A beautiful sunny September day and a rare (of late) opportunity for me to spend a few hours by the river. 10am - 2pm is probably the worst time to fish and couple that with a river that is lower and clearer than I have ever seen it before makes for a tough angling session. Still beggars can't be choosers.
I wandered up and down the river looking at all the usual Barbel swims but the lack of fish in any of them forced me into a rethink. Luckily I had a plan B involving maggots and the deeper swims. I just fished for bites, pure and simple, any species would do, wasn't bothered.
In fact I had an enjoyable couple of hours, plenty of action involving lots of these.....
and loads of these....
Oh and a solitary Gudgeon.
Fish of the day was this 7oz Dace that I nonchalantly swung in thinking it was a small Chublet but was over the moon when it turned out to be a Dace.
A pretty decent Dace for the Avon and a fun day pleasure fishing. If I had fished for Barbel I would definitely have blanked. Maybe some anglers would have preferred that but not me, it is more fun to catch something than nothing at all.
That is a good dace. Suggests better don't you think? Really hard to find them that size. Even the best dace swims I know where really large ones in excess of 12 ounces are known to have been caught you struggle to get past six ounces. Mind you, there's millions of them! So it is a lot of fun trying.
ReplyDeleteYeah I think there could be bigger, wasn't a typical Dace swim, fairly slow flowing so that may be the answer to finding the bigger ones. Think it's more a Winter challenge though.
DeleteWell done on the Chub btw, cracking fish and looked quite young from the photos, poss a Winter 'six'???
Inspired i went with the big guy up the middle river this eve to try for dace. He was after the double that eludes him, I caught dace alright. And plenty.
DeleteWithout reading glasses they may have been minnows!
Smallest I ever caught. little finger length