First blank of the year

[wunnus]

I am always fascinated by cyclic reports of fish missing in a river. Yet when I get down on the bank there is often an amazing sense of deja vu, roughly the same species and roughly the same sizes. The great thing about rivers is that it is not a group of fish going round and round. The move up and down the river for the best feeding spot. A section of the Gipping had reports of good bream "all those years ago", I never saw any sign of em, until one day!!! Then never since. The little dears are there somewhere! It makes a great difference if way down the section a tree goes down or a bramble is cleared.I expect tat it is like a domino effect, one group is moved, they go to another swim and this displaces another species etc etc

[garylee]

What section of the gipping with the good bream do you mean?

If you think about the gipping there are sections separated by lock gates (weirs replacing some lock gates).

This goes back to when the gipping was used for transporting goods and barges could go from Ipswich to Stowmarket.

Fish (apart from in floods) only move up and down these sections.

So not much difference than a lake really.

[wunnus]

By lake I was thinking of those large circular holes with few features, usually well stocked. If you spook the fish they have nowhere much to go, on the river if you spook the fish they can bu**r off 1/2 mile down stream.

Most rivers are long thin sections separated by weirs but the big difference is the vast number of features. Each weir produces a pool, with flowing water to contend with. Overhangs, bridges etc all vary the conditions of visibility. In addition the fish have a pecking order of swims, hence you often see the same species of fish at similar swims.

The section on the Gipping mentioned was the section from the weir beneath the road bridge at Blakenham/Claydon down to the Paper Mill Lane lock. I disbelieved the local reports of good bream in this section (mainly fishing either side of the weir) and then one day hey presto they were there, then the next day it was no sign! I can only presume that they live way down this section and had a day out.

[Anderoo]

On a section of Thames that I fish for chub, I once saw a big shoal of bream travelling upstream, porpoising as they went. I have never caught a bream from that stretch, nor ever seen them again, despite having fished it an awful lot.

 

On a neighbouring stretch (the other side of a weir/lock) there are loads of them. Maybe they were all going home!

[garylee]

By lake I was thinking of a more natural water with reeds, lilies, weed beds, sunken trees, over hanging trees/bushes and natural stocking levels (spook the fish and they back off out of casting range).

Not an over stocked featureless hole: not that all commercials are featureless.

I can't say I have done much fish spotting at the section you mention the only time I've walked it is in the past is when cutting the footpath but the vibration of petrol machinery is not very conducive to fish spotting.

How many fish did you see? Approx size ? Might be worth a bit of a roving session