The morning of the16th and I was out of my bed at 2.45am arriving on the bank at 4am just as dawn was breaking. I planned to fish the river upstream of the car park at the far end of the old railway line and was surprised that there was only one angler on the bank when I arrived. I stopped and had a quick chat with him to find out what he had caught before heading off slightly further upstream, it transpired he had only had the 1 Bream. Anyway I decided on a lovely looking swim on a slightly wider section 5 pegs upstream and set about cutting out a few reeds and lily pads.
The plan was to fish a groundbait feeder for Skimmers and Bream so I set up a medium feeder rod of 12ft coupled to a 4000 size reel loaded with 6lb mono. The rig was a simple semi fixed paternoster using a homemade feeder link running up to a no6 stot that was paced against the knot of my 4" twizzled loop with a small float stop above to allow me to turn it into a bolt rig if required. To the twizzled loop I attached a 60cm hook length of 0.15, 4lb Drennan X Tough hook length line with a size 14 Drennan Wide Gape match hook.
I had a few exploratory casts as I was aware there was some streamer weed in front of me and soon found it was a lot worse than I had expected. Never the less I did find a relatively clear area 3/4 across and slightly to the right of centre.
I started with 4 large feeders full to start the swim and then planned to cast at short intervals for the first 30 minutes or so to lay down some bait.
The groundbait mix was 1/3 Brown Crumb, 1/3 Pro Natural Bream and 1/3 Pro Natural Dark, to this I added dead red maggots, Casters, Micro Pellets and Chopped worm.
I switched to a medium plastic open ended feeder of 20gr and baited with 3 dead Reds before making my first proper cast of the new season at exactly 5am. I sank the line and set the tip with a slight curve and sat back to contemplate my 5 minute casting regime figuring I would start leaving it longer should no bite be forthcoming in the opening period.
My contemplation was very short lived as on 2m 30 sec the tip moved an inch and then dropped back....I picked up the rod and was surprised to feel the reassuring nod of what could only be a Bream. Within the next minute or so I had My first fish of the new season safely in the net.
I quickly re baited with 3 maggots and cast out, perfect I was right on the money and after all of 2 minutes I was in again and Bream no2 was mine. I though I need to get the camera out and get some footage of the session but 2 more casts resulted in 2 decent skimmers both over 1lb.
At this point I decided to get the gear out and start doing some filming as I do like to share my adventures by various means. On re casting I was into a bream in no time at all and as I got it to the middle of the river I could feel I was dragging it through the weed and You guessed it goodbye bream! The next cast resulted in another lost fish but this one came off shortly after it was hooked and I did have to wonder if it was spook the shoal?
Anyway the next 3 cast passed without a sign and so I changed to a grain of corn on the hook and promptly had another bite and claimed another fish but this time it was a very angry Hybrid of about 1 1/2lb. I carried on in this manner changing bait between Maggot, Corn and Worm and various combinations of these catching a couple of fish and losing a couple of fish until I packed up at 9am.
I finished up with a nice net of fish for 30lb plus but would have had double that had I not lost so many fish to the weed mid river. Yeh yeh I know the one that got away!
Anyway a great start to the new season all be it a short 4 hour session and Im looking forward to getting out again soon.
Please have a look at the video of the session below and feel free to like, Share and Subscribe
cheers Mark
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