It has been a year and a half since my last blog entry. I haven't been fishing as often as I used to and so these pages are becoming a bit neglected. I had my first fish of 2025 last Friday when I went down to my local spot at Neatishead Staithe. It was pretty cold and temperatures were just hovering above freezing as they have been for the last week or so.
This was the scene when I was sat there in the afternoon. No boats! Well, there was just one moored up behind me. You can also make out that the dyke was slowly freezing over and it was creeping up the staithe. I have seen it again today and it has now completely frozen up. I had a kingfisher as a companion. He or she was successfully diving for fish from the other bank.
I was just float fishing using red maggots. Anyone fishing for pike would probably do well as the staithe is full of bait fish. I was trying not to catch the preponderance of small roach by fishing on the bottom and close in. This can work and perch seem to like the edges better than they do the mid water. I did catch quite a few small roach to begin with but eventually I started getting one or two bigger specimens and eventually the perch showed up (and also a few ruffe which showed how close to the bottom I was).
This was my best perch and it did require the use of a net:-
To get an idea of the size of this fish the disgorger is 13.8cm in length and by my reckoning the fish is 23.6cm long or 9.3 inches. From experience this fish probably weighs about 12 oz. I caught this fish about 3.15pm in the afternoon.
All pictures and text copyright Duncan Hale-Sutton 2025.
