All last week I checked the weather forecast and more importantly the river levels hoping that the river would finally let us take her on. The planned trip was to be Sunday as I had work and family commitments on Saturday and what a lovely day Saturday turned out to be, frost in the morning and sunny all day, o well you can't have it all your way. Our Mike had to drop out from this trip, he had gone over on his ankle on a family outing to a restaurant in Liverpool and sprained it so it was just Sefo and me. I picked Sefo up at 05.30am and off we went full of excitement and anticipation wondering what the day ahead had to offer. I chose to fish 4 rods, its been a while since I last put 4 baits out and with no one but myself to worry about I thought I'd up my chances. Arriving at my swim the first thing I noticed was that the water level was the lowest i have seen it since the back end of last year, the water was also a lot clearer than its been in the last 3 months, all these factors make it a lot easier for the pike to feed which in turn makes them easier to catch (in theory). I had a few traces that needed to be changed so I put out 2 rods straight away before it started to get Light then set about sorting my terminal tackle on the other two rods and eventually casting them in. With the final rod in I set my brolly up but this time I had to set it up the bank away from the rods as we were expecting a tidal surge around dinner time and rain late afternoon, I put the rest of my gear under the brolly and sat down to re make damaged traces from my previous trip when the bobbin dropped on my right hand rod, the last rod I cast out. This rod was in deep open water around 17' the last time I fished here I had four
fish in the space of just over an hour on this one rod which is unusual because most of the fish I catch in this swim come from the deep slack margins on the left side of the swim. I picked the rod up, this fish was running for the opposite bank, wound into it and struck, it didn't really put up much of a fight and was in the net soon after the initial run. 14lb 02oz of river pike, that'll do me, a very good start to the day and it had only just turned 7am. Sefo took a few photos for me and I let her back. It wasn't to be too long a wait before I got my next run on the same rod, a scrappy little jack of 7lbs that was pretty full and getting ready to spawn. Sefo took the last fish of the morning a jack just over 8lb on a paternoster-ed live bait. The morning pasted with no other action and the imminent tidal surge was fast approaching, todays surge was to be the biggest of this current batch so as soon as the water level began to rise my plan was to bring in my two rods on the left and bring my other two rods up the bank and try and fish the surge up. With my two right hand rods out of harms way further up the bank it was time to bring in my remaining rods, just as I picked up my pod one of the other rods let rip, I didn't have too much time as the water was rising with pace, I chinned the fish once I got it to the bank another jack around 7lb and retrieved my pod and rods before it was to late. I finally settled back down to pay full attention to this tidal anomaly. Over the past 6 months I have noticed that this generally occurs off the back of a new moon when the moon is at its closest to our planet and as a more significant gravitational effect, they usually last for 3 - 4 days and start 1 -2 days after the new moon. The clarity of the water didn't really change as the water came in and the only thing that was to be any real burden was the amount of debris the river collected as it went into a reverse flood. Unsure but optimistic I sat there wondering what the fish would be up to during this change, would they sit it out or would they take advantage of their pray fish breaking cover to head into the changed flow? As the tide hit its peak the flow of the river slowed down and stopped, Sefo came over and told me he had a low
double in the net so I grabbed the camera and headed over to his swim. As he lifted the fish from the water the first thing I noticed was the fishes girth, she was a very fat little lady with a small head, Sefo weighed the fish and I began to take photos, I couldn't get over how fat she was so much so that it was only when I took the last few posing photos I noticed that she was in fact a pug nose and sefo's first ever river caught one, well done mate 12lb 07oz and a lovely looking fish. Nothing more came after that and we stayed into dark, I will say that once the water begins to subside after a surge it go's back at some real pace and carrying a lot of debris so much so that I stopped fishing for a good hour. A good session with much learned roll on next weekend :)
