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No grayling, one roach


Rusty

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River Lambourn, Saturday 1st December 2012

 

The second visit in a week to this venue, I’m getting a bit fanatical about the roach. Last Sunday was a waste of time with the river being very coloured and flowing like I’ve never seen it before, by Wednesday however the colour had reportedly dropped out and it was fishing very well.

 

It took a bit of a walk to find them this time but with polaroids donned and the water crystal clear it wasn’t too long before I came across a shoal of redfins. None of them looked particularly large but a few had landing net potential so I thought it would be worth unleashing my armoury of bait upon them. Said bait was hemp, bread and chopped lobs so I had most angles covered but it was a bit disconcerting to see the roach ignore the free offerings of all three. Still, ever the optimist I thought that the addition of my hook into the bait would somehow tempt them to feed and so I spent the next hour alternating hookbaits and watching the roach swimming around admiring my tiny avon float. They were driving me mad.

 

The arrival of this interloper changed their behaviour, it looks huge in the pic but I’d guess at about 5lb;

 

DSCN0956.jpg

 

The roach became far more active…..not eating but evading. They started doing circuits around the swim depending on where the pike decided to pitch up, he’d go left and they’d swim right, he went right and they’d swim left. Only one of the smaller specimens decided that a last meal might be a good idea and happily this coincided with a piece of lobworm being on my hook;

 

DSCN0954.jpg

 

I toyed with the idea of trying to tempt the pike out with a big lobworm but the setup I was using was too light for that so instead I amused myself by observing the food chain in action. It was great fun watching them play ‘pike tag’ but after a while the roach got bored and disappeared, the pike swam off once he realised that the menu had been wiped clean. I was getting cold so was also on the verge of departure (I’m not that fanatical) but I had a last wander downstream to see if I could find them again. No luck but I did come across Chris Plumb emptying the river of grayling…I don’t think he’d actually caught a roach though so by invoking rule 26a I win the competition.

 

The mini campaign continues, I’m sure that trying for these fish at dusk would improve my chances but I’ll wait for a milder spell before I do that.

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Ah good ols rule 26A saves you again ,after dark is the way i reckon ....has it come yet?

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