The Tiny River Alne - Otters and Otorhinolaryngology

When the Alne is coloured lobworms seem to do really well so for this short afternoon session I decided to hedge my bets and was hoping for a bite or three. The river is still pretty low to be honest but when there is colour if often brings out the fish to go for a mooch about.

You see despite the Alne being a small river there is still predation from all sides and I saw the otter again today this time pressing stop rather than record on my iPhone where all I captured was one second of his head popping out of the water 😀 

Shame as it was very inquisitive and came across the river to see me where I was no more than 10ft away from it. 

I decent sized one as well and munching and crunching on something, still plenty of swims to fish here so I fished the deeper swims first and then worked my way back upstream. I must admit I do love fishing small rivers even though the quarry isn't all that, the fact I'm in complete solitude is hard to beat. 

I use fairly crude tactics for this sort of fishing, a size 6 hook half a lobworm and straight through to 6lb main line.

The chub don't go massive a 4lber being a specimen from the stretch I fish but it's always a lottery what will turn up because it can vary quite a lot. I even caught an eel today which is the first one I've caught I think and also 5 or so trout eager to get the worms.

I've lost 2 trout over the years that were twice as big as the ones I had today but I'll keep plugging until I've banked one because for a a small river in Warwickshire these fish don't give themselves up easily.

Plenty of bites from perch, dace, chub and trout with the dace escaping the net when I landed the eel as I was keeping it in the net to get a photo as it was quite a nice one. The chub came from the same swim as the otter appeared as there is thick cover there where literally 30 seconds of the bait hitting the bottom I was getting nibbles and plucks. 

I missed a proper pull round so I persevered and stuck it out in the swim for another go as I knew it was a chub because of the missing around with the bait and then the savage pull round of the tip.

So quite a successful short session where the trout outnumbered anything else but still they put up a cracking fight even though the biggest was 2lb or so. 

Short and sweet just how I like it !! 

The Wife hadn't even realised I'd gone fishing when I returned, I should do it more often 😁