The Tiny River Alne - Minnows and Millenarianisms

The river Alne is one of those rivers that can provide some fantastic sport when the conditions are good and then the rest of the time often you are scratching around for bites.

It can rise and fall ridiculously quickly and the fish I'd imagine especially in the winter haven't a clue what to do one day to the next. I better get the excuses in early because to be honest, I kind of knew the outcome before I'd even started. 

Despite the hard frost overnight the Alne looked it would be in decent fettle for this short morning session. I only had worms and maggots with me but a first look of the river maybe I'd made a little bit of an error.

You see the water was clearing fast after being brown and properly coloured and a large visible bait would well have an advantage of a pungent worm and maggot cocktail. 

I decided to try the very upstream section and work myself down to the middle of the stretch and then retrace my steps. I rarely fish this section but I have had chub, dace and trout here in the past so I know it holds fish.

When its clear here I love nothing more than fishing a small Salmo Hornet and it can provide some decent sport especially when out of the blue a trout or chub can dart out from the cover and grab the lure.

Bait fishing though can well be hit and miss like it was for this session. 5 swims down with only greedy minnows up for a bite it really was tough to find any proper bites. In-fact the only proper bite came typically when I was enjoying a cup of tea in the winter sun.

That must have come from a roach or a dace I'd imagine but a recast nothing materialised. The last swim I fished was fast on the outside, slack in the middle and inside and fairly shallow. A bite came quick and as soon as I hooked it I knew it was a trout.

A decent trout at that and sadly the inevitable happened because shortly in to the decent fight with the fish giving me the run around the hook pulled and another decent trout did me over. I've lost 3 proper decent ones here now with the best banked around 2lb.

This was much bigger than that and sadly I didn't get to see it this time. And that was a wrap, another tough session on the Alne, oh well, still a lovely morning to be out though especially when a stop off at Dermot's I treated the Wife and I to a late brekky.