A session on the Dane (Klaipeda Lithuania) 21-11-07

[Wandering_Angler]

Today I ventured my first session since October 29th when I fished with my Granddad on the river Ekete. My strategy, knowing it could be sub zero, was to go prepared. This meant setting up last night in the relative warmth of the garage and so this morning left the house ready with a waggler rig on a 12 foot carbon match rod and Pike rig on my Carp rod.

On leaving the house in thick fog the temperature was registering -2 and it didn’t get much warmer for the session. I arrived at the River Dane next to the Botanical Garden bridge at around 9am and headed into the woods towards Mosquito bank. The river has been in flood for a few weeks and although the level has dropped the water was still moving through with real haste.



My chosen bait for the Pike rig was Herring section (in this case a tale). This is far from my first choice bait, in fact it has proven next to useless so far this winter but it is all I have until the Smelt come into season so had little choice. I decided to put the bait about 1/3 of the way across and then set to with the Waggler which I fished around one to two rods out fishing single maggot over crumb with casters, hemp and aniseed.



Nothing happened, I tried casting to several new spots with the Pike rig and changed the bait on the waggler, first to worm and then to double maggot but apart from getting cold, absolutely nothing happened. After around 45 minutes I found myself removing ice from the eyes in the upper section of my match rod and as my feet grew steadily colder I decided to move up to the next swim where a tree has fallen into the water.



I put the dead bait almost right on the tree while my waggler continued to trot through like a steam train but to be honest I think I knew already this was going to be a blank so when I packed up at noon with no fish I really wasn’t at all surprised! It was -1 when I returned to the house.

I thought you might like to see these, they are exactly the same views of Mosquito bank as the first two images, one looking left the other right but they were taken in July :)

[Fishing Forum Admin]

Sounds hard going but enjoyed the read and Im sure you will get a pike next trip

[pingu]

lovely looking spot hope te fish play ball next time

dave

[Wandering_Angler]

Hi guys, in the summer it’s not bad at all with plenty of weed and when the waters down, pads all the way across.

This is the only spot so far where I have caught Asp, although nothing massive they really do go!

This one was caught on October 3rd 2007 :)



How many points would I score for that :)

[Norfolkboy]

Nice report mate, shame you didn't catch, but looks a lovely place to blank.

[Twiddler]

Great report and pics......shame the fish weren't playing but there is always the next time.