11/11/2011 - River Derwent

I always seem to lose focus and struggle a bit at this time of year. It seems such a huge step change when the clocks go back, with that lost hour making all the difference. No more crafty afternoon sessions after work. Instead, everything has to be meticulously planned to make best use of my remaining annual leave, so it's annoying when a trip doesn't deliver the goods. Such was the case with the latest session on the Derwent. Forecast was for the best weather of the week. However, as it turned out it was cold, drizzly, never got light all day and yet again there was that annoying upstream wind. The saving grace was that the conditions didn't stop the silver fish feeding, with a mixed bag of roach, dace, chub, bleak and gudgeon coming to the float rod. It was the predators that didn't show. Had two paternoster rods out for the last two hours, but didn't get a sniff. Not even a suicidal jack or greedy perchlet. Just about said it all when I wound in one of the rods to pack up to find a bare hook and realised I'd probably been fishing for half an hour without any bait! Still, there's always retail therapy to cheer oneself up and I'm particularly finding myself drawn into the world of rubber! I recently got some great looking shads off Allan Mee at http://www.agmdiscountfishing.co.uk/. They're the 3" Big Hammers (the bottom one in the picture is a great minnow imitation and will get an outing on the Derwent when the weed dies down).

A three pack of rubbers please

Also splashed out on some larger crayfish imitations that will hopefully get me a bigger fish or two on the River Soar, which is now riddled with signal crayfish. At a few quid per packet and the same for the worm hooks and jig heads they make far more economical sense than an extortionately priced piece of Japanese plastic!

Eat me!

Did have some good news at the weekend. Tim reported that the zander on the canal were still feeding well, so hopefully it'll back to normal service and a few fish on the bank soon!

Tim with the best fish of a recent session