River Welland Sunday 28th August

The river Welland was in a strange mood today with the better fish conspicuous by their absence on what seemed like a perfect day. The only reason I could think of for this was the extra water that was in the river from the recent heavy rain we have had but everything else was spot on. The water had a good tinge of colour and there was a decent ripple on it and most of the day was overcast.
I was torn between the waggler 1/3 across or the feeder 3/4 across but when Graham said he was going to fish the feeder so I decided to fish the waggler as we would get a better feel for what was going on fishing 2 different methods. On plumbing up I found about 9 feet of water a 1/3 of the way across and this is the range I saw most of the proper bream topping last week.



 Insert Waggler ideal for Skimmers

 I introduced 6 medium sized balls of groundbait containing Casters and Sweetcorn and started with Caster and maggot on the hook. The river was up about 8 inches and pulling slightly but nothing too much, anyway it wasn't long before I had my first bite from a 1oz Skimmer which was I am afraid to be the stamp of fish for the day.

It take a lot of these for 10lb

I was loose feeding Casters each cast and Sweetcorn every 3rd chuck and I had about 20 fish in the first hour or so but the fish had started to come up in the waters and I was missing as many bites as I was hitting. I carried on with the  loose feed but slipped a grain of Corn on the hook to see if I could get through the small Skimmers and after a couple of casts I was into a chunky Hybrid of about 10oz but it must of been the only one in the river as I never saw another fish of this size for the rest of the session.

So at this point I thought I would concentrate on what I had in front of me that was willing to feed and I switched to maggot on the hook and then proceeded to catch 58 fish in the next hour.

I have to admit that this was a little to frantic and decided to take a break for a few minutes and have something to eat while I gave some though on what I was going to do to get through these small fish.
I resumed after lunch with 2 balls of groundbait and I planned to introduce a small ball every 4 fish or so and see if could at least get the fish on the deck. well this didn't make any difference and I was still plagued by small Skimmers on the drop. I decided to alter my shotting and moved more shot down the line and group my droppers to make a double bulk pattern which did allow me to hit more bites as it was very clear when they had hit the bait as the float was now holding well out of the water. Anyway I finished the session coming in right at the rod tip and found I was catching just the same as I had 1/3 of the way out and so I would have probably done better with a 4m whip.
I finished with 155 fish for 10lb, this had been a busy session to say the least and I was a little disappointed that there were no better fish showing today but this does bode well for the future with all these smaller fish in the river. Graham ended up with a few bits on the feeder but had fished corn most of the day and still only managed small fish.

A busy catch for 10lb

On the way back towards Crowland we stopped to talk to another angler and he told us he had struggled but had  caught 1 big Tench. He emptied his net while we were still there and this thing must have been 7lb I just wish I had had my camera as this was a cracking river Tench by anyone's standards.