Ruffe end of the stick !

With the mild weather sticking around I decided to have a quick session on the Anker to try and temp a Perch or two. I arrived at about 3:30pm to find that both the pegs I had in mind were taken ! Thats the trouble with the BAA waters I suppose.
I managed to find a perchy looking swim further along so quickly set he margin pole up.
A bite developed straight away but it turned out to be a Ruffe. Its been a long while since I've seen one of these fish. Another Ruffe followed shortly after. I soon drew the conclusion that the swim I was fishing must have been full of them.


As darkness drew in I conceeded defeat (in landing any Perch) and packed up.
Still it was another important session on the river learning some more about the stretch. The temperature readings were air 9deg C & water 10deg C

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

Anker Flood fishing

I had the morning off from work today but was due to be visiting a site in Birmingham in the afternoon, so not one to pass up an opportunity to fish, I decided to try the River Anker again. As it is not far from where I live it meant I could spend a reasonable amount of the morning there.
I got up at 6 and was on the bank before first light about 6.45am. The weather was calm a bit overcast and cool but not freezing. The river however was in flood again and there were only three pegs I could reach.
The water was the usual flood brown but had obviously fined down a bit since the deluge at the weekend and the banks were still sodden from the receded water.

I set up my feeder rod first with the intention of Roach fishing using breadflake on a size 10 hook and a small cage feeder filled each cast with some grated bread and some leftover maggots from last weeks trip (they keep well in the fridge if its cold enough). I used 6lb straight through fiquring that the Roach would not be too line shy in these conditions as the would only be able to smell and not see, also if a chub took the bait I had a better chance of landing it in the stronger flow than on a 2lb hook length.

The swim in front of me had a nice steady flow, slowed by a bush upstream 10 yards to my right and the edge of the crease it caused was probably two rod lengths out to the main flow.
I tried several casts here but never registered a bite. On checking the water temp I decided to set the Barbel rod up too, as the temp and conditions were about perfect. With a steady 8 degC of flood water pushing through it was too good an opportunity to miss. I lobbed out some flavored meat on a 3 oz lead which held relatively well in the flow , only dislodging when too much leaef and weed litter built up on the line after 15 min's or so. Not that it did me any good as I received no bites to this rod all morning either.


After trying the other two accesable swims downstream later on in the morning, I finally packed up about 10 o'clock, in time to get home an get ready for my site meeting in Birmingham at 1:50pm.
So you can imagine what I thought when I got there and found out it had been cancelled !! To think I could have stayed fishing those brilliant Barbel conditions all day, who knows what might have prevailed ?

A bit of Anker fishing

I fished the River Anker today starting at the crack of dawn, which at this time of year is 7:00am ! so not too early. It was just about light when I arrived at the Car Park, so I quickly set up and plumed the depth. The target was to be Perch on the float rod first off, but I also set a barbel rod up with some flavoured meat on - to be left to its own devices in the margin in case any barbel decided to come on the feed.

After getting a few perch type bites on the float (twitchy bobs) and then missing them for some unexplained reason. I decided to move to the next peg to rest the first swim. This gave me almost instant results with a little sprat (Perch) on the denrobena worms I was using, purchased from Polesworth Tackle shop. I had another then I stuck at another typical perch bite that bobbed the float twice then sailed away. This time as it sailed away and I struck it instanly snagged me on an undewater branch ! Bites dried up quickly after this so I decided to try another species.
I decided to see what the fish that were topping all over the river in front of me were, so I changed the float rig over to a smaller stick float and started trotting maggots down the nice deep glide in front of me. After a short while I started catching a steady stream of nice Roach from a couple of onces to maybe 6 oz, which was quite fun from a river. I seems like along time since I last caught a river Roach and after a while I had bagged quite a few of them along with a solatary little Chublet.
None of the fish I caught were massive but as time went on I did start to get slightly bigger stamp of fish. I couldn't help thinking that a really big one would be next, but maybe thats just over optimistic enthusiasm kicking in !
It was definatly enjoyable though to trot the float down stream waiting for it to pass through the 'bite zone' that had naturally formed. I assumed this was where the shoal had gathered to intecept my free offering maggots that would be drifting down in the current. The old adage of feeding little and often was once again proved as I made sure half a dozed were fired in every cast.
A really enjoyable morning overall and I am starting to really enjoy this little stretch of river now. There were no bites on the Barbel rod suffice to say, but 'you've gotta be in it to win it' !