A few hours out yesterday.....

[Martin56]

Don't beat ya' sen up about the big Grayling Ian. They do like Crocodile death rolls with that big Dorsal & once hooked, maybe a blunt hook is irrelevant, since it would be now on the hook bend??

Maybe too many maggots cushioned the hook + Barbless didn't help?? & they have a soft mouth!!

[Tigger]

34 minutes ago, Martin56 said:

Don't beat ya' sen up about the big Grayling Ian. They do like Crocodile death rolls with that big Dorsal & once hooked, maybe a blunt hook is irrelevant, since it would be now on the hook bend??

Maybe too many maggots cushioned the hook + Barbless didn't help?? & they have a soft mouth!!

 

I was being gung'ho with it Martin, it was hugging the bottom until I got it right up to the bank and I just bent the rod into it to get it to the surface.  The hook was a drennan super spade which is barbed (I never used barbless hooks) but it had lost it's point.  I knew I should have changed it but was just too lazy lol.

I strike like a panther , so even if a maggot is masking the hook I still rattle the hook home into the fish....if the hook isn't blunted as that one was.

The grayling looked every bit as big as the biggest chub which was over 3lb, but, who knows, it might have been hollow lol.

[Martin56]

Yep' , I don't do rivers any more sadly.

Maybe a bit spoilt these days on commercials - just lift into a fish with the Pole or Rod Nearly pulled in!!

Striking like a Wus or not at all is good enough here!!

[Tigger]

I had literally an hour on the river today before "rain stopped play" ☹.

I was aware there may be some light showers, but there was no mention of windswept heavy freakin rain!

Anyhow, I winkled a couple of chub out of a slow 10ft swim.  I took a pic of the second one which was the smaller of the two.

I used the browning sphere 13ft 6inch rod again today and it is growing on me a lot!

[Martin56]

8 minutes ago, Tigger said:

 

I used the browning sphere 13ft 6inch rod again today and it is growing on me a lot!

What, you mean might be 14ft Tomorrow?? 

Edited November 24, 2021 by Martin56

[Tigger]

Narrh, i've got a 14ft sphere waggler rod .

The spliced tip is nice though, and I think it'll be sound for barbel.  I did get a barbel of around 10lb with it when I first got it and it coped well enough, although that was a small river and they just don't fight anything like as hard in small rivers.

[Martin56]

On 11/21/2021 at 10:24 PM, Tigger said:

Don't beat ya' sen up about the big Grayling Ian. They do like Crocodile death rolls with that big Dorsal & once hooked, maybe a blunt hook is irrelevant, since it would be now on the hook bend??

Reminds me of a time when I was about 15 or 16, & a member of Leeds Electric AC & fished with my Late Dad.

We had some cracking venues (Secretary, Malcolm Daniels was a big wheel  in the Leeds & District ASA)

We had one Match where we fished on the river Ure at Middleham on Lord Bolton's Estate whereby his Lordships gamekeeper boarded our bus & announced - "There Will Be NO Laying On & No Worm " (he meant no Legering) & one wise guy shouted up "Arthur - want to borrow a Float??" Arthur Manson & his son Michael  only fished the Plonk!!

Anyway, the point of the match was to catch as many coarse fish as possible & there was an EA Tanker waiting to take them away to some other place where us working class type chappies could catch them all again!!!

It was a Disaster - another 2& 1/2Lb Grayling, then another 4Lb Brown Trout & so it went on all day with hardly a scale fish caught.  We even tried to avoid them by fishing in a slack  trying to catch a Bleak to win the match but again - another bleedin' 2 Lb Grayling!!

Dad reckoned he had 100 Lb+ & I had around 40.

Happy Days.

Edited November 25, 2021 by Martin56

[The Flying Tench]

Ian, I see that even in bad conditions and a deep swim you fished float. Is that always the case, or do conditions sometimes mean you resort to feeder and big baits? I ask of course with reference to my local Thames where my success with the chub is limited to say the least!

[Tigger]

3 hours ago, The Flying Tench said:

Ian, I see that even in bad conditions and a deep swim you fished float. Is that always the case, or do conditions sometimes mean you resort to feeder and big baits? I ask of course with reference to my local Thames where my success with the chub is limited to say the least!

 

If I can I always try to float fish John, I just enjoy it more and it is a much more sensitive way of fishing.  I think you miss a lot more fish if legerring also.  I know most people leger the swim where I fished yesterday, and i'm not lowing my own trumpet, but they seldom catch a chub on a leger, they usually catch dace or barbel.  The chub are a bit clued up as that spot is hammered!

I usually try to stick to bunches of maggots, 13 or more on a 14's drennan superspade hook.  Often i'll remove several maggs  and squash two pieces of corn on, they seem to like a cocktail.

I very rarely leger and if I do leger I have found I get better results if freelining a bait.  

 

[The Flying Tench]

Your catches demonstrate that float is best, certainly on your river, but my problem is seeing the float even with the hopefully-very-visible ones I bought recently! But I'm interested in what you say about freelining. Does this involve having maybe one swan shot on the line, where you can allow the bait to trundle through the swim, ie a semi-moving bait?

I haven't met anglers on the Thames who float-fish for chub, but several people have said they don't use a feeder cos they think the chub can feel the resistance.  So they cast the line, with just one or two swan shot, into the flow and wait to see where it settles, I think on the basis that that is where other food will settle also.

Have I got the right end of the stick about how you freeline?