The Tiny River Alne - Tiddlers and Tidology

The Alne was fishable which was a surprise because the other local rivers were banging through and carrying a ridiculous amount of extra water again. It drops like a stone though however I caught it when it was on the rise again with rain overnight and again in the morning.

It would be chocolate brown I know that so it was out with the small feeder and and half a lobworm was bait. I've found the Alne hard to work out, it's feast or famine I must admit.  

More famine than feast of late sadly, but then looking back at my blog I've had some cracking sessions here when the water has been exactly like this.

Now you know very quickly if there are fish in the swim and it is a matter of roving the stretch to try and drop on the fish. Fishing this method had bagged me plenty of dace, chub and trout over the years and the Alne can often throw up some nice surprises for a small waterway. 

2 swims down though nothing much was happening so I decided to negotiate the bridge of death to where the river is wider and also a tad deeper. Within a few minutes I was getting taps and pulls on the worm and I knew exactly what the culprit was and yeah a greedy minnow.

They eventually hook themselves due to their perseverance and it was clear there were plenty of them in the swim because as soon as the worm hit the bottom the tip was rattling like a good'un.

This was the gonk swim I found though so I decided to stick it out in that swim because at least I was getting a few bites. I've had some nice fish from this peg and often the fat dace make an appearance as well but sadly not for this session.

What did show up though was a few gonks, with one weighing just under my PB of 1.2 ounces. It's a shame I didn't have my scales here the other day because one of them was definitely bigger than this one. 

And that was my lot sadly, all a bit quiet on the Alne front the fish don't know what the heck is going on at the moment. Nothing big showed up either so maybe scaling down and catching gonks was the way to go. A float could just about be used but I've always found that getting the maggots to sit on the bottom is the way to go.

I've seen gudgeon up close when the Avon is clear and they are bottom dwellers there is no doubt about that. It will be nice for the river to settle in to some stability because I'm sure it will fish much better then. Still nice to see gudgeon isn't it, definitely my favourite tiddler.