A sign of warmer weather, was the sight of brand new floats festooning the trees, as I made my way downstream from the weir pool of my little local river this week, the park bounded on two sides by housing estates, proving a magnet for runners, dog walkers and anglers alike. Today I was determined to find the roach that had eluded me last week and continued past the  fast chub run of my previous session, looking for a slower pace in the river, choosing a spot on the straight of an S bend.

This is not an easy swim to fish, having branches from the tree opposite hanging low over the water to half way across, needing a side catapult cast to reach the deeper water at it’s base. This was my first visit this season and I noticed that the shopping trolley feature of last year was now fully submerged, just to my side of middle ten yards downstream. As I said, not an easy swim to fish, but nets of roach, skimmers and decent rudd make the occasional lost hook worthwhile. I set up a 3 No 4 short peacock waggler with a top rubber to fish as a stick float on my 12 foot Hardy Match, with an ABU 501 closed face reel completing the 35 year old rig. Liquidized bread was the feed and a 6 mm punch was used on the medium sliced white to provide the bait on a size 14 barbless. I followed a couple of hand sized balls of feed with a cast to the opposite bank and watched the float make it’s way down the flow, giving tell tale bobs of an interested fish. Straightening the bow of line from the downstream wind, resulted in a pull in the opposite direction and a hard fighting winter roach was darting across the river to be scooped into my net.

Roach of this size were coming one a chuck and I was settling into a nice rhythm, when the sound of a chainsaw twenty feet away brought me back to the world of the park. Standing above me on the path, a bearded man in a da-glo vest was slicing into a fallen tree with the saw, spraying me with wood chippings. Seeing me he smiled and continued his labour, until a heavy branch was released to roll down the bank with a thump. A bizarre conversation took place as he scrambled down the bank to reduce the branch to log lengths, while I struck into another good roach and netted it. No he wasn’t a council worker, he was a volunteer, who had installed a wood burning stove at home and was busy feeding it from fallen trees in the various parks around town. Despite the noise and disturbance, I continued to catch roach, which amazed him, as he didn’t think there were any fish in there. Continued to catch that is, until he stood at the water’s edge peering down into the water saying that he couldn’t see any fish, his bright orange jacket standing out like a beacon. If this had been a match, I may have got the hump, but this was a sunny day in February and I already had outdone my expectations for the afternoon, so I fished on trotting further down the swim, until I snagged the sunken supermarket trolley and lost my hook, but thankfully, saved my float. At this he loaded up a wheel barrow with his saw and logs, retreating in the direction of the car park, returning ten minutes later on his way down to collect more logs. Yes I was still catching, holding up another roach, the fish now coming from further down the swim, despite my attempts to draw them back up with more feed. These fish I had to pull hard away from the sunken trolley and the size 14 hook only lost hold once on a smallish fish. When a mother and young daughter came down to the river twenty yards upstream and began feeding the ducks with slices of bread, causing a convoy of quacking mallards to rush past for a feed, I checked my watch and saw it was almost 4:30. Time to leave before I got stuck in the evening rush home. The sound from the net told me that I’d had a decent few hours fishing with some quality roach up to 8 oz, my scales indicating just over 6 lb of roach and one gudgeon.