Big Dace in a Wild Place. (Part Four).

 It's been a little while since I targeted Dace, maybe a little too long. These are certainly one of my favourite species, especially when they reach the realms of 12oz. With recent trips spent targeting Pike and Roach, the Dace have slipped off the radar, until today.

 It didn't start well either as I had plenty of issues to resolve before even thinking of setting off to wet a line, by midday I had arrived, finally. Joined by the Pikeman we set about finding some "Silver Darts", the river was up as I expected along with plenty of colour, catching is usually not the difficult part with location usually the stickler, today it was the other way around as the fish were located in previous visits. The job was to get them feeding, bread mashed up was the attractant with a healthy piece of flake sent down to do it's job.

 It did take quite a while for my first bite but when I connected to it a sizeable Dace flashed and was gone, not the best thing to do with a shoal fish, bumping fish usually sends the shoal into shutdown. Thankfully after plenty of chopping and changing the gear around the bites began to appear again, 30 or so minutes later this mint conditioned Dace of 12oz made it's way into the awaiting net, kindly done by my ghillie for the short afternoon session, just the response from the swim I wanted. Even with that fish released away from the swim I felt that bites dried up almost completely due to Dace re-entering the run, it was time to move.

At 12ozs it's a specimen Dace but clear just how big a pound fish really is.

A proper fatty, needs to eat a little more I think.

 We tried a few other swims with no joy when the monotony of the float running through without enquiry was broken as it vanished from sight, that take turned out to be a Chub as it made off towards the far bank cover, in the flow it fought quite well by Chevin standards but not strong enough to defeat me!, a fish of 3lb or so graced my net which was followed by another of around 1.8. The obligatory Trout also showed interest which killed off another swim, mint conditioned but not what I was looking for, surely any Dace in there were long gone.

10oz, not a bad finish.

 As dusk approached swiftly I finished in the swim where I had the large Dace earlier, plenty of hard work to get bites I finally hooked one which spun the dial around to 10oz. A good fish in anyone's book, two Dace over 10oz's in those conditions wasn't bad going, with the wind whipping up some strong gusts and the rain getting more persistent we called it a day as the light failed. Not bad and I shall be back to find that special of all Dace.