Autumn Perch from the River Brue

Our fishing on the River Brue, to date has always taken place during the summer months, where we can rover around fishing various stretches of the river and often stalking chub in the clear waters. This latest trip was to be a bit of a departure from the norm, slightly later in the year than usual with autumn seeming to have well and truly settled in. The leaves are falling, the temperature has dropped, and the weed growth begun dying back. On top of it all the river itself wasn’t quite as clear as usual, but slightly coloured. The weather forecast wasn’t ideal either, with heavy rain showers forecast – but we decided to brave it anyway with waterproofs and fishing umbrellas on hand just in case we needed them.

We didn’t have a particularly encouraging start with the fish just not seeming to be feeding and struggled to get a bite for an unnervingly long time until a move of location and a bit of patience, paid off. We both began catching small chub and roach after building up a swim with a steady flow of bait.

The promised rain eventually came, and we spent the next hour under umbrellas. At this point I thanked my lucky stars that I’d had the foresight to come prepared..

I mainly fished single red maggot on the float rod and started to consistently pull in chub of around 8oz or so. A switch to the ledger rod however brought instant results with a cracking perch of around 2lb, followed by another slightly smaller one which I promptly lost in a raft of reeds under the rod whilst I was being a bit blasé about things and chatting to Jason rather than concentrating on netting the fish.. That’ll serve me right!

After that I missed a few more perch before landing another, whilst Jason also had  lovely perch on ledgered worm. The fading light brought an end to proceedings and the end a what turned into a good days fishing.

Bull Huss – the daddy of all Dogfish.

October out on the Bristol Channel and it’s all beginning to feel considerably more autumnal now. Sunshine or not, the stiff north easterly breezy today was pretty chilly.

Mike and myself fished our usual brace of uptide rods each, and with a smallish tide we were able to head out to deeper water from the off without having to hang around inshore waiting for the tide to ease.

Mike picked up a good smoothhound on the first cast, whilst true to form I pulled in a dogfish. We had steady action throughout the day, with conger eels being around in significant numbers.

I had 8+ congers, some of them a decent size too, along with another 3 or 4 that I lost (usually as the result of being bitten off – despite the 80lb mono traces). I also landed a small tope although only about dogfish size, along with a few proper doggies and a couple of Bull Huss – the biggest being a pleasing 12lb.

Mike had congers and dogfish before finished off the trip with his 2nd smoothhound of the day weighing in at just shy of 14lb. Quite a fun day all in all. Most of my fish came to whole calamari, whereas Mike’s hounds were all needless to say on crab.

Only one more trip left now for this year then it’s our winter break from the boat fishing before recommencing in the spring. Maybe November’s trip will see a cod or two, you never know!

Kia Ora Lakes and the Squirmy Worm

The weather today has been amazing for October! Amazing full stop in fact. Hot and sunny and not a breath of wind. Isobel and myself headed to Kia Ora lakes near Cullompton this afternoon for a chilled out session.

We set up on the smaller of the two lakes to fish for the ‘Silver fish’ and proceeded to pull out a steady stream of quality roach, rudd, skimmers and small tench along with a few hybrids and gudgeon. All were on a short pole and double maggot. Isobel really got into the swing of things and amazed me not only with her patience (not a quality 9 year olds usually have), but her enthusiasm for pole fishing. I would have to admit that she definitely takes after me when it comes to striking bites though… not exactly lightening reflexes shall we say. In fact she made me look positively on the ball… Still – loads of fun and she enjoyed herself.

The ‘Gold’ lake containing the carp was just a couple of yards away from where we were fishing, so I popped over there to stalk a few carp with the fly rod, whilst Izzy was making a dent in the food supplies.

Floating baits aren’t permitted at Kia Ora and as I didn’t want to fall foul of the bailiff should he visit, I fished a sinking fly – my squirmy worm fly.

There wasn’t that many carp to be seen, but I did spot and get to cast to a few that were sunbathing or just cruising around. I probably managed to cast to half a dozen, and hooked 3 of those. It was really satisfying to cast to a stationary sunbathing carp and land a fly a foot in front of his nose then watch him suddenly swim purposefully forward to take the slowly sinking ‘worm’. All close range stuff and pretty arm wrenching.

I had 3 carp in total, the biggest 8lb and the others around 6lb.

Izzy did’ take that long to demolish the sandwiches and before I knew it I was called back to catch more of the ever obliging roach and rudd. Will have to bring more food next time to buy myself a little more time to myself…