So slightly different tactics as well, this time some a few No 8’s to help the maggots down a little faster through the water column and I’d also have a sleeper out with a small maggot feeder and short hooklink, where I’d alternative between breadflake, corn and maggots.
Now the Rudd’s bottom jaw protrudes past the top, giving away the fact that it prefers to feed from above, be that on the water’s surface, or on food as it falls through the water. Its pelvic and anal fins are usually bright red but can be dull orange if living in coloured water, whilst the pectoral, dorsal and tail fins are sort of a muddy-red colour.
To the untrained eye Rudd are often mistaken for roach, the easiest way to distinguish between the two is to look out for the brilliant colouring of the Rudd’s fins and its bottom jaw which is set forward, unlike the roach which has its upper jaw set forward. I cannot see how you would misidentify them myself, maybe when they are really small but yet to a couple ounces and above, they are wildly different to me.
However because Bream, Roach and Rudd all spawn at roughly the same point in the year, hybrids between the species are not impossible and are in fact quite common. The Rudd-Roach hybrid causes the most confusion amongst anglers, as the two species are already quite tricky for some to distinguish between.
A Rudd-Roach hybrid will often look mostly like a true Rudd or Roach, but will have some confounding features, such as an extended bottom jaw, when everything else about the fish suggests it to be Roach, or vice versa. To be fair a couple of fish I caught the weekend appeared to show characteristics of these strange specimens! And could well have been hybrids.
Now I didn’t manage anything half decent last time, even a jack pike would have think twice over the mere toothpick, but there are much better fish here hence my return. You’ve got to fish for what is likely to be biting in these conditions and Rudd particularly in the summer months is a worthy quarry.
What else to target ? well chub off the top, eels, or trotting for whatever comes along, just maybe not wade in to the bleakakke (™ Russ Hilton ) seemingly going on at the minute, wrong in so many levels and target them specifically there will be casualties.
The river is full of them at the minute, for the Pike, Perch and Zander It’s like a conveyor of Haribo Tangtastics put in front of a kid in need of a sweet fix, after a while the gluttony wears off even Jack, Billy and Zedlet would be looking for the stop button.
After a swim was raked the bite were forthcoming with Nic managing a bite a chuck for the fits hour or so. Now I was fishing away from the raked swim but was fishing above the weed which is quite thick here, however I was still catching fish, bleak, small roach and my target the Rudd. Those fish were in the 1 to 2 oz range when out of the blue a much bigger Rudd turned up. Ok not big in the scheme of things but I rarely catch Rudd on the Warwickshire Avon.
All 6.2 Ounces of it. A lovely fish though, nice proportions and fat. After hooking a duck which took my maggots on the drop a couple of foot down, the bites dried up, not helped by a boat that churned the bottom up to be fair. Anastasia was back catching the perch though and I lost count of the fish she caught by the end of the session.
As the light went I started to pack up as the bites were hard to come by but after a small bream out of the blue Nic's float buried under and a half decent fish was on. It was giving a good fight for his size and "A hybrid I reckon" said Nic. He was right, a roach bream hybrid, all 1.6oz's of it and a good scores on the board for the bloggers challenge.
The sleeper rod remained untouched but there is too much weed here to fish it effectively. I will be back, this time for a dawn session and will fish and bait it a bit differently. I'm sure there are more surprises to be had.
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