The Tiny River Alne - Torrents and Torsiographs

As dusk approaches, another angler's many hours by the riverside are about to pay dividends. Having patiently fed the swim during this warm afternoon and evening he now waits for that all-important first bite. As the sun descends behind a big willow tree, surface activity on the swiftly moving river reveals the presence of a shoal of good-sized dace feeding on the insect life. An encouraging sign for the angler, but he will choose to wait for one of the bigger fish to accept his breadflake offering.

The angler hopes this preoccupation with the evening hatch will soon be frustrated and that the dace or roach for that mater will will then turn their attentions to other tasty morsels. 

Much of his bread slop feed will have been washed away by the current, but he hopes that some will have remained in the swim, and that the big dace, with hunger in their gills, will now make it their source of food.

Sitting some 30 yd upstream of the feeding shoal, he carefully casts his Avon float into their path and through deft control of his centre-pin reel he is able to present the bait perfectly. 

Surely his moment of glory will come. In successive casts he lands fish of 8 oz and 10 oz, but he knows bigger fish lie below. However, they are not as easily fooled as their younger cousins. 

On the next cast the bait makes it through to the bottom of the 4-ft glide and a perfect specimen a 1-pounder leaves the sanctuary of the weed-bed. Temptation has proved too much to resist. The float dives under, and after a spirited battle the angler's patience is rewarded when a slivery flank surfaces to reveal his prize. A dream is realised as the fish of a lifetime sparkles in the waxing moonlight.

Then I woke up !!!!

Anyway back to reality, back in August I caught a lovely dace from the Alne that weighed 12 ounces and catching a fish like that, you get to think are there any bigger than that to be had ?. To be honest I answered my own question and it's been on my mind ever since. The gudgeon too, they seem to be getting bigger and bigger down here every time I catch one.

To be honest the Alne and other local rivers have been more miss that hit and the river has been up and down, up and down and not really settled in to a rhythm for a good while now. I would have liked a few pike sessions in my now but that's not going to happen any time soon I'd imagine. There is more heavy rain tomorrow and those river that have just recovered will be going straight back up again because of the amount of rain we have been having. 

So after a busy week at work for that fix I fancied a few hours down the Alne just in to dusk to try and winkle a fish or two out. A small feeder with groundbait and I'd swap between worms, maggots and bread to mix it up. A size 16 specimen hook with enough purchase power to land of the rare bigger chub that reside here. 

Now what I didn't expect was that there was already someone on the stretch when I got there which is very rare indeed as I've usually got the stretch to myself. As I was walking to the bridge of death an anglers appeared from behind a bush and he was heading straight for it too albeit quite a bit closer than me. A quick natter before he settled in the peg I wanted to fish, he'd had a few minnows and that was it.

Hmmm, anyway with that swim out of bounds now I went on the rove to try and find some fish. The sensitive tip amplifying the bites that hopefully might come my way. Those bites that came my way were sadly from minnows too, so a change of tact was needed.

I changed to thumbnail pieces of bread at first and when after fifteen minutes in this newly created raft swim a couple of plucks, a proper bite when the tip pulled all the way round. A decent chub was on but before I could get it under control it headed under the raft and headed straight towards my bank where it did me over good and proper in a snag that it clearly knew was there. 

After that not much happened a few more swims and a couple of small pulls but nothing that could constitute a strike. I fished past dusk and thought that would bring me luck, but nah, nada, zilch, nothing doing whatsoever.