8 minutes and 3.7 miles I can be bankside by the tiny river Alne which for someone who is struggling to get bankside of late, and needs to make use of those tiny windows of opportunity, it really is a perfect little piece of piscatorial plesentary especially when almost without question I've got the river to myself.
The recent storms of late have boosted the local rivers beyond their banks and they haven't been fishable all this week and not even I fancy trudging the towpaths when the mercury has barely registered on the scale.
Luckily the Alne goes up and down far faster than any of them so it was as a nice level to try and catch a fish in a couple of hours before I had to be back for the diary makers. I only had one swim in mind and that was the 2nd deepest on this stretch I fish and I fancied trying to catch a dace that seem to migrate here when the levels are up.
It's a fish holding area and I've caught some of the biggest fish from the Alne from this usually productive swim. Chub to 4lb, dace to 12 ounces, trout to over 2lb and some decent sized gonks too.
Now when it starts to get really cold dace often leave the currents entirely and move into slack, or very nearly slack water. Here is is generally best to fish a stationary bait and use laying-on or light ledger tactics.
This bait being buoyant, will rise clear of the bed and it seems that this fact is responsible for its success when the fish are somewhat eager to feed.
Now at times of high water as I said expect the dace to have moved away from the main press of water. This move perhaps of no more than a few feet, will generally bring the dace bankwards so that they lie on the edge of the current, but where, as on a band, the main flow sweeps along the bank, the fish may have moved out towards the centre of the river.
There are not many occasions when one can confidently anticipate catching dace only, it is likely that they will come to the same baits and methods whatever other species are present and they will be considerably larger than the dace.
It's made easier with the colour of the water however and when the river is as coloured as it was for this session then they certainly become less tackle shy.
So for this session a 1oz tip to register some bites and a small cage feeder filled with liquidised bread and some small pieces of punched bread on a size 12 fine wire hook.
A little crude for clear water, but this was like rivers in England after one of those frequent sewage discharges 😢
The Alen can be very moody indeed mind you because more often than not those fish just don't show and that's when it is beneficial to get on the move and get finding those fish.
Now that's all very well but when you haven't much time anyway like this session I sadly was going to anchored to one spot. But you never know with the Alne, very much boom or bust !!
The weather wasn't ideal with bright sun and clear skies but better than gale force winds and horizontal rain I suppose. A much needed vitamin D boost though and in the season of the S.A.D. that is most wecom
So anyway ? how did it go ?
Well errrrrrrrrrrrrr....
Despite wearing Buffalo Si's cap from River Masters (new Vlog coming soon) that I found and I'm keeping safe for him, it didn't bring me any of his luck. Don't get me wrong there were plenty of bites, but only nibbly twitchy bites that were non committal and certainly nothing you could strike at.
That was both on worm and bread. Minnows with eyes bigger than their bellies ? quite possibly but even when scaling down to a small piece of worm those fish had other ideas on seeing the world outside of theirs. Oh well hopefully next time, this is the Alne though, catch it on a rare good day it's great, catch it on an average day, it is pants ☺
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