Fishing days: February 2015

If your a regular reader of my fishing stories on here, you will know that stick float fishing is just my favourite way of fishing bar none, a close second is stalking carp in the margins. The latter will have to wait for sunnier times but those long warm evenings will be most welcome when they do arise.

So February only means one thing to me, stick float fishing on the river (& predator fishing, of course)

So armed with the lightest of gear I set off to my local river with excitement at what the day had in store for me.

Joining me was my good pal Paul who has been filling his boots with nice chub, dace & wild brownies. While I was hard at work he kept sending me pics of some real beauts, so hopefully it was my turn now.

The river was low & clear & it looked like it could have been a tough slog to coax any fish from their snaggy home under the far bank.

The day started of slow & as expected but with steady stream of maggots trickled in (little & often as always is the key) the lighting fast bites start getting quite regular. On the third bite I finally woke up & struck sweetly into the first fish of the day, a pristine dace.

I didn't weigh him but at a guess he's be well over half a pound

Lovely start & I'd be happy with a few more like that I thought.

The bites came thick & fast with dace after dace coming to my net, I'm sure without a keepnet I'd struggle to keep the shoal attacking the maggots so readily but as I slipped another nice dace in the keepnet I had a feeling my luck was in.

With 20+ good dace in the net the chub started to appear, bronzed flanks flashing at the grubs as they drifted down stream.

I thought I'd hook one soon & a handful of casts later I was into a decent one.

It's no often you catch chub in very shallow water without them seeing you but this river is different.

It's a foot deep at most & I can see the bottom at the way across but even with the Polaroids on, I could see very few fish.

They were darting out from the snags & grabbing at as many freebies as possible before disappearing very quickly back to their undercut far bank.

Anyway, this chub flew right to this far side bank & I just couldn't give him any line as I felt him thumping away against roots & snags.

Thankfully I stayed firm & I netted him soon after, at about 2lb he wasn't massive but let's hope there are a few more hiding away down there.

Paul was doing great at this point with a fair few chub & dace in his net just a little downstream.

A wonderful winter chub for Paul

So I had quite a bit to catch up on !

After loosing a pair of what felt like very good chub on consecutive casts, I started bagging up on the dace again with the average size a very healthy 6-8oz.

At this point I hooked what I thought was another chub but it was darting all over the shop & as I jumped I realised is was a nice brownie.

I got him back after a very quick photo

I watched Paul land a couple of chunky chub & at last I hooked a decent chevin.

Again powering into the far side but I was ready & within a minute he was mine.

Bit of an old warrior with only one good eye but he gave my tackle a good test

Paul had a few trout and some nice dace as well, this was turning out be a wonderful session for both of us.

As time ticked away with decided to call it a day & make sure we had enough light to get some decent pictures of our prizes that lay hiding in our keepnets.