Sunday was not a day that I would have chosen to fish, as freezing winds were battering the UK yet again and a wise person would have stayed home in the warm. With Christmas visits and hosting just days away, my wife had set today to make her well appreciated sausage rolls, while also preparing a lasagne sauce, before washing the kitchen floor. Obviously hoping that I would be making myself scarce for a few hours, she volunteered me to go fishing. Seeing what the weather was like outside, she had the same guilty look, that she has, when she puts the cat out on a stormy night. Seeing me off, as I reversed down the drive, a hand and half her face were briefly seen, before the door was quickly closed.

Oh well, I’d better make the most of it I thought. I had been considering a visit to a local weirpool at the outfall of the Town’s water treatment works anyway, where the water may be a few degrees higher, than the river that joins it. I had always had plenty of roach and chub there in the past, although never in low single digit temperatures like today, also my daughter had bought me a nice little padded gilet, with a pocket wired into a rechargeable battery. This would be a good test.

Parking in a nearby field gateway, I crossed the weir, the sun was out behind me and all seemed quite pleasant, until a vicious blast of icy wind cut into me. Nope, not this swim. I moved ten yards upstream, where a large tree and bushes gave some respite from the gusts and began setting up. The river was still dirty with flood water and pushing hard into the outfall, demolishing any hope of the productive eddy that forms here. Not to worry, I’m only going to stay for an hour, or two anyway, depending on the fishing of course. With groundbait prepared, after crushing the liquidised bread, which was still frozen from the freezer, I tackled up with a 5 No 4 Ali stemmed stickfloat to a size 14 barbless hook, which carried a 7 mm punch of bread. At 11 am the outfall began to roar, as washing machines and showers began to empty across the Town, creating rafts of soapy foam, that the wind was whipping up into airborne balls.

It is usual here to catch a chub first or second cast once the groundbait has gone in, but not today. My run, stop, run technique was not working. Worse than that, the sun had gone in behind clouds and the cold was creeping in despite the full thermals today. Time to switch on the heated gilet. Well at least that was working, a warm glow spreading steadily around my back and chest. With the flaps of my furry hat pulled down over my ears, I was quite cosy, but the fishing was rubbish. Half an hour without a bite!

Time for a change, I’d been slow trotting the shelf of the bramble lined bank opposite, even casting into the slack beneath, following balls of groundbait with no signs of a knock. I bulked the shot to within a foot of the hook and pushed the float up a foot, making an under hand swing to the edge of the foam and held it back solid, with my finger on the line. More groundbait was put in upstream and I waited. The instant I felt a pluck on my finger, the float dipped. I struck. No bait. Back in, minutes later, the float dipped, I let it run and struck. A small roach splashed on the surface, was caught be the wind and fell off. Full concentration now, I had dropped to a 6 mm punch and the float went away, I paused and struck. A decent fish? No, a bottom hugging gudgeon!

I tried casting further up in the clearer water, but no touches. They were in the turbulent water at the edge of the foam. I eased the float down with the flow. With three more gudgeon in the net, I considered my options. Make up some more groundbait and keep feeding in the hope of something better, or go home. It was a no brainer really, go home and comeback another day, especially as it had started to rain. At least I hadn’t blanked.

Well that was the end of my Festive Fishing Session, not a lot, mostly small stuff! I headed home and was greeted by the warm aroma of cooking and tray of sausage rolls. Merry Christmas!

These days fishing is no longer a pastime carried out in free time, it is an activity carried out, when the frequent weather events and storms allow. Take this week as an example, heavy rains flooded the rivers, then tempertures dropped chilling the water and as I write this, the latest Storm Darragh is hammering the coasts and howling around my house. I fish by weather forecasts, which are often wrong. I had plans for a visit to my very local pond, Allsmoor, this week, and Friday was the only dry day with sunshine, before Darragh would hit later in the evening. Oh joy!

