Return to the waterside

I was back fishing at Neatishead staithe this afternoon. It is good to be back there during the winter when there are no boats to contend with and the fishermen have the water to themselves. It wasn't that cold, perhaps 8C, but it was overcast and by the end of the afternoon I felt quite chilled through. At least there was very little breeze.

I had the remains of a pint of red maggots that had been sitting around in the shed for a couple of weeks. At least, at this time of year, they don't all turn into casters in a matter of days - there were enough maggots lurking in the bottom of my tin. I was float fishing as usual and began with a pair of maggots at a depth of just above the bottom. The water is still very high with all the rain we have had but the water clarity has improved; there isn't the muddiness in the water that there was a few weeks ago.

I started getting bites immediately and within a few minutes I had a couple of roach that weren't tiddlers. I fed in the casters that I had as groundbait into the middle of the water. I was sitting halfway down the staithe on the left-hand side as you view it from the car park. There were a few other fishermen present. There was a father and son (of about 9 years) at the right-hand end adjoining Limekiln Dyke. The son was doing better than the father much to the father's annoyance!

I thought I would try alternating my bait in rotation - double maggot, double caster, single caster. I also adjusted the depth of the bait to just above the bottom. This seemed to work. I was catching quite a few roach, some of not a bad size (up to, perhaps, 6oz) and I also snagged a couple of skimmers (small bream of maybe 6 to 8oz). Nothing like the bream they were catching on the river Yare at Woods End where we went for a walk yesterday! The guys there were into a shoal of bream of up to 5lb. I saw one nice specimen being landed using a swim-feeder rig.

I started to try and make a note of how many fish of each species I was catching by using casters as counters in the bait tin lid. I mostly had roach but there were about 5 or 6 perch (no size), 3 rudd, two dace, 2 bream and 1 ruffe. So six species in all.

Part of the enjoyment of sitting by the water is seeing and listening to the wildlife. There were a couple of cheeky swans (one ringed) that were seeing if we had any food for them. One was trying to nibble my boot. All through the afternoon there were robins competing with each other, tits of various sorts twittering in the tree tops, pheasants squawking from people's back gardens and, at the end of the day, the lovely sound of blackbirds chattering as they find their roosts.

All text and pictures copyright Duncan Hale-Sutton 2020.