Three for a jack

That's how many casts it took on the way home today to catch this hard fighting jack. It's the beauty of fishing lures, the most instant of fishing, and one of the reasons I'm getting so addicted to it. Simply roll up, get out the car, put on suitable clothing to protect work wear, grab your gear from the boot and cast in all within a minute or two.

Nothing massive granted, but it came on an size 3 spinner (above) intended for one of the large perch I was hunting. The jack gave me the right run around even tail walking, reminding me that sometimes the size is just irrelevant. Or in other words "it's not the size of the pike in the fight, but the size of the fight in the pike".

 

(Please excuse the rubbish quality photo's - I've got to get round to getting a new camera still)

Trent, a quick lure session..

After a late afternoon site visit in Kegworth I headed to the nearby Trent for a chuck of the lures and spin of the...erm spinners. I was soon in the first swim on the stretch with the usual copper gold spinner on winding in under a canopy  of trees looking for that big fat perch to grab it.  A fish almost surfed half out the water to try and snap it up but missed, exciting to see though. Next cast and a sub pound fish was landed.

After a few of these I headed further upstream to a nice deep channel running parallel to the bank, there was a point above a large slack pool where I could stand and cast to my left along a 30 yard line of lillies running along the slacks edge as it met the flow.  First cast and bang - something hit the spinner hard. Turned out to be my first lure caught chub (well chublet) !

The rest of the session saw me landing perch after perch, maybe 20 or so ! The biggest going about 3/4 of a pound.  Having now caught what must be about 50 or 60 of these small perch in the last few weeks, the biggest being a fish of 1lb 2oz, I am starting to realise that although the spinner will catch you plenty of perch it can't catch the bigger fish if they ain't in front of you.  I will need to work harder to locate where  these bigger fish hold up on the rivers I am fishing or suffer more and more of these sub pounders.

I also tried out the new Kopyto jigs that arrived about a week ago. Though I didn't get any interest, it's early days and I need to get my technique right with jigs as I don't feel like I'm fishing them correctly enough yet but once I get that first bit of  interest I know I'll soon learn how to work them as the confidence grows.

Spinning in the small rivers ... (Spinning 4)

Friday after work and yet another half hour on the river which produced one fish and this time it wasn't a perch ! A nice little jack graced the net taking one of the 30 plus 6 gram copper spinners that I'd bought last Sunday.

I spent a few quid last night buying some Kopyto jigs on recommendation from Leo, so when they turn up I'll be straight on the bank to see how I get on with them.  My lure fishing is still in its infancy really and although I've had a few half arsed attempts in the past and as a teenager, It is only this last week or so that my confidence has started to grow.  I'm starting to  see what all the fuss is about now.

Sunday Morning....

among the fields of barley !

After watching one of the best days sport Great Britain's ever produced at the Olympics yesterday, I was ready for a bit of gold myself.  So as I walked through fields of gold (sorry sting) at about 6 something this morning onto a small river with lure rod in hand, it was stripes, spots or even brassy silver I was hoping for.

that's plenty clear enough

Thankfully the river was flowing with clear water having fined down nicely since the deluge of yesterdays thunder storm and torrential downpour.

Summer time and the livings easy ...?

The sport was slow to start with, the gold spinner being ignored in the first pool. The atmosphere was eerily still and quite, a quite so pure in fact that at one point I wondered if I'd suddenly gone deaf ! You can only get this kind of peace being out early - it's a magical time to be on the river in the middle of nowhere. 


The spinner came good in second spot with several small perch being fooled in about a dozen casts.

When the pool had given me all it would,  I simply continued downstream to the next to start the process again. The results were similar but the stamp of fish a bit larger.

 A classic bend round every, erm ..corner !

I wondered further down stream findng new spots I'd never cast a line to before, catching more and more fish none of which would ever worry the net or scales, but even so still an enjoyable morning to be out catching, then back home by 930am to a cup of coffee and some toast. A great start to the day.

Quick Spinning pt trois

On a complete whim I spent six quid on spinners at Go outdoors on Sunday while the wife and kids looked around the other shops next door.

Today - Six pm I pulled up by the river on the way home.  Fifteen minutes later I was on my way again to meet the wife and kids for food shopping, pleased that I'd stopped to land this fish after just half a dozen casts on one of the new spinners, a big copper 9gram jobbie on today's "power session"

Brownie points awarded by wife and a lure caught perch pb of 1lb 2oz in the bag.

perch fin moustache !!

Why haven't I thought of doing this before ???

Gone Spinning - part 2

The girl from accounts said she was going spinning after work, I thought "snap"  but I won't be peddling my little legs off at the gym !!

Instead I managed to sneak in half an hour on a new stretch of river on the way home, where a quick go with the spinning gear produced this little chap.

The stroll between fish-able swims revealed some interesting spots along the way, plenty of chub spots, barbel runs, perch snags and pike holes were noted in the mental map. Hopefully I'll return and give them ago at some point.

Also had a reccy along some of the GU Canal near work at lunchtime. It looks like one of the clearest stretches of canal I've ever seen especially as this was taken at around midday when there would have been some boat traffic ( if there is any along here ? )

Might be worth a go with the spinners or lures. Mind you the shoal of roach that I saw soon had my mind flitting to other targets, one of them was easily over a pound. 

spot the small roach

Here be Monsters ??