The Tiny River Alne - Obamabots and Orguggsmics

With some flash flooding locally recently the river Alne has risen quite quickly and had returned to where it whence came. For this session I had planned some roving crankbaits as they work really well here in the summer when the river is low and clear.

The trout and chub can shoot out from their hiding places when using this method but the conditions need to be right. The problem was when I got bankside the river had turned a colour of stewed tea only my late Nan could make.

After fishing 3 or 4 swims without even a nibble it just wasn't a lure day at all. Even the brightest Salmo Hornet in my armoury could only been seen literally an inch or so from the surface.

For sight feeding fish it just wasn't going to happen so there was only one thing for it and that was get back in the car and return with gear more suited for this waterways turbidity. Yeap my stream set-up with a pint of maggots. At the start of the stretch the water is much shallower and not only that but oddly it is clearer too, I would imagine the gravel helping that I'd imagine almost filtering the crud. 

The difference in colour was quite remarkable really but it's much more open here and less bank to disturb and colour up the water. 

Fishing small river like this is all about finding the fish and if you haven't a bite on maggots within 10 or fifteen minutes its time to up-sticks and find another swim to fish. At this time of year the swims can be limited because of the sticky weed and nettles that hinder the access but luckily it didn't take long to find some fish.

Ok not the biggest stamp of fish but they were queuing up in the second swim and it was a bite a chuck. The tap tap of tell-tale minnow bite eventually a decent bite would develop and a small fish would hover up the two red maggots. Even a rare perch for this stretch turned up out of the blue, very nice indeed. 

I to tend to favour half a worm tipped with a red a maggot maggot because it usually brings a better stamp of fish but to be honest it was just nice to get a few bites. The bites dried up eventually but I had a nice variety of fish with chub being the dominate greedy little beggars.

Now it's quite incredible how the depth changes in certain swims here and fish those deeper swims you will often get a surprise or two. Who would have thought one swim you would find bream and you could stack a few cars on top of either other and they would still be hidden from view. 

The next swim you see was much deeper than the rest and without a few seconds of the maggots being dropped in a much more powerful bite from the rest developed. Gobies have a distinctive fight so I knew exactly what it was when the 'jag jag jagging' was felt through the carbon.

Where there is one there is usually a few more and sure enough I managed to winkle out a 6 or 7 before again the bites dried up. I like to retain them in the landing net because they do seem to have the chubs knack of telling their mates to clear off if you return them straight away.

Nothing massive but certainly a few Gonks in and amongst the humdrum and considering how dull the morning was they brightened it up on end as who doesn't love a gudgeon, despite their size they are up there for the most charming of species. They came me a smile or three, that's all I can ask for.