WYE AYE

 
Repeated outings with the cane poles had produced little of note, beyond some reasonable mixed bags of silvers. I've no problem with that as long as the float keeps going under and the occasional fish pulls out a bit of elastic. It has been noticeable that the morning's fishing follows a set pattern, few bites in the first hour then bite after bite that I can't hit, silly bites that just pull the float down sharply and rarely develop. Set too finely the float will flash under but it makes no difference. Despite using a quill carrying just two No 10s, they remain unhittable. At some stage over the next hour or two, the bites will become more hittable even if I have to leave them for an age before striking. A few fish will hit the net on consecutive casts and then just as quickly, they either disappear altogether or become unhittable again.

I've been feeding a mix of hemp, tares and wheat. From one day to the next, I never know whether wheat or tares will be the best bait, but I do know that wheat produces more Hybrids, Bream and tiny Crucians while tares produce Roach and the occasional Hybrid. When Pete and I went down to the Wye at Aramstone for a week, I was keen to put this mix of bait to the test in search of some Dace and Chub, with the chance of a Barbel thrown in, I know we used to catch a fair few from the Thames when I was a lad, laying on with tares over a pile of loose offerings bait-droppered into place.

Obviously it never quite went to plan, what ever does? We had a small mountain of bait, luncheon meat, sweetcorn, hemp, tares, wheat, boilies, pellets and groundbait along with multiple rods and reels to suit. By the time the week had ended, I had established what I shall take next time and I doubt it will be a tenth of what we had with us. Trotting hemp, tares and wheat for dace was an unmitigated failure. Maybe using hemp on the hook would have worked but I can't find any big enough for the job. Hemp these days is a pathetic shadow of what it used to be with tiny grains suitable only for hooks of size 20 or smaller. No good on a Barbel river.

 
Luncheon meat was effective but tended to bring the unwanted attention of eels and we had a few of those. For floatfishing, sweetcorn was the answer. We both fished wagglers and 3 or 4 lbs hooklengths to good effect, catching eighty chub between us over the week. All but a handful of chublets, were between one and four pounds, In fact none of them actually hit the four pound mark but we had a fair few between 3-10 and 3-14. They all looked huge and I am convinced that they weigh a lot lighter for their physical size than they do in the Warwickshire Avon. Some of them would have been nearer five than four pounds back at home. The fact that Stan, the bailiff, told us they had spawned recently may well be the cause of course.

 
I'd made up a batch of un-loaded wagglers carrying up to three swanshot for the purpose but ended up using loaded version taking 1 No4 and 1 No 6. Sometimes you can listen to other anglers too much because the bait was still getting down far enough to drag the float under and the slower fall was more closely following the loose feed down the swim than it would have done with more weight down the line. What those fish lacked in weight they made up for in fight. Even a one pound chub at range gives a good account of itself in that current. Their strength probably due to living their lives on an aquatic treadmill and their ability to set their bodies in a rigid curve that takes them either away from the angler or more often, straight into the tree roots under the bank. It really was great fishing.

 
Sadly as the years tick relentlessly by, I find more than two consecutive days, standing up for eight hours trotting a fast current too much and then the second rod came into play, a built cane JB Walker MkIV carp rod instead of my 12 ft Hardy Matchmaker. I replaced the Mitchell Match I had been using with a wide drum Aerial loaded with 10 lbs line, and legered pellets and boilies under the near bank. Again, it has to be said, to good effect although no barbel showed. In fact the whole stretch produced less than a dozen all week. What was noticeable yet again was just how little lead was required. I fished with a single 1/2oz bomb and had no trouble. True I was fishing within fifteen feet of the bank but Pete used 3/8 oz leads out in the river for much of the time. Given that we were using fairly heavy lines, 6lbs in Pete's case and 10 lbs in mine, I just can't help wondering why everybody else uses nothing less than 2 oz and often as much as 4 or 5.

 

So we had six days wonderful fishing in beautiful surroundings where the only man made sound was the occasional distant helicopter when the SAS were nipping down to Greggs for a sandwich. We caught a stack of fish using methods we enjoy the most and learned a lot of lessons for next time, some of which will almost certainly be put to use on the Warwickshire Avon over the rest of the season.