A day afloat

Ive not being doing a great deal of fishing at the minute and it always feel strange when i haven't. A week can soon feel like a month! The kids are just about to go back to school so i should be able to find more time again hopefully.

On Friday I had another day on Neils Bote trolling and casting for pike and perch. We both had a trick up our sleeves that we thought might add a different dimension to our day.
To be fair the river had still not fully got over the rain from the week previous and although the levels were fine the colour was still running through and it wasn't ideal. We started to pick up a few fish here and there which was actually a surprise as we thought it would be more of a struggle.

Neil with the first of the day, a trend that is becoming so familiar, I'm sure he brings the same fish along and clips it on when I'm not looking!

 

We carried on heading up river and on the way we both lost off what felt like better sized fish with only seeing a glimpse of them before coming off. We had built a tally of around about the early teens when we reached a spot we knew always held fish and this is where we intended to bring out our secret weapons!

 

Neil wanted to give live baiting a shot in this spot as we generally pick up better pike and good sized perch here. We saved a few ideal sized perch from earlier to use as bait, as soon as Neil cast one out it was snapped up in seconds, after a good fight and nearing the boat it then came off. Another bait when out in a similar area and again with seconds it was gone, sadly the same happened again and the fish was lost. Neil really wanted to land one of these fish as he was using a really old set up he had from younger days and wanted to land a fish on it for nostalgia. While he was casting into a few different areas, i was running my soft shads through the swim and had two pike, one on a 3" yellow dragon phantom shad and the other on a 4" savagear cannibal shad. Not massive pike but great fighters on the light gear.

 

 

A little later as my takes had dried up, Neil put another livo into the hot area and once again in was sailing away in seconds, hopefully this was going to be third time lucky and it turned out it was as the fish stayed on. We got a photo with the rod and reel in view for memory sake.

 

My plan was to give drop shot a go in this particular area as usually we do really well for perch here and often get a few big ones, we always notice that the takes come on the drop too so i wondered if drop shotting would find us more fish. there was no perch showing an appearance to normal tactics so i thought I'd leave it till on the way back to have a go hoping the perch would have moved in.

 

The day got slower and slower and we really struggled at times to find fish on the troll, we had a few little spells of catching small perch and a few pike by casting lures to walls and other features but in general it wasn't proving to be a good day after the promising start we had in the morning.

 

On the way back I got my chance to try drop shotting in the hot spot, and despite there still being no action on the kopyto's i had to have a go with the drop shot. The thing about drop shot is that it needs a proper set up and lots of patience. I only have the latter in very minimal amounts and i didn't want to keep changing set ups or take another rod for it. The night before I came up with the idea of making a hook rig that i could just clip on and off if i wanted to change to drop show quickly. This was basically just a hook with wire passed through the eye and then twisted to form an eye at both ends of the hook eye. This enabled me to clip mu lure off my trace and clip the trace onto the dropshot hook making an 'up trace' as protection from pike. On the bottom eye i then had mono tied to a weight.

I worked this in the hot spot for a few minutes before eventually i saw the rod tip bouncing away so gave a brief pause before striking into the fish. I was chuffed to get a perch and on the right day i think it would really hammer some fish.

 

Neil then thought he would catch the smallest fish of the day on a kopyto!

 

That was pretty much it for the day, we had a tally into the mid 30's so we did ok to be fair, sometimes I think you just want more when your used to catching more. We both always enjoy it no matter what and this time was all about trying a couple of different things that might really make another good day an even better day if it is more successful.