step hard work. I started off in my old faithful spot which was looking in great condition with the floods having pushed away a lot of debris while also scouring away the river bed to create what will be an excellent sight fishing spot next summer. if we get a summer that is.

Thoughts of summer stalking came to mind

Two rigs went out complete with pva sticks of small pellets and crumbed boilie, a spicy tuna boilie being on each hair. After an hour or so the downstream rod banged over a couple of times, no doubt due to a chub attack, but other that that it seemed strangely dead. I stuck it out for three hours which is much longer than I would normally stop in a swim on the Soar but I was confident that barbel weren't far off, eventually though I knew that I had to move.

I walked another three hundred yards downstream to an area that I've never caught a barbel from which is a strange choice maybe but I know that they do turn up there at times and the more I blank the more I want to catch one from the spot. Again I only made one cast per rod and just with a small pva stick for a bit of extra attraction, despite it looking good for a bite the last swim had proved that the barbel weren't ready to crawl up the bank so there was no point in going over the top on the bait front. I sat down and surveyed the huge amount of debris deposited in every bush and tree by the high water, almost entirely plastic of some description and the vast majority of it will still be there for months to come. Even if the rubbish does get dislodged the problem will only be elsewhere, many plastics take an eternity to degrade and even if they do so they release toxic elements into the environment. It's a sobering thought to consider that we have only relatively recently been producing these materials, what kind of state will we be in another few hundred years?

Rubbish,  that just about summed the day up

I was shaken out of my thoughts by a swirl mid river and twenty yards downstream that caught my eye. I stood looking directly at the spot and suddenly there was another swirl that developed into a bow wave that travelled for a few yards before disapearing, then two more big swirls heading into the near bank. That didn't look like any kind of fish to me, the nature of the bank stopped me from seeing any further along the bank and no other activity was seen, was it another sign of an otter? Whatever it was it was the most excitement that occured all day, it seemed so right but it obviously wasn't.

On the way back to the van I stopped to check the permits of two anglers piking. They too had struggled with only one jack between them when they would normally expect more, it's a funny old game this fishing lark. Talking about it later someone remarked that the day in general had seemed strange with hardly any bird life about and when I came to think of it he was right. No matter what we think we know there will always be a lot that we don't understand, it makes things so much more interesting, and frustrating.

Commercial perch fishing, or was it roach...

The next stop on Thomo's magical mystery tour was to be a commercial fishery that Leo had come across a year or so previously with the intention of catching a few perch and which was fairly prolific. I was well aware that I was flitting from one thing to another but by this stage I had come to accept that I just had to grab what I can until the weather settles down and be happy with a bite or two whilst praying for the flaming rain to stop.

As you might expect it was indeed raining as we arrived just before first light and unloaded two sets of kit onto a piece of grass that was more fluid than solid, it actually turned out that that was a dry piece compared to the track that we trudged along in a slip sliding manner to reach the lake. The wind was piling in to the first bit of water that we came to and it took little persuading for both of us to carry on walking towards the calmer water. We passed a couple of blokes with shotgun's in arm who remarked that we must be mad as it was going to rain all day, not what my forecast had told me and I hoped that my version was the right one.

Leo had told me that prawn was the way to go on this place, fished close in against the reeds and topped up with a flick of maggot every now and then. That sounded good to me, it's always nice to break out a float for a change and in fact I'm starting to find it becoming a more regular thing and I'm enjoying it. Many of the platforms were submerged and I plumped for a spot with a bit of bank to one side giving me access to a substantial bed of reeds. I decided to give the centrepin it's second ever sight of water just because it needs using to be honest and coupled up with my 14ft carp float rod it was just a case of an under arm swing and the bait was positioned a foot or so out from the foliage, game on.

You know you are bored when you start taking pictures of a motionless float

Well bar the occasional small twitch of the float the only entertainment I had for the next couple of hours was in watching Leo attempt to burn off the Xmas calories by moving swim, twice, well it was either the fitness regime or a case of the grass being greener. The grass may have been green but the perch certainly weren't, or more likely were elsewhere as by early afternoon neither of us had a stripe to our name and I decided that it was time to make a move myself. As I squelched past Leo I made a sarcastic remark about his backside being welded to his seat as he had managed to stay put for a couple of hours but he assured me that he was going to see the day out in that spot. I went another hundred yards along the bank and started the process again, within ten minutes something caught my eye to my left, it was Leo's brolly being folded up. Two minutes later he was passing me loaded up with kit muttering something about kicking his maggots over and that it was a sign, he was right, it was a sign of being a clumsy git.

As Leo toddled off round to the far bank and sat directly in my line of sight behind the float sitting motionless in my margin so I couldn't help but see what looked suspiciously like a strike not long after he had cast out, and then another, and then I got a text saying that it was a bite a chuck, I was off round there like a shot.Leo had actually already surveyed the area for a prospective move earlier in the day but had discounted it due to the waves rolling in and the fact that the bank was virtually submerged but there was a strip of dry ground just big enough to accomodate me in a swim just a few yards from Leo. From the first cast my float was knocking and bobbing almost constantly, you wouldn't believe that the fish could be so concentrated in a small area would you but they were, it was like fishing a different lake. It was obvious that most of the bites were from smaller fish than we were after though Leo hooked a small'ish perch early on. I was missing quite a few bites and had the option of scaling down the tackle to try and hook them or sticking with the bigger bait for a perch, I stuck at the perch plan and increased my hook to a size 8 with a slightly larger piece of prawn attached. Within ten minutes I hooked a fish but would you believe it, it was a roach, talk about reverse thinking. It was a nice fish though and after both guessing wether or not it would make a pound we decided that it had to be weighed, the scales made it 14oz's which was bigger than I'd had while fishing for roach a few days earlier.

Desperate times!

My float continued to bob almost as much even with the bigger bait and hook and a couple more suicidal roach were banked while Leo netted two more perch up to mid two pounds in weight, not the session that we had envisaged yet again but we had escaped the Xmas mania for a few hours if nothing else.