The only cover for 200 yards

Saturday Ist October – River Dove

I made a visit to a stretch of the river that I haven’t fished for about 3 years. I never actually caught a barbel from this area despite trying lots of swims, all I ever caught was chub.

On walking the stretch it proved to be a lot shallower (amplified by the exceptionally low water level) than I remembered. The only fish I saw were a barbel of about 9lb, half a dozen chub and half a dozen bream. These were all in the same swim, which my mate dropped into.

I chose a swim that although it was very shallow, had 10 yards of bushes on the far side. This was the only cover for about 200 yards up or downstream so I figured was bound to hold some fish. continue reading…

After reading Shaun’s diary type pieces, I thought I would share my own. Due to work I have been restricted to a couple of short trips a week.

Friday 8^th July – River Dove

After a bit of success on the Dove during the two previous week-ends, we were back again to the same area for another after work session. I stayed with the Special Crab after the previous results but despite trying numerous different presentations I only had a few small chub knocks to show for 6 hours fishing. I would guess that with the present conditions the barbel will revert back to feeding late at night (11pm onwards). This very often happens (on the small rivers), you get a ‘duffers fortnight’ where the fish can be caught relatively easy at the start of the season and then it changes very quickly. It was quite surprising that even with all the heavy rain showers we have been having, the river was still at the lowest level I have seen it.

Saturday 9^th July – River Dove & Upper Trent

Each season I try and fish a new stretch of river and with everywhere being extremely low and clear (and the fish having finished spawning), it seemed like the perfect time to go and have a look somewhere new.

The stretch of Dove we went to look at proved to be a major disappointment. After walking for about 1 ½ hours, through head high vegetation and nettles, clambering under and over barbed wire fences etc we never found anywhere that looked really appealing. I did see four or five nice chub (biggest would have been a big 5) but only one very small barbel, not much when you consider I could see the bottom along 95 % of the stretch.  It also proved to be the wrong time to be wearing new walking boots as my heels are now covered in blisters lol!

Part of the Upper Trent

With this stretch being unappealing we made our way an area of the Upper Trent where we had made a couple of swims on the opening weekend. You don’t usually see another angler on this area but on arrival there was another car there, and true to form the guy was fishing in the swim I had made. I ended up fishing well upstream in an area I hadn’t looked at before. I made a small gap in between the 6 feet high bull rushes and fished the remaining four hours there. Again I was bite less and the weed coming down was a real problem at times, even using 6oz to hold bottom. continue reading…