02/07/2020 - Back down the river again

Spent the best part of two hours locating and patching holes in my waders after my last trip ended in wet feet, to the extent that they were nearly more patch than wader! Happy that they'd do the job for at least one more trip I went back over to see Scott again at Soar Tackle for some maggots. Unfortunately, I got there a bit late in the day and he'd virtually been cleared out, so had to make do with what was left in his fridge - a mixture of bronze and whites. However, I was sure that the fish weren't going to be fussy and as long they still wriggled I didn't mind! A couple of days later I was again back in my spot on the River Soar near Kegworth for another evening session.   

It had been raining most of the day, so I wasn't surprised to see that the river was slightly higher than previous visit and that there was a bit of colour in the water, but I looked on this as a positive. Soon had the Ultralite set up and was running a stick float down the crease again.The ravenous hordes of bleak were initially absent and I picked up roach and a couple of small skimmers on the first few trots down.  

However, wasn't long before the bleak, dace, chub and the odd, fat minnow turned up, attracted by the loose feed. I'd brought the perch paternoster rod with me this time, so one of the bleak was swung out and positioned at the tail of the swim, hopefully to attract something large and stripey. 

My friends on the island failed to turn up this time, so I was able to carry on trotting away undisturbed. Turned into another "fish a chuck" session as I carried on catching until the light started to fade and I started to struggle to see the float any distance downstream in the gathering gloom. Unfortunately, the only perch had come to the float rod and I was just thinking of getting the paternoster in when the rod tip banged down forcibly a couple of times and the line pulled out of the clip. However, wound down to feel a weight that was far too heavy for a perch, which was confirmed when a green and gold rocket went airborne. After a few more acrobatics I bundled a pike of about 7lb into the net, hooked nicely in the scissors by the size 6 Gamakatsu circle hook that I was trying out for the first time. Toyed with the idea of putting a rod out for an hour into dark for a barbel, but decided that I couldn't wait for the swim to settle down again. 

Besides, I was getting hungry and had obviously missed a hole in my right wader as I had a wet foot again. Needless to say, after having to squelch back to the car again, the first thing I did when I got home was to consign said waders to the bin, perhaps where they shoud have gone in the first place!

Expect I'll get a few more of these float sessions in as I've not really got a "big fish" bug yet and am quite enjoying catching a variety of species. However, perhaps a change of river will be on the cards for next time? We'll see...