Fast paced river fishing at its finest

As I keep banging on about stick float fishing (sorry in advance) you will know how much I love this type of fishing, I'm always impatient to cast a line in any water, river or still, but if its possible, I get uber excited about these kind of days.

@dangriff75 is woken up at 7am by my phone call "I'm outside your place now, get a shift on mate"

After a customary stop off for bacon sarnie & coffee, we were on are journey south & an hour later were parking up with huge anticipation of the day ahead.

So with chest waders on & match rod & centre pin in hand, I'm ready to go.....

It's cold-ish in the shade, but my iPhone BBC weather app tells me it's 6 degrees, there's not many clouds & it's definitely not freezing so my new neoprene gloves won't b needed just yet.

This lovely little southern chalk stream is now probably my favourite river, after discovering it only 3 seasons ago. Despite this diminutive little river being only 10ft across in places & only 4ft deep at its deepest, some cracking fish are to be had, on a good day.

Maggots of course are THE bait when it comes to fishing the stick float, (red in particular, do seem to catch more & the odd bigger fish as well) worms, corn & bread are a great back up & If I'm organised I'll have them in my bag 😜

My set up for this day is a 13ft Drennen float road & okuma pin tackled up with a 4bb alloy stemmed stick float, 4lb line/2.5lb hooklink & a fine but strong size 16 at the business end.

A 15 minute walk leads us to our favourite swim, its a nondescript patch of water with reads either side that have died back with the onset of winter.

The secret to this lovely glide is obvious when the sun pokes it's head around the clouds for a minute or so, shallow gravel at the start and end of the 10ft glide & it's the bit in the middle that I'm interested in, it's black, mysterious & deepens from 1ft in the shallows to 4ft quite quickly & as most of this lovely river is very shallow these deeper sections quite often can hold a good shoal & produce bigger fish than u would imagine.

I wade out just upstream & dan positioned himself adjacent to the swim but kept low behind what's left of the reads.

As i set up, every minute or so i'll feed a small handful of grubs upstream from the swim & the flow takes them quickly into the darker regions of the river.
Where i hope a nice sized fish lay in wait, intercepting the bait gleefully as the visibility worsens.

That's the theory anyways & I'm daydreaming again.... ha ha

The excitement is building as I find very often if you prime the swim well, the first trot though can quite often produce the best fish of the day.

Float touches water & centerpin spins... my thumb just slowing it down a wee bit & the float disappears mid swim, just where I thought it would, (it's great when I can second guess a fish, it doesn't happen much & If only I could do that every time I wet a line) 

Anyways I'm in....

A strong fish has taken the bait so to speak (excuse the pun) & it's a good grayling as I can see a big purple or blueish dorsal fin in the clear water, it's amazing when you can't see any fish in the shallow water until you hook one.

It's fighting well in the fast flow & with a 2.5lb hooklink I've gotta take it easy.

I dip the net under a pristine Grayling of around 1lb 4oz......

What a good start

                                                                Come to daddy, ha ha

                                                                  First fish of the day

Dan was yet to finish setting up & rather hacked off that I'd sneaked out a lovely fish so quickly, I cheekily told him "the early bird catches the worm"

To which he replied with tirade of expletives that I can't write here, that's more like the dan I know so well (in fact since play school at the age of 5)
Typically I should have kept my mouth shut as he proceeded to out fish me for the next few hours, catching 2 or 3 to my 1 fish.

I managed quite a few more fish as time went by, to even up the numbers a wee bit.

A few times throughout the day the swim went a touch quiet but that just signalled to us to give the fish a break from are rigs for 10 minutes while we had a very welcome brew from my flask. I did keep feeding a few red grubs while i slurped my tea, as i wanted to keep the fish interested & stay in the swim of course.

Three hours in & the swim is alive with fish & as the sun came out now & then you could see many fish flashing as they intercepted the maggots as they were swept downstream.
Dan hooks into a very good fish & i can see its a large grayling because its swimming up stream towards me, twisting this way & that.
Just as I'm thinking "this could well be Dans PB" the hook pulls out, gutted.
Grayling & trout for that matter have quite bony mouths & if your hook isn't razor sharp this frustrating circumstance can happen quite regularly, as we have unfortunately found out a few times. Back in the autumn i lost a cracking wild brownie of 5 or 6lb from this very swim, throwing the hook as he jumped 2ft clear of the surface, spectacular yet hugely annoying.

But its hard to get angry when we were having an enjoyable day, all great sized fish, so many grayling to 1lb 8oz & a few very welcome wild brownies to just under 2lb

Along with these beautiful fish we caught some lovely little salmon par to around a pound.

After 5 hours of bite a chuck very enjoyable fishing the bites died down & i suspect that we've almost emptied the swim. As we hauled in the keep net, my excitement grew again like a small boy on christmas morning, what do we have ??? 
A total of 42 fish with a combined weight of around 25lb or more & a truly memorable day for both of us.

                Average stamp of beautifully marked Grayling at 1lb 4oz & 1lb 8oz

       Dan posing with our enjoyable days work

As we counted the fish back into the river we held some fish in the fast & very cold flow, just so they can recover & regain some energy, every fish went back fighting fit which is so important to me.

The smiles on our faces are plain to see as we walked back to the car & I think I love this stream a little more every time I spend a few hours walking it's banks with rod in hand.

Im not really sure why there is a huge lack of standard course fish in this section of river, I know course species do well & grow to large sizes in other beats of this river. So in seven sessions over the years I've caught only one 3oz roach & a solitary minnow. 

I find this very puzzling, so for what its worth here are some possible problematic issues for these fish & my thoughts

1) The water quality

In my mind this is never in question, generally it's very clear & you simply wouldn't have wild brownies swimming around "happy as larry" if there was a problem with that.

2) The lack of slack water

Its true, this beats flow is fast & strong,  there are not many slack areas, eddys or holding areas for fry but I've had some big dace years ago in the same kind of rivers so i discount this as well.

3) Feeding habits

Ive read that game fish can easily push out course fish from a swim when feeding well but I'm sure a nice chunky chub wouldn't stand for that at all.
Experience tells me that chub love mopping up maggots in fast flowing water, maybe even more that any other fish & any time of year, cold or warm.

4) Predators 

Whether we are talking about the infamous Cormorants or the small carnivorous salmon & trout eating up the fry or eggs. I'm sure that plenty of fry would escape a grisly death as the game species have & positively thrived in this environment.

So in conclusion I'm none the wiser really & I welcome an expert or for that matter anybody's theories or possible solutions on this strange situation ??

So with it being December, 2013 is up there with some of the best years for me in fishing terms & i guess it should be really, you never stop learning from others, picking up new ideas & evolving...... but I guess I still have 20 odd more days, to squeeze another session or two & maybe a PB. well I can dream 😜