Dan O’Neill, better know for Trout and Salmon reports from Mount Juliet, has an unusual report from the Nore…
The past week saw some very clammy weather. The thought of wading through the river in such heat surprisingly made me switch the fly rod for a small course rod and go for an evening’s gudgeon fishing with Anthony, my son and angling apprentice. Stopping off for some maggots and small floats along the way I got a couple of hundred questions about gudgeon. Managing to answer them as honestly as I could we thankfully arrived to our destination. We crept down slowly to the waters edge and throwing in handful of free offerings it was time to break the waters surface with our puddle chuckers.
The set up we were using was 1 pound breaking strain line and a small float (puddle chucker) with some no.6 shot to stand it to attention. It wasn’t long before the orange tip disappeared, making a journey to the depths. Lifting into the take we landed our first beautiful gudgeon. Not a monster by gudgeon standards but a gudgeon none the less. Our gudgeon party was under way. We had several more gudgeon over the next while, all nice sized and healthy. We also had a guest appearance from an eel, a few roach and rudd. It was a great evening’s gudgeon fishing, one which will stay firmly set into the little apprentices fishing memories for a long time.
