21/10/2010 - River Derwent

Another two weeks that have flown by without any fishing. Never mind. Had three days of great surf at Saunton and got out on the mountain bike when friends came to stay last weekend. However, when the opportunity did arise I was straight down to Borrowash. Was expecting great things with it being so mild compared to previous days. Certainly started catching on the float rod straight away, including a decent stamp of roach.

Good fun on the float

Soon had a paternoster out alongside a reed bed downstream. Had only been in a couple of minutes before I had the first run. Unfortunately, this turned out to be one of my friends called "Jack"! A couple of casts later with the float rod and I had one of his mates go airborne after a chub I was just lifting out of the water. This was followed by a dropped run on the paternoster and an another attack on the float rod by something that left a very impressive boil at my feet. Seemed to go quiet after this initial flurry of activity. However, whilst I continued to catch steadily on the float rod, ending up with a nice mixed bag of roach, chub, dace and bleak, there wasn't any sign of any perch.

Perhaps with the recent cold weather I now need to go looking for the perch, rather than building up a swim full of silver fish and waiting for them to come to me, especially with so many pike about. Will definitely be going back with the pike gear though!