The place for dace

A change of river again today, as I headed down the A453 to Ratcliffe on Soar. After parking up by the church I hopped overthe stile and headed upstream towards the weir. I realised upon reaching the Deeps that without the far bank tree cover I would be fishing into a fierce headwind... not conducive to happy trotting. Retreating back to the weir I began running the float though, but after 10 minutes hadn't had a bite so began to work my way downstream. In the next peg I began to pick up the minnows which have plagued my trotting for the last month. The first minnow casualty became a hookbait, and for the rest of the session I alternated trotted maggot with trotted dead minnow in every swim. two hours later I had reached the bottom of the section , the minnow was still untouched and I'd got nothing bigger to show for my efforts.
Finally, in the last peg, fishing a patch of dead water below an overhanging tree the float dipped and a small perch was brought to my hand, this was followed by another and another, then a roach...

There was a large mixed shoal packed in into this slack and I was picking up small chub, perch or roach every minute or so. Every one gave a good account of itself as I had to steer them out into the fast riffle and move them upstream to avoid the branches of the tree.

After a while I tried running the chubber down the far edge of the slack, just running down the crease with the swift main flow and holding back gently. About 10 yards downstream of the tree, and on the first run through, the float dipped, and a succession of dace followed, all taken from the same line, and fighting extremely hard for their size as I brough the upstream against the swift flow. It has taken me a month to find them, and as the sun set and I released the final silvery bar back into the river I spoke my thoughts out loud... "What a great way to end the day..."