River Nene, Stibbington - 5 March 2015

Well as luck would have it the weather was good for my midweek trip to the Nene at Stibbington although a little windy. On arrival I had a quick look off of the bridge and as I suspected the river looked in great shape with some flow and a nice tinge of colour. The wind was from the WSW and so would be pretty much in my face so I figured that I would sit either just up or downstream of the bridge as this area is the most sheltered. Anyway after a quick look I decide to sit just above the bridge as this was by far the most protected from the wind.




My Office for the day

 I planned to keep it very simple today as I just wanted to enjoy myself and didn't see the need for complications, so it was to be the pole. I set up 1.5gm Tubertini river float on a top 4 and found about 8ft of water at 9m, the rig comprised of a bulk with 2 droppers and a size 20 hook. I mixed up Dynamite Roach groundbait with some Brown crumb and added to this some mole hill soil from the bank behind me, the plan was to feed hard balls of ground bait with pinkies and a few big maggots in it. I kicked off the swim with 4 balls cupped in for accuracy and planned to top up with another small ball every 15 minutes and see how it went.

1.5gm Tubertini float


 

With the groundbait in I organised the rest of my tackle and gave it a few minutes before my first run through with double pinkie on the hook, holding the float back slightly I edged the rig down the peg at about half the speed of the flow. It was on the third run that the float buried and the first Roach of the day was hooked and although only a couple of ounces it was a positive start to the session. Before my next put in I adjusted the number 4 elastic to be a little softer and gave it a good dose of lube which improved matters and allowed the smaller fish to swing comfortably to hand. I was getting a bite most runs through and connecting with most bites so was confident that I would see double figure unless I got Piked out or did something really wrong to balls it up.

Small  hard balls to keep the swim fed

The session progressed nicely with most fish between 1 and 3 ounces with a few 4 to 6 ounce fish making me wish I had brought some Hemp with me but alas I only had 1/2 a pint of fluro pinkies and a few big maggots. The feeding plan was working fine at 15 minutes between top up balls but if I left it much longer the bites started to tail off. Anyway I had only just been thinking to myself that I was lucky not to have had any pike trouble when the inevitable happened and a Pike of about 5lb snaffled a Roach as I shipped the pole back but this was short lived as the hook length soon parted.
The Pike had various other attempts but failed to get hold of any more of my fish even resorting to following them out of the water as I swung them out on the top kit.

Although not big this was one of my better fish on the day

 

On about 4 and a half hours I snapped my hook length when swinging a fish in and decided that I would call it a day as I was more than satisfied with how it had gone, I had had a lot of fish and it had been steady fishing without being too frantic.
When I pulled out my keepnet I decided to have a quick weigh in because it did feel a little heavier than expected, to my surprise I had 18lb so by my reckoning  I would have probably done 20lb if I had changed the hook length and given it the full 5 hours. I had a great day and really enjoyed the fishing, here's hoping I can get back there before the end of the season.

Cheers Mark

No complaints from me today