This is not the first time I have been fishing this season but this was the more successful one. Friday I popped down to Neatishead Staithe for a couple of hours and it was really slow.
This was the view across the water. I initially had some old sweetcorn I was trying to use up but it was obviously not even enticing to fish. So I went to the shop in the village and bought some bread which I balled up and put on the hook. This was better but in 2 hours I only caught 4 fish; 3 small roach and 1 dace. I wondered if it was because of all the heat we were having. Somebody I spoke to on a boat said that the water temperature had been as high as 16C.
Today I went to the Bure at Cold Harbour near Ludham. There are a few fishing platforms there which are still open access and one of these was available. There used to be more spots but these have been taken back by the NDAA. I brought bread with me again and, as a back up, some red maggots. I tried the bread first but without much success. A few nibbles but not much more. I was float fishing close in. I then switched to the maggots and began to catch a few small roach and a rudd.
As per normal, the problem with fishing the Bure is that it is tidal and so the float began to pick up pace as the tide began to go out. I did hold the float back and this is often when you get bites. But today I thought I would switch to ledgering off the bottom. Nothing too complicated. One lightish ball weight held between to swivels. Wow, what a difference! I hadn't been expecting the fish to be so voracious. I had been feeding in maggots regularly as I float fished but now I placed the ledger further down in the swim. The bites were surprisingly strong. They really twanged the rod and I was pleased to pull in this nice bream:-
The disgorger in the image is 13.8cm in length which makes this fish 30cm, roughly, or 11.8 inches. Previous experience tells me that this fish will weigh about 1lb 3oz or so. I carried on and caught a few perch but nothing of any size. Then the last three fish I pulled in were all eels! Again, all quite small but quite vigorous. Fortunately, they were all lip hooked and so went back unharmed which is great given their protected status. It is good that the number of eels in our rivers is coming up again. I think I will doing some more bottom fishing!
Between fishing seasons I have been down at the local carp lakes a few times. On the 6th April I was at Holly farm and picked up a couple of carp, the largest being about 4lb:-
Both fell to sweetcorn. Then I also had a couple of trips to Dilham Fishery on the 8th May:-
Then on the 23rd May where I had a nice tussle with this 6lb common (measured):-
This fell to a piece of balled up bread. This is me unhooking the fish.
All pictures and text copyright Duncan Hale-Sutton 2023.
