Fished today on the Ship Inn stretch in one of the pegs above the weir… After plumbing up I started with two lines, one at 7 metres and one at 13. The line at 7 was fished with loose fed maggots with a small 4 x 12 spinadesco pencil and at 13 i balled in 7 jaffas laced with casters and chopped worm at 13, here i set up a sensas edmund flat float of 1.5g and a sensas jean phillipe of 2.5g. This was only 6 foot deep, i expected a lot deeper, i plumbed up right out to 17 and found that the depth was uniform from around 12, so i decided on 13 as the bank behind made for tricky shipping. The loose fed line was very slow from the start, in fact it only produced one perch all day! After 15 mins without a touch running though i decided to give the 13m line a try, so on went a worm tail and out i went, not a sniff on the bodied float, held back, run though, over depth, up in the water… nothing, not even a sniff. After 15 mins of running this though i was beginning to question myself. I decided to try the flat float so on went a caster and out it went, by holding back the float this style of float will sit completely still in the water, first run through the float dipped and the popped up, striking into the flow the blue hydro fizzed out and i thought to myself that i had found my fish… A rainbow trout of about a pound came to the net, on went another caster, nothing… By meddling with depth, shotting patterns and bait, i winkled out two more trout and a skimmer about a pound… Then my dog started to growl sat behind me, as i coiuldnt see up the bank, i got off my box and was greeted at the top of the bank by two… yes two Environment agency bailiffs…
This was the first time in years ive been checked, they both wanted to know if anyone else fished the river??? and wanted to know where else they could check local?? Although pleasant, the pair of them genuinely sounded like they didnt have a clue! One of them even asked me if the canal was the Leeds Liverpool?? Enough said.
Anyway, back to the fishing, back out on the 13 metre line with a bit of worm and… nothing.
I carried on, alternatine lines, baits, depths ect and really had to work for my fish. I finished with 6 skimmers to 1.5lb, 3 trout and a small perch… Not a single roach, never saw one?
I packed up at 2.30 as the flies on the bankside were becoming impossible!
All in all not a bad day, but i was left wondering as to the absence of a single roach??
TF_badger.
