Finally, some fish and new reel christened.

barbelblanker · #1 02-12-2011, 05:30 PM

Well it was such a lovely day there was no way I was staying in.

River Salwarpe made it's way to the top of the list because although the Severn was fining down it was still that colour that leaves my confidence ruined.

Went to get some bait from my local tackle shop and there was some bloke in there who didn't half look like Des Taylor. As he was in mid flow about beer and I was in a rush I got bait and left. First angling "known face" I've seen it quite a while.

So down to the BAA section just my side of Worcester.

Originally picked a swim with bushes on the far side but wind in my face. Binned that after realising I was just making life difficult for no reason.

Went back up stream three swims and found a nice even glide with the wind blowing upstream.

The Salwarpe is a tributary of the Seven an enters about a hundred yards down from where I settled (through a couple of bends. I could see that the level had very recently dropped a good two foot or so , so can only assume the Severn backed up in to here, so there's a good chance some of the fish did too.

Temperature was a balmy 9 degrees with the air temperature matching it exactly. Lowest temp was 8.8 when I left in the "cold".

Some views of the swim.

Upstream.

Cattle drink.

Close up on the cattle drink.

Bush in water , are you thinking what I'm thinking pinkie ?

Downstream, river turns sharp left then meanders the 100 or so yards to th Severn.

Took a maggot approach as I wanted to give the centrepin another go.
Set up three rods.
One was a light float rod with the Akuma centrepin and a 5 no4 stick, initially shotted with most of the shot spread out in the bottom two thirds.

Had a maggot feeder set up and a waggler as back up, for reasons that will become apparent in a minute.

The surface was flowing upstream, it did this last but one time I fished this river and seems to happen when the Severn is high.

Dropped the stick in and , sure enough it went upstream (with the wind), then the bottom third of the shot settled and it , slowly, headed downstream.

Yet again the surface layer was going in a completely different direction. Hence setting up a waggler in case that wind got stronger and the float stopped all together.

Fed small portions of maggot very regularily to try to stimulate and roach in to action.

Had images of a great days fishing but after two hours it was looking like a blank.

So the stick float (which had been used on and off as well as the waggler and the feeder), came off and I got a topper float out and loaded the shot Bath fashion. Bulk of BBs low down to dig in to that flow.

This seemed to work as I finally christened the reel with two roach, one bleak, one perch and a couple of ruffe. New species too as I have never caught a ruffe before.

A piccy (please note I do not use t-towels to unhook fish as it removes the slime, it's purely to calm the fish down and stop me loosing it in the weeds).

Normally I'd have been glad I hadn't blanked but not too impressed with this days work apart from -

1. Catching a new species.
2. I've blanked like mad for weeks so it's great to catch ANYTHING.
3. Learnt to cast the centrepin a few rod lengths using the "loops" method.

So, not dejected at all.

Right as I missed the rugby it's beer and kebab time anyway.