Be Careful What You Wish For!

With the river levels being so low for weeks I'd been praying for a drop of rain to bring them back up to winter levels... I should have known better really as since then the weather has been atrocious with gale force winds and torrential rain making the rivers almost unfishable.

In between downpours I managed to find a day where the river was dropping do headed out for a session.. it was a bit of a gamble as it was still high but if the colour had dropped out it could have been good day. As usual lately though this wasn't what I found when I got there. The river was still very high and pushing through at a rate of knots but there was some visibility in the stained water.

I started off with my usual big softbaits and fished the stretch without a sign of a fish but the water had visibly dropped by 6" and had cleared a bit so decided to go back to where I started and fish it again. This time I changed my lure for a bright firetiger pattern and after half a dozen swims a fish hit it in the margins. After zipping around the swim she went in the net first time and on the bank I estimated her at about 11½lb or so. Blank averted, I continued in the happy knowledge that at least I'd caught something.

I decided to put a catfish rattle on my leader in the hope increasing attraction and whether it was because of it, or in spite of it, a few swims later I had another hit. This one was a bit bigger at about 14-15lb. I was unhooking her as a walker came past so she took a quick photo..

A few swims later another mid double shot out from the margins at the lure but missed it and no matter what I did she never came out to play again.

I fished the stretch once more hoping that the clearing water might help my cause but had nothing else show any interest so went to another stretch for the last couple of hours. This stretch turned out to be much dirtier and I never saw a sign of any fish.

Still, 2 doubles isn't a bad result in bad conditions.