Small Brook Fishing Pt.10 – Trugs and Twiddle Poops

The stream has been a little out of sorts of late where bullheads are concerned anyway. These aggressive little fish nowhere to be seen over the last few sessions where particularly the last session trout seemed to dominate. In the winter fish maggot you usually catch one or two at least every trip or at least have a few drop off when swinging it in.

The theory I had was unless you're prepared to fish in to dusk and beyond which is difficult to justify, they were no biting because it was too clear. The are well camouflaged when hugging bottom and much of the time they are laying up under their stone blanket. Yesterday there was a decent amount of rain though so I decided to give it another go to try and register some challenge points.

100 points for the biggest of the species, will others dedicate as much time as I have been doing for them I wonder ?

The water was up as expected, a nice clarity and it looked ideal for a bite from the 'Millers Thumb' It took a while for the first bite though and it came to Sam who was fishing a swim with a little bit of depth.

A nice dark roach of 8oz's and gave a pretty good scrap on light tackle. Certainly the biggest Roach he'd caught and just goes to show some the quality of these fish that live in these small waterways.

In many areas you can go from one side to the other just by rolling your socks up, very shallow indeed but these small tributaries are feature filled and it's just a matter of roving around to try and find fish holding areas.

After a couple of small Perch and one that probably went half a pound I caught a tiny brownie. By far the smallest I've caught here but encouraging all the same. The bullheads were nowhere to be seen though. Hmmmmmmm !!!

Were persevered and continued on in our quest. There was misty rain falling down as well and the wind was picking up. Considering a few days earlier it was 37 degrees, this felt like an autumn day. The tiny weir oddly didn't produce any fish, usually there are dace there and trout.

Now I've seen bullheads move from the bottom and properly go after maggots in the past and the final swim I'd dropped the float rod in for Sam to commandeer and out the corner of my eye caught the sight of a bullhead do exactly as described above. It came out of nowhere and tried to grab the slowly sinking bait. Fast as well, they don't mess around.

"Sam, bullheads, I've found bullheads !!!!"

And they register bites on a 1oz quiver and also bob the tiny float fitted to Sam's rod. Sure enough after a few casts the first bullhead was caught. Not a big fish, but well deserved and around half the size of the fish that we have caught here. Where Sam's biggest is a 1/4 of the British record, I'd love to see a big Bullhead I really would.

But another species ticked off the list. Now I think I'll return again in the winter for those dace or maybe even sooner, we'll see, Sam and I love this sort of fishing. Simple tactics and simple fishing. The stamp of fish surprise me here though. I love the adventure, the exploring and discovering more of this small waterway. I'm sure there are other surprises to be had, I also want to try and catch a stoneloach on rod and line. Apparently there are here, and I want to catch one.