Dan O’Neill was in touch with another report on his and young Anthony’s latest fishing adventures…
With the kids on Easter break I find myself quite busy on the lakes. The rain has not given up and seems to stop long enough to give us a glimmer of hope, but just as we begin setting up a plan for the river, we hear the familiar sound of droplets bouncing off the window. The canals were quite high but fishable, I really enjoy roach fishing and how delicate it is. Shotting the float so that the least little touch will dip the orange tip under the surface. This week it was the mighty River Barrow where it all began for me.
The night before we set up the rods to save us time on the river bank the next day so we could maximize our fishing time. Packing the ground bait bucket was key and this week i had a mix that I use quite often during the colder days. Shotting patterns would be key also so I just added two shots and a hook to my set up so I could plumb the depth then add my shot as I needed to.
Arriving at the river it was angry but fishable, so we made our trek along the bank to the spot we had settled on. Adding the final ingredients to the ground bait we began introducing it to our swim, making sure it was packed tight to get right to the bottom. Before we introduced the ground bait to the swim, we plumbed the depth and found it to be about 5ft with a slight incline just at the tail end. As i threw in the ground bait Anthony was on tea making duty, giving the ground bait time to settle we had a cup of tea and a sandwich.
The first cast today was of course Anthony’s, and we ran the swim 6 or 7 times before the float dipped and we hit our first Roach. With the river being a bit heavier today I picked the Cadence 12ft 1pound T/C rod, there was some weed growth and a sunken tree nearby so I needed to be able to control what I caught. During the day we had some lovely roach, bream and beautiful perch which ran to 35cm. The 12ft rod proved the right choice as most fish tried to dive under the tree or into the vegetation in the water in front of us.
At around lunchtime the swim went quiet, the odd fish here and there but mostly empty runs through the swim. Usually this means we had a surprise guest in the depths and today was no different. Luckily I had my master predator specialist beside me who grabbed the fly rod and his favorite pike fly, Anthony began casting and moving up and down the bank a bit with each cast. No surprises when i got a call to say, “got him”. The pike gave a great fight and really tested the rod and reel with deep lunges and sudden accelerated runs. I netted the fish for Anthony and we got a quick picture.
The swim picked up after about 30 mins and it was roach and perch again until we decided to draw a line under the day and head back home.
A wonderful day and another one for Anthony on the fly.
