blank at the woods

tried another night fishing boilies over a bed of particles under about 13ft of water. total blank

Another bloody bream

At Johns invitation I had a night in the peg which had produced a couple of carp for him a few weeks ago. It had been regularly baited for a month or so, though as he had moved on it hadn't been fed for a week. A large fish crashing out at dusk about 50 yds upstream gave cause for some optimism, however, following the script of an all too familiar story the night would pass without a blip from the alarms.

 By way of consolation another bream joined me for breakfast,  though as you can see from the state of the mat, the weed, and in particular the duckweed have reached a state which can only be described as obscene. the sooner the autumn rains arrive to give it a thorough flush through the better!

Sweaty slog for a solitary slimer

Fresh from a rod free holiday in Menorca I grabbed the first chance I got to try and track down the wiley Trent carp which had so far eluded me. The change of month made me increasingly aware that time was running out - and as nothing I had so far tried had worked I returned to the peg that my brother had suceeded in a year earlier. It was a 15 min walk with 10kg of groundbait doing its best to yank my arm out of its socket, and with sweat pouring down my face I was regretting the decision to wear, rather than carry my duckdown coat to the peg. Using the baiting scoop I propelled a dozen or so balls of groundbait into the middle of the river, and fished two rods either side of the baited area. Just one bite resulted in one disappointing bream, taking the hair rigged spicy prawn boilie at 21:50.

I was joined for a while by a guy who had been baiting up a peg on the pits. he told me that a few carp have been caught from this side of the river this year, but nothing like as many as usual, and from pegs much further upstream. Once he had departed, and with no sign of any more fish I decided not to put any more bait in, and instead turned my attention to finding micro species in the margins. Spotted a few sticklebacks, some stone loaches, small bullheads and perhaps most interesting, baby gudgeon. At least I think they were baby gudgeon, the juvenile markings are quite different from an adult. It was interesting to note that the baby gudgeon and stone loach would shoal together, though generally out of range of my camera.



baby gudgeon



stone loach