A very cold clear morning with weak sunshine greeted me, but the forecast was for temperatures to rise by lunch time and the walk to the pond was quite spring like. No-one else was fishing and there was a slight breeze from the west, so I chose a sheltered swim and set up my new Edge Monster pole.

By 11:30 I was ready to fish, but where had the promised sun gone? Expecting it to be warm by now, my thermals were still in the draw at home. The pond looked lifeless. For a water crammed with undersized rudd and carp the surface didn’t show any movement. Expecting the worst, I had selected my hard winter rig, a fine antenna 4 x 14 float, lightly shotted down the line to a size 16 barbless hook. This float sinks to the very tip, while floatant on the line, just keeps it on the surface.

I had bought online a pole cup, which fitted over the pole tip, avoiding the need for a special cupping top two sections to feed groundbait, while this also allowed the float rig to stay in place. Having mixed up a fine liquidised bread, with ground pellets, ground hemp, ground arromatic seeds and raspberry flavouring, this concoction was damped down to hold together, before being cupped in 6 metres out. I could not have thrown this out to the fishing area, it was too light and would have broken up in the air, whereas I fed the pole out and rotated it enough for the cup to empty, spreading down into the swim. Additional cups fed out to the exact spot.

The float did not move. I cast over the baited area again. Nothing for half an hour, then it sank. Missed it! I cast over again and waited ten minutes. This time the float sank and I waited for the floating line to very slowly sink. I lifted. Solid! The elastic stayed down. Thump, thump. Explosion! A good carp was powering to the left into the old lily bed. I raised the pole to put on more pressure and to lift the carp’s head out of the roots, as it scythed through the dead pads. It turned back to the middle, the  danger was over and all I needed was to keep up the pressure, leading it back and forth, until the carp rolled onto it’s side, feeding the pole back to the roller behind, then breaking down to the top two for it to slide into the landing net.

What a beautiful ghost carp. The scale pattern is very distictive. There are all sorts in this pond. This was a hard battle, but the size 16 barbless hook held. I had deinitely earned a cup of hot tea and a sandwich after this one.

Another 7 mm punch of bread was threaded onto the hook and I cast into the baited area again. The float settled and sank immediately, while the line followed suit. Solid again! I don’t beleive it. Nothing, then two carp. This one was smaller, but rocket propelled, dashing out to the middle, then curving round to the lilly bed and skating across the suface in front of me to be stopped by the landing net.

The hook dropped out in the net. I was lucky with this common.

I put in the last of the feed and hooked a decent rudd on the drop, bringing it to the surface on the lift, feeding the pole back quickly to stay in touch. This fish was freezing cold. No wonder they were slow biting.

The carp battles had stirred up the mud and filled the water with particles of feed. Disturbance was apparent below the surface in the baited area. The bites were now more positive, but still took time to develop. Most of the rudd were small, but some good ones were among them.

The wind had picked up and turned to blow in my face. It was icy cold and I gave myself another ten minutes to fish before packing up. Gudgeon had taken over from the small rudd, when I was in again with another common carp, which shook me out of my frozen stupor. The Edge Master pole is quite stiff and with the heavy elastic, a powerful tool able to stop the rapid runs of this latest carp, keeping it away from the snags for long enough to wear it down ready for the net.

I bashed out more small rudd and gudgeon in the hope of another carp, but if there was another one there, the small stuff got there first. From sitting ready to pack up due to no bites, it had ended up with a bite a chuck on the bread punch.

From the moment that I began fishing, the light had not been good, but by 3:00 pm it was fading fast and I needed the camera flash on for my picture of the net of fish.

As I walked back, it began to rain. At least I had been saved from that.

It has been weeks since I last went fishing; too flooded, too cold, or a combination of both, have kept me away from the bank, but this weekend there was to be a blip in the weather, a dry, warm day was forecast. I’m sceptical of the forecasts these days, but yes, when I checked the car that morning, there was no frost on the windscreen, although light drizzle was falling from a leaden sky, but hey, what’s a bit of drizzle? Tackle was loaded, bread taken from the freezer and I set off to the River Cut a couple of miles away, which on inspection a few days before was over the banks and the colour of milky coffee.

