Back on the River

Tue June 16th 2009

Opening day arrived and I decided to go back to the Trent to my "lucky " peg in the hope of a confidence booster to kick the River season off with. However after fishing from about 9pm through till 1am I came away with just a solitary Bream. This was only caught late on in the session when I decided to move the left hand rod in to the near side margin in about 8ft of water.


Within a few minutes I had a vicious rattle, then finally the tip twanged round a few times again and I struck into what I assumed would be a Chub. The initial fight was quite a battle and I thought I must be into quite a good Chub. Soon the broad flank of a Bream rose to the surface and I was a little surprised to see it at first. The river here is quite slow and deep so I shouldn't have been, I'm just not used to catching river Bream I suppose.






















I can't remember if I have ever caught a decent Bream from a river before and with this one being a respectable 5lb 10oz male in full spawning armour, (it was as rough as a tree trunk to touch and sporting loads of white tubercles on it's snout)it's definitely my largest river Bream to date. I had one more cast and had another tap but I couldn't continue much longer being tired by now and in desperate need of some kip. I had already wound in the RH rod as I'd slowly started to pack away before the Bream showed up to save me a blank.

The middle rod just kept getting plagued with weed all evening. My only regret was not trying the near margin sooner, or I might have tempted any Barbel that were feeding alongside the Bream had I built up the swim with some bait? Earlier there had been fish rolling out in the middle channel at dusk where I had the RH rod, but like I said before the weed catching on the line kept moving it out of position after a few minutes on each cast.


I didn't get this problem in the winter as most of the weed had already been stripped away by floods, so the lead was easily able to hold station out in the middle channel.

I reckon the Barbel could still be finishing off spawning and so are not yet switched onto anglers baits too much yet? Still there's plenty of time .... !