The Tiny River Alne - Tyrannize and Tangoreceptors

Fishing needs to be varied for me, that could be the intended quarry, from fishing a  a tiny stream for bullheads or battling the bruiser barbel on a flooded river. 

The methods too, from surface fishing for Chub, float fishing for dace, angling is a pursuit than can offer so much variety, this pastime of ours head and shoulders above others for being able to mix it up.

For this hour and a half evening session the rods was strapped to the car and I was taking the short drive to this rather lovely waterway. 

It seems that since early 2020, millions of Brits have reached the logical conclusion that regular social contact outside the home has become quaint at best and dangerous at worst. Apologies for the crude expression, but the rule makers have forced this. 

With wellbeing for many affected bigtime, any smaller win in your armoury whilst still operating within the 'rules' needs to be grasped when you can.

Anyway back to the fishing the stretch I have at my disposal is just over a mile long and offers to much variety it's incredible really. From the upstream shallows where you could take your shoes and socks off and wade across, the deep 14 foot hole, the sluggish downstream swims, the bubbling weir.

I've the banks to myself here, the other syndicate members paths crossed rarely, in-fact there has only been two days where I've seen an angler or two, most of the time it's me and the wildlife. It feels a world apart from the daily WFH drudgery where some much needed solitude is most welcome after the full on day I've just had.

With the river clearing I fancied throwing some crankbaits about. The chub particularly don't grow massive here but the larger fish do seem to like the chase of the lure, to show the other residents of this small waterway who is boss.

In the summer when the river is very low and gin clear a seemingly fishless river can turn in to one of eyebrow raising surprise, when out of nowhere a chub darts out from it's sanctuary and snatches at the Salmo Hornet.

Small crankbaits work so well here as when the river is in spate the debris that can litter the bottom would be a hinderance to a conventional softbait, but a shallow diver means it's well up in the water column to avoid any potential snaggy lure losers.

The trout are here in good numbers too and some days I'd catch a mixture of chub and trout, where other sessions it's one or the other.

What has surprised me though is where the heck are the perch ?

Even bait fishing with worms and maggots I don't think I've had a perch yet.

Some of the swims are perfect for perch to hide out, but no, rather suspicious in their absence. 

This session didn't start well the first take was from a trout literally right by my feet and it went mad like they do and managed to throw the hooks.

The lure went straight back out and again another grab, but again it came off, hmmmm. Once bitten twice shy and all that.

So would it be third time lucky ? well it was actually because the lure went out yet again and sure enough a second or two in the water the fish was one. This time it hit the lure proper hard in the relatively pacey water so that probably helped as the crankbait was fighting against the current and was taught against the braided line.  

I've hooked and lost two trout over the years that were around 3lb but most are small brook trout like you'd expect, still they are cracking sport on very light tackle. The rod thinner than a Bic biro, every lunge and jump felt through the blank.

I fished 5 or 6 swims where two swims produced all the fish. I finished with 6 red spotted brownies this time so no chub which I was surprised because the last swim I fished I did well for the chublets on lobworm the weekend before.

With the season coming to a close where my Canal Zander Quest will kick in again I trying to tick as many sessions off as I can.

I'm limited on venues because of the travel restrictions but with the previous session here showing the big dace potential I might pop back this weekend and fish bait again, this time though not a size 6 and a lobworm I might scale down and hit more of those bites I missed.