Anyway we arrived at the river just after 08.00 and after looking at a couple of area's decided to head for the area around Danby Drove, we stood on the bank for a few minutes and watched countless Roach topping which was enough to make up our minds.
It was decided that a couple of hour on the feeder might be a good way to start as this would give us time to feed up a pole line for later in the day.
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| The Great Ouse, wide and very deep |
The setup was the usual paternoster rig with a medium Fox feeder and 3ft tail with a size 16 hook to a 2lb bottom, I also set up the pole at 11m with a 1.5 gram float on a top 5 kit and No 4 elastic. Fishing 3/4 of the way across the river I started off with 6 casts on the feeder to get a little bit of bait in and then baited with 2 Red maggots and had the first proper cast. The river was actually gently running off but the feeder wasn't landing very far from the spot it was cast and with hardly any wind it was very easy to cast to the same spot every time.
The groundbait for the session was equal parts of brown crumb, dynamite bait silver X Bream and silver X Roach Black to darken the mix a bit and to this I added some sweetcorn some dead Pinkies and a few casters.
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| Main attack for the feeder was based on a dark groundbait mix with maggot and caster on the hook |
It was a couple of casts before the first indication on the tip and a fair few more before I hit the first bite which was a Roach of a few ounces, the second fish was another Roach of 6oz. After the first 45 minutes I had a few Roach in the net before the bites tailed off which I hoped was the signal that some better fish had moved in and displaced the Roach. It was another 15 minutes before the tip pulled around and I struck into something a little bigger an in no time at all I had a decent Skimmer of 2lb in the landing net. I re-cast to the same spot and as soon as the feeder hit the bottom the tip pulled around again and I had another skimmer of a bout 1lb, this was followed by a couple of similar sized fish before the next bite signaled the return of the Roach. The next half hour saw a few 4oz Roach along with some missed bites and so I thought that I would have a look on the pole line.
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These Roach were like brand new I slipped a single Red maggot on the hook and shipped the pole out over the area I had been feeding for the last 2 hours and watched the float settle without anything having a go at it on the way down. A few minutes with the bait fished a couple of inches over depth and the float slid away and my strike was met with absolute nothing, shit that was a great bite and I managed to miss it. I had a feeling that the elastic was probably set a little too soft and so decided to add a couple of extra turns on the winder bung because at 15ft deep I needed to make better contact on the strike. This improved matters and I started catching a few Roach but within no time at all I had attracted the attention of a pike and was very soon attached to the bloody thing. Well after a couple of minute it decided to let go of the Roach and it came flying out of the water as at that point my elastic was nearly bottomed out. The next 20 minutes was very quite and I suspect the pike was putting the Roach off and so I returned to the feeder and it wasn't long before I had a couple more decent Skimmers but again they drifted away and the Roach moved back over the feed. I had at this point the start of a back ache and decided to call it a day so I had a quick weigh in to see how I had done and the scales indicated just over 12lb. Interestingly Graham had sat on the peg below me and fished a very similar session to me with the Feeder and pole but he had not had a single Skimmer but he caught 11lb of Roach. |
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| Two of the better Skimmers both around 2lb each. |
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