The Moonlight & The Dark Crease

Friday 14th November 2008

Fished the Dove again after a about a months lay off. I arrived about 7:00pm in darkness but with an almost full moon, the river fining down after another flood the previous weekend. I estimate it was still up about a foot or so with quite a flow pushing through. The water temperature was 11deg C when I started with the airtemp being 14deg C. I used flavoured meat first casting along the edge of a large crease created by the contour of the river bed that flowed from my left near bank up stream to the centre of the river, and then downstream further past the end my swim.


I was surprised not to get any lead movement from the flow as I was only using a 3oz lead to hold bottom.

There were no bites on my curried meat so I moved down to the next peg to try a cast there in the same crease further down, but eventually I switched to pellet and feeder after a hour or so when I lost confidence in the meat. This however proved unsuccessful also. Eventually I decided to try my own made pellet/hemp and base mix boilies, and after a short while casting to the faster flow on the outer edge of the crease I seemed to get a positive take. I retrieved the rig back some minutes later as I suspected the bait had gone, which sure enough it had. Encouraged I re baited with another boilie and tried again, there were no more indications on the rod tip apart from the usual pulls and stutters back and forth each time the feeder was dislodged along the bottom by the faster flow I had now cast into. After an initial 11deg C reading the water temp remained a constant 10deg C throughout the session but even with these ideal conditions I never managed to get any fish interested, just another of the mysteries of fishing I guess !

This photo below shows the stretch fished. I was fishing from two swims on the left hand bank, near to the tree you can make out in the picture on that side, the crease follows the line of the light reflection cast by the street lamp in the centre of the river.


The final Temperature readings for the Air & Water were shown below