Today the river was back between its banks, which were covered in a fine layer of silt, while the water had an orange, rusty hue, washed out from the peaty forest head waters. At least that’s what I hoped had caused the colour change.

My weeks of inactivity had given the opportunity to sort out some of those must do tasks, that usually get forgotten until the next fishing session, one being to make up a couple more float rigs, including the 5 No 4 Drennan Ali stem stick float, already assembled to my 14 foot Browning float rod in its ready to fish holdall.

I wasn’t too sure about the colour of the river, having experienced a few fishless pollution events here in the recent past, so rather than mix up groundbait to be wasted, I squeezed up a ball of liquidised bread and threw it close to the opposite bank and watched it break up as it was washed downstream by the strong current. The river here is quite shallow, over gravel and I set the float slightly overdepth to trip bottom, when trotted on the open spool of my ABU 501 reel. With a 7 mm punch on the size 14 barbless hook, I cast over to the far side and the float dragged under. Too shallow? No, there was a flash as a hooked fish turned over, then rushed downstream, bending the rod as I gave line with light pressure on the spool. The river was clear enough to see a nice roach zigzagging its way back upstream toward my waiting landing net. A good start.

A few smaller roach followed, then another clonker was on its way to the net, this one taking on the drop, lifting the float and leaping across the surface, but staying on.

A heavier ground bait was needed to go straight down, as the liquidised bread was breaking up and washing further downstream, taking the fish with it. This was liquidised bread with ground pellets, and ground hemp added, formed into tight balls, this seemed to do the trick, as the roach came back.

This also brought gudgeon swarming across the bottom, hoovering it up.

I didn’t mind the gudgeon, as they are in the keepnet in seconds, but there were two gudgeon to every roach and I know what I would rather catch.

I had been using a shirt button pattern of shot down my float and now tried extending the No 8 tail shot to 15 inches and the other shot up toward the float, with the last No 4 under the float to allow the bait to rise and fall in the current, holding the float back at intervals, the float going under, when my finger released the line each time. More roach.

The grey cloud had now gone and the weak sun was shining through the trees warming the air. It was quite pleasant and was glad that I had left my thermals off. When I began fishing at 11:30 the drizzle had stopped, but sitting on a tackle box in late November is not good for old bones and I was soon feeling a chill from the downstream wind, but now it was almost springlike. My wife had made me ham and cheese sandwiches with a liberal covering of Piccalilli, accompanied by a few sections of fruit cinnamon loaf, all these cut into bitesized pieces. Ideal to keep the spirits from flagging, when washed down with hot tea.

I had stepped up the feed to a small ball over every cast, attracting small chub and dace into the swim, hoping for better fish. The chub were unmissable, but the dace were not.

Roach continued to fall to the float being held back and released trick, taking further downstream in deeper water as the level had dropped by a few inches. These were all better fish and ran off like chub, putting a good bend in the rod, while I leaned back and let my raised rod take the strain.

The dace were all small, tapping at the bait and often coming off before the net, but what they lack in size they make up for it in fighting ability, tumbling all over the shallows, when hooked.

No dace were in the Cut when I first fished it fifteen years ago, but several restockings following serious pollution has established them and we are now catching their offspring.

My lunchtime interlude of sunshine was soon over and with the return of the cloud cover, the gentle breeze was turning to cooling gusts and I checked the time, ten minutes after two pm. Packing up at 2:30 would give me an even three hours of fishing.

The light was already failing and my float was difficult to see at the bottom end of my swim. Holding back created a wake on the surface, followed by a disappearing dimple. It was a bit like fishing by numbers, wait for the dimple, pause and strike.

My last roach

A busy afternoon on the Bread Punch