Feel It In My Toes.

 

 Hmmmmmm.....winter.....I spend months looking forward to it then you remember it's never easy fishing, even when you think you have sussed out a venue. The question I asked myself, can you ever have somewhere truly sussed out? Rivers always like to keep you on your toes and the winter just makes you focus your aim that much more acutely.

The Perch water that I'm currently blanking on.

 In a week where I went fishing for Perch, Grayling and Pike all in separate sessions. For the Perch I have a venue that I've been targeting recently and with that initial success I thought I was on to a winner but have subsequently blanked the following 4 trips and left somewhat uninspired, I put it simply down to the sharp downturn in temps. However my next target shouldn't suffer from a dose of the "I don't wanna feeds", and with that I made the 109 mile drive back down to the Wiltshire countryside for another go for a Grayling of my dreams.

 The grass was crunchy underfoot, the river still up but crystal clear given the drop in temps and my maggots lay almost dormant in their tubs as -5c temps kept them subdued, I could only hope they would all either be useful feed or the single maggots that would tempt a lady onto my size 16 wide gape hook.

 All the previous sounded perfect, problem was the Grayling very quickly seemed to be off the feed, a couple of very good looking swims that have done fish for me in the past were devoid of Grayling and to make matters worse the sharp decrease in temps meant the Trout were feeding in ravenous fashion, buggers could not be avoided! 

1lb 14oz.

 It took me hours to finally find an area where Grayling were feeding and they took ages to tempt, hours of trying and numerous runs trotted I finally started to get some decent fish but the effort put in this time wasn't rewarded in the fashion I usually experience, that was until I connected with a big Grayling just minutes before dusk, a big powerful fish made its way very slowly up the run and in hindsight should have walked downstream to intercept it knowing how many fish I'd lost throughout the day, alas I didn't and the frame of a mid-2lb specimen showed itself in the gin clear water just a rod length out before it came off, I was just a little bit pissed off, that fish would have made my day and in the famous words of Rex Hunt, " Yibbidy Yibbada that's all folks". Not the day I was expecting but, that is winter fishing, it rarely plays to the script and Friday was no different.

1lb 13oz

Prime trotting country!

Oh and a dead Otter in the margins.

 So given that tough day on Friday I decided it would be a good idea to go deadbaiting on the Rother for the day on Saturday. Taking my new Drennan E-Sox Piker 12ft dead-bait rods out for a maiden fling I hoped they would get a beating! 

 Wrong....I spent the day trying to no avail and ended up as ghillie for his royal highness Brian-of-Nazareth, shame Brian didn't hook the one prior to his Erling Haaland look-a-like as that would have been turn up, alas he didn't catch it and I blanked....Where did I leave my golf clubs?