Mixed fortunes on Ten Mile Bank

Well having spent the last few weeks fishing the river Welland I fancied getting back on the Great Ouse at Ten Mile Bank and fishing for Roach on the pole. We arrived at the river and decided to fish the stretch by the chapel as it was a lot more sheltered than most other sections of the river as there was a strong wind blowing. I put on a 3gr rig on my top 5 and had  plumb around the swim, I settled on a line at 11.5m as if I had gone out any further I would have been off the top kit because it was 16 ft deep and still sloping away. I had a plan to start of with a couple of balls of groundbait and then to loose feed casters and hemp over the top and get the Roach up in the water and then switch to a lighter rig.

Well to say that it didn't go to plan was an understatement as after 2 hours I had not even had a bite. My friend Graham had started on the feeder and wasn't doing very well either and had only had a Couple of small Skimmers and another of around a pound. I decided to pack up and go and have a look elsewhere but Graham decided to tuff it out, I had a quick look at the Little Ouse but it was very clear and weedy so I headed back towards Littleport. I didn't even bother getting out of the car as it was blowing a gale and so I headed back along Ten Mile Bank with an view to having a look around the Danby Drove area, when I got there there were couple of anglers there so I carried on a little further to  where the owl box used to be. I had a quick look and found that this area was well sheltered from the wind and so I decided to drop in and have a couple of hours on the feeder and within a few minutes I was making my first casts to get some bait into the water.

A typical comfortable sit down on the Kings Lynn AA stretch of the Ouse

This section as is most of Ten Mile Bank is very deep and the feeder was taking a count of 18 to hit the bottom, after 6 casts I put a hook on and baited it with 2 red maggots.
It was about 10 minutes before I got my first bite which resulted in a 6 oz Rudd, i then had a few bites and a couple of Roach of around 4oz before I started getting bites on the drop.


One of many Roach to take the bait as the feeder was going down


With the increase in activity of more regular casting the fish where coming up in the water and before I knew what was going on I was getting hit as early as a count of 6.
Now rather than fight this I decided to go with what I had got going on in front of me and so I switched to a lighter feeder and shortened my hooklenght to a couple of feet.
I also switched to only putting groundbait in the feeder every couple of cast and this had the benefit of 1 saving on groundbait as I was having to retrieve and re cast about every minute and also stopped the fish coming up to high in the water and held them at about 10 -12 feet deep.
I would cast out and hold the rod across my knee by the time I had counted to 12 the tip was rattling around, I was striking at everything and hitting a fair percentage of the indications.
Most of the fish were around 4oz with the odd better fish going 6oz and after my fruitless morning session on the pole I was having an absolute ball.
I could just imagine if I had fished a waggler fixed at about 12ft I could have  murdered them but as time was running out fast I stuck with on the drop feeder fishing until I had blown what groundbait I had mixed up. All in all I had really had a fun couple of hours and saved what could have been bad day. I called Graham to let him know I was packing up only to hear that he had not had another fish and was packed up and waiting for me.
I had finished up with about 5lb of Roach which was nice as they have been a little conspicuous by there absence so far this season.

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