A rainy day on the River Medlock

Now recovered from my fruitless reccy to the Rever Etherow I decided to stay local this morning. Having saved half a pint of maggots from Sunday's trip I figured with a Warbies loaf I should have enough bait for a day on the Meddy. I was under the impression that angling was a real family pastime, but my family didn't seem too impressed by the noise of the food processer liquidising my bread at 8 o'clock this morning. I got this beauty for my birthday, could have chosen anything really, but thought I would get this in preparation for the summer months. With half a loaf liquidised and the other half for breadflake I was determined to better Sunday's dismal result.

I headed upstream from the Vale. The river here is much more pretty and tends to hold bigger specimens. There are some deep holes created by the current as the river meanders through the back of Woodhouses village down to Clayton Vale. On a previous trip I had fancied one such swim pictured below, but not bothered as I only had a float rod with me. Today I set about tackling this swim convinced there would be a couple of clunking chub prepared to mop up my breadflake.



I persevered for a couple of hours on the cage feeder filled with liquidised bread to the back of the swim under the broken trees to no avail. I wondered if today was going to be a repeat performance.  I am not patient enough to watch a stagnant tip all day and opted to try a different swim. I set a float rod up and moved to a swim I had caught two chub from on a previous visit this year. First cast the float buried, one of the most definate bites I had seen in months. The result, after a frantic scrap was a nice brown trout. I had set up with a very light 0.10 silstar superteam hooklength and size 22 hook, as my confidence was at a low and this trout tested my rig well.

Now buoyed up by my new found success I was expectant in this swim of better fish. I should have known though that any other fish would have been spooked as the trout set about its acrobatic bid for escape, and true to form the swim produced nothing more, either on tip or float. Determined to better my previous trips I moved to a canny little swim that  I have passed on many occasions but never tried. The river is very narrow here but looks deep as it runs below a low footbridge (on which I banged my head walking under more than once).

After a few tentative bites on the first trots through, I managed to catch the chub below, a really chunky fish, one of the better fish I have had out of this section of the river. My patience had paid off.

This turned out to be my only chub banked today as the wind really got up, and the rain began to drive against the flow of the river. The weather was turning horrible, but I wanted to go back to the first swim and try on float. I hooked into a bigger chub than the one pictured and managed to maneouvre it away from the snags at the back of the swim only to see it turn and dive unexpectedly and snap my hooklength. Oh well, at least the fish are biting again. Let's hope the frosts stay away for February, and the fish keep feeding. I will be back out on Sunday although not sure where yet. No fishing next week as I am back on international duty watching England play a friendly against Denmark in Copenhagen