Freshwater Fry Up…12/11/2013

Freshwater Fry Up…12/11/2013 It was a Tuesday. It should really have been a Monday but Monday was raining so Tuesday it was. Monday wasn’t raining all day but it was when I got up so I got back down again until it stopped raining. That meant it was both too late and I wasn’t in the mood. That’s winter for you. Tuesday, well, it was still winter and it HAD been raining but it was past tense, or almost past tense. Past by the time the coffee was gone so it was time I was gone. Hmm. I’d go easy, I’d go river. Down to Beccles and I parked up at the pool. It seemed the easiest place for where I was planning to fish. I wanted a ruffe and a bream would be nice; my maggots were not as fresh as I’d have hoped and were stinking a bit but they’d get a bath and they seemed lively enough so they might do well. Besides, the fry by the pontoon were attacking them with gusto. No piking gear, just the tiddler-bashers. I jumped in and set off downstream, there was definitely no rain about now, it was glorious, if a little nippy. Quite still it was and I didn’t feel like exerting myself. lucky really, the Cuda doesn’t take well to exertion – it tires me quicker rather than moving quicker. At least I was dry though, no cold, wet foot from my shredded sidewinder foot that should have been replaced a year or so ago. Nice and slow and downstream I go, casting here and there in likely spots. Down to my never-fail chub spot. nothing. Not a chub, not a dace, not a roach nor a perch; no gudgeon and definitely no ruffe. A boat though, I wasn’t sure it’d get through but they managed to coax it under to my annoyance as I needed the laugh. I gave it a couple of biteless hours and decided to move back upstream, failing all the way. There was nothing for it but to try for fry. Haha. size 16, red maggot, half maggot, quarter maggot, sliver of maggot; no. Side 20 (the other rod) just as disastrous. I was watching them, I was giggling like a child and I was getting quite tense. There was nothing else for it, size 24 and the tiniest sliver of red maggot…half an hour of constant harassment and I hooked one, it fell off in mid-air. Right you, even tinier sliver somehow just on the hook…ten minutes and bingo! A roach. Well I couldn’t really go home on a blank this early, could I!