In It To Win It…27/06/2013

In It To Win It…27/06/2013 I’ve been hammering the freshwater since the season opened to try and get enough points for the anglersafloat team species hunt at the detriment of everything else including sleep. I’ve covered far more miles and fished new waters, caught two new specifically targeted species and two surprise personal bests but I’m still being eluded by three that I could reasonably expect, namely ruffe. bream and eel. The two former ones shouldn’t be a problem but could I find them? That was the question for today. That said, I also needed Wilmy to open his score and with a bust van he was stuck. So with 3 hours sleep in 34 it took a bit of effort to go this morning after my shift… I picked him up at 9:30, the plan being the drain at Barsham after launching at Beccles – here he should get a few species; I was hopeful and reasonably confident he’d get six, hopefully I’d add two to mine, possibly his and if time allowed I’d put him on the sticklebacks. Stopping briefly for more maggots from Ellough we headed for the launch with fingers crossed. What a beautiful day! The water was reasonably high, reasonably un-dirty and the cloudy sky and high temperatures should bode well. We’d see. Launching, I flung out another untried Fladen lure, an Eco Narrow, a small, shallow running 7cm fat thing with lots of bumps in a yellow and orange colour scheme with black stripes. Looked tempting and hopefully would avoid the bulk of the weed as we trolled up to silver territory! I flicked a maggot out while waiting for him to be ready to launch and had an immediate roach…he paddled over there and tried himself but with the rod tangled at the tip he drifted onto the spot and put the fish down. No matter, we had four hours to get something. As we paddled along through a couple of former hotspots nothing happened but then, out of the blue my rod started to jolt and buck. I turned, grabbed it and in came a half-pound perch. Great! That was a start…could I get a pike though and more importantly could Wilmy get one? Well yes, he could. He did the honours with a 1lb jack on a lure of his own soon afterwards; he was off the starting blocks. Stopping for a boat and with a bit of weed on my lure I turned to reel it in when I saw a splash and another perch grabbed it, similar in size. Looked like the bright colours were doing the business in this sunlight. We moved off again and just before the Barsham bend my rod bucked again; what could it be? "A slim young pike, with smart fins And grey-striped suit, a young cub of a pike Slouching along away below, half out of sight, Like a lout on an obscure pavement…” D. H. Lawrence A small jack of a couple of pounds came to hand on the 13cm Jointed Minnow in firetiger that I’d changed over two a minute or so before. Two species but still not one I needed, they were just for fun. I pulled up at Barsham, a boat was moored where I wanted to fish. Damn. I sat the opposite side and got drawn into a pointless conversation while watching fish swimming beneath me amongst the weeds in clear water through my new polaroids. I cast out and started with a definite rudd; I wasn’t happy with the pictures of my previous rudd, worrying they may have been hybrids or misidentifications but there was no doubting this fella with his golden flecks and scarlet fins, deep body and large, silvery scales and the offset pelvic and anal fins compared to the dorsal. Good. Next up – and it took longer than expected – was a roach. Dorsal and pelvic fins aligned. Then I waited ages, dropping a small perch – but I didn’t need one – before finally getting a small chub with its rubbery lips, streamlined body and paddle tail. The boat finally moved off and Wilmy moved in to fish that had gone off the feed. We experimented with the length between float and hook, watched fish investigating and ignoring the baits and basically sat there. I had a feeder out mid-river which gave me a bonus gudgeon though but I had that as well – Wilmy could have done with all of these! I had an idea. He smokes a lot so I told him he wasn’t allowed another cigarette until he caught another point! I promptly lit up to increase his carving. It took two minutes and he had another point…I’m saying nothing. Sporadically we tempted a few more odd fish and with Wilmy on four (Pike, perch, roach, chub) and the fish all being the same we decided to head back for the town stretch to see what was about. I trolled down, stopping o stick the float out here and there but just managed roach. A fella in a boat had taken bream earlier but they’d moved off – I tried anyway to no avail before heading down to a couple of cuts and the dyke at the end of the quay. Nick’s Trident was on the slip when I went past and on spotting him when retreating I mentioned we were just upriver if he wanted to join us briefly. I had no bites at all in this time. I’d sent Wilmy to my favourite spot and returned to chat to him. He’d done it! Dace and gudgeon, the six expected were in the bag. I figured we would just be able to make the stickleback mark if we headed off now as I needed to be in bed in an hour and a half ideally. Just one more fish… A dace, 3 inches long came to the 3bb waggler and then it was off. Nick had passed us and was flicking lures out. I was going to tell him he was overly optimistic, being fifty yards from an otter holt, when I saw he had a fish on…a decent one as it turned out and with some video and a few pics in the bag he slid a good eight-pounder back into the river to swim away strongly. He was chuffed, he’d launched before us and gone the other way without a sniff, had not had a fish last time either but had been rewarded with a lovely one that pulled his yak about somewhat. Good stuff! We got to the car, loaded up and shot off to Haddiscoe, pulling up on the narrow verge most of the way across the dam. The tetra was unloaded, slid over the gate and launched and with wilmy in the hot seat I passed him the rod; a single pinkie on a size 24. The stickys were on it straight away but they just didn’t want to grab it; ten minutes of hilarity passed – it’s great to watch the shoal batting a maggot around – before half the maggot was pinched off and stickleback after stickleback dropped off before being landed. I could tell Wilmy was amused by it all…and then, finally, success! He landed his first three-spined stickleback, an inch long, and finished his day with seven new points for the team. Nicely done! As for me? Keep on searching, I have until Sunday…but maybe I’ll turn up something new on the sea tomorrow.