silver bream & a 2lb perch - not bad for an evenings work

my plan to fish the gravel shallows below Beeston weir fell at the first hurdle when I discovered that the footpath was closed, blocked by substantial  building work, presumably improving the flood defences. Rather than trek the footpath diversion I headed upstream past the marina, taking a recce at some of the gravel pits in the half hope that i might see some carp moving.No carp said hello, but a shoal of bronzy red finned fishes kept periodically breaking the surface in pursut of the emerging flies of the evening hatch. almost certainly rudd, I may be back for those chaps later in the season.

 I arrived at a nice looking peg with a steady flow and a large overhanging tree to my left. plumbing around revealed a fairly steady gradient reaching about 6ft at one rod length and 9ft at two rod lengths. the bottom was clay and without any significant features, though further out there was some gravel. It was to the gravel that 3 ragged pieces of lunchen meat on a size 4 hook were hurled with the assistance of a 2oz lead, and followed by half a dozen loose pieces of meat. The other rod was set up with a maggot feeder, and a 8inch hooklength of 3lb line - again a size 18 spade end held a single red maggot as the feeder was swing underarm just beyond the overhanging tree. The first five casts went out at 1 minute intervals before settling into a rythm of recasting every 2 to 3 minutes. Within 15 minutes the bites started, fast roach tugs that I missed most of, but with each feederload the bites become more confident and i begin hitting at least half of the bites. the roach began to alternate with small perch, a skimmer or two and the odd hybrid, and swapping between single maggot, red worm and double maggot established a definate preference for double maggot. Then a bigger fish took the bait, It certainly looked like a silver bream, and the lateral scale count of 44 and anal fin ray count of 21 confirmed it. Ok so its not in sequence & I'll need to capture another later in the season, but at least i know where to start.

I carried on picking up perch and roach, noting that if i dropped the feeder just 1 ft short of the sweet spot bites would be much slower coming than on target or up to 3 ft too long. eventually on one of the longer casts the line parted at the hook on the strike, a new hook was quickly tied on and recast and was taken within seconds, within seconds the same result though as the line parted once more. i threw out a handful of maggots to try and keep these biggies busy while i upped to a size 16 straight to the 6lb mainline. On the recast at about 8:30pm  I was into a better fish which stayed on this time.

 Tipping the scales to exactly 2lb it was a great way to finish my weekend, and the watery gods seemed to agree, the only bites i was to have in reward for persevering into full darkness were 48 mosquito bites, marie counted as she applied the antihistamine cream!