Who's been catching in the snow?

[Anderoo]

Despite having a cold I couldn't resist getting out there today, to the little stream with Rich. I'll let him tell the story as he outfished me by a mile! But here are a few snaps of the afternoon.

 

I caught two fish, a little dace and this slightly bigger chub!

 

 

A couple of Richard's chub:

 

 

 

A small chub that turned into a big dace!

 

 

What we were up against!

 

 

It was a brilliant day

[Alan Roe]

I managed to get out on to the River Aire at Skipton yesterday and managed a grayling, they seem to be taking over the Aire at present the chub seem to be vanishing along with many of the other coarse fish. This may be down to the increasing water quality.

[Kappa]

It was a brilliant day

 

Too right! I couldn't believe how willing the chub were to feed despite the weather! Even the trout had decided it was too cold!

 

The stream was up and had a deceptively strong flow which left me scrambling together a improvised leger weight to attempt to hold bottom.

 

The stream is one Andrew has posted pictures of before, I've walked past it time and time again to get to a bigger river but always thought it looked too small and shallow for anyting but tiny trout. How wrong I was, this season has been excellent of this stretch will plenty of willing 'proper' chub including one that got away last time that looked massive!

 

Well cut a long story short rolling a worm about in the slightly deeper pools accounted for some nice chub including a 3 and half pounder and a baby chub which turned into a big dace on the bank! All the fish were a beautiful dark bronze colour and mint condition.

 

It was a great day to be out fishing, even when we got caught in the heaviest snow I've ever seen with flakes the size of golf balls!

 

I wonder where I will be next weekend?

 

Rich

[Kappa]

I'll let him tell the story as he outfished me by a mile!

 

p.s. This is not true, I just bagged all the best spots

 

Rich

[Guest tigger]

Great pic's.

I took the dogs out instead of going fishing as on my last few trips to the local river I've blanked. On my last attempt the other day I tried fishing every little swim possible and failed again to catch which is very unusual as in previous years I've always caught at least a few Chub. Now a friends told me that in the paper there's an article stating that the river has been polluted with fookin cyanide of all things ! Apparantly the EA have tested fish as well as the water and they're full of the stuff. They don't know who's responsible so the polluters will get away scot free.

[Chris Plumb]

A couple of grayling I caught this afternoon....

 

 

 

 

C.

[arbocop]

Stonechat and there were loads of them around there

 

The stonechats were everywhere and they perched on my rod at least twice. I was feeding them almost as many maggots as I fed into the river.

 

Overall I think we all had a great day out at BC - the weather was particuarly fine and with all the snow - what a day! I tried the fly but the water was a bit stained and this was non productive. All fish came by trotting maggot on the pin. The only tactic we all caught with I think.

 

Highlights of the day for me?

 

• Trout action = 12 or 13 from 5cm to around 3lb. All brown apart from 1 rainbow.
  
• Dace = around 20 up to 22cm to the fork of the tail - does anyone have any idea what a 22cm dace would weigh? I think it was PB for me.
  
• 
  
• A kingfisher, snipe, screeching buzzards, and wheeling red kites. Oh and a water vole - rare sight these days.
  

 

Lowlights

 

[*]Strange absence of grayling apart from the one Chris caught and the large one I lost - from the fin on the surface I would put it aorund 30cm+

 

Other than that - leaving to come home!

[arbocop]

Yes it was a great day out and the only bloody Pike i saw was munching on a Trout i had just hooked ,Mike had loads of Dace and Trout and some good ones at that and rusty managed a load of trout and a baby Grayling ,This is one for the twitchers whats this then

??

I spent most of the day feeding a male and female of the above maggots also saw a Snipe and a Water Rail.

I wonder what can have made the smaller fotprints here

.

Action shot of Arbocop and Rusty

Steve.

 

Action shot of Arbocop -

 

Not my best angle - angle? Geddit? Oh suit yourself.

[Alan Roe]

Great pic's.

I took the dogs out instead of going fishing as on my last few trips to the local river I've blanked. On my last attempt the other day I tried fishing every little swim possible and failed again to catch which is very unusual as in previous years I've always caught at least a few Chub. Now a friends told me that in the paper there's an article stating that the river has been polluted with fookin cyanide of all things ! Apparantly the EA have tested fish as well as the water and they're full of the stuff. They don't know who's responsible so the polluters will get away scot free.

 

Tigger the issue around the arsnic and acid in the Douglas are of long standing and at minute concentrations and won't be the reason for the present poor fishing the relevant article is easy to find with a google search as it was printed in the Burnley Express and the Wigan paper.

The new water directive is concentrating minds on this issue as these elements are still detectable even after millions have been spent on clean ups. The is an EU requirement to do better now so the EA were hoping to get anglers on board.

[Guest tigger]

Tigger the issue around the arsnic and acid in the Douglas are of long standing and at minute concentrations and won't be the reason for the present poor fishing the relevant article is easy to find with a google search as it was printed in the Burnley Express and the Wigan paper.

The new water directive is concentrating minds on this issue as these elements are still detectable even after millions have been spent on clean ups. The is an EU requirement to do better now so the EA were hoping to get anglers on board.

 

 

Yeah Alan I've had a nosey at it on Google.

I don't know if this is recent or not....

 

......."The Douglas at Adlington has suffered one serious fish-kill with around 10,000-12,000 lost, while the water quality in Wigan is officially poor and only moderate downstream, which might come as another shock."

 

 

I'll ask my m8 which paper he saw it in, he reckons it said it was quite high consentrations of arsnic.

Edited February 8, 2009 by tigger