Running the Throop

Since starting fishing  four months ago most of the fishing has been on still water lakes using the waggler and I have caught a number of silver fish and a handful of small carp.  Being my first winter as a fisherman I have now learnt the lesson not to go to a lake with out checking the weather first.

Once Saturday morning as part of a group I travelled to a new lake and as we walked to the location full of excitement we turned the corner to notice that the whole lake was frozen with no chance to fish. We promptly drove to a fall back option but as we drove up the road the gates were securely closed again most likely due to a frozen pond.

After driving around the fishing the group decided to call it a day and plan something for the following day. After hours of research we all decided that a river was our only option. With some input from a local tackle shop we decided to travel to the Throop on a day ticket.

When we arrived at our location we found it to be a fairly straight foreword walk to the river bank we started setting up ready to fish. As a beginner I had opted to fish maggots with a float a balsa to be precise.

The setup was easy attach the float top and bottom with some rubber bands  and add some shot to the line. After a few try's it was obvious I was going to struggle on the river. The wind was strong and the river's current was fast.

After some experiments I found that if the line length was too long the float would sink as the hook got trapped on some bottom weed.  After arranging  a fairly good line length just above the bottom I noticed that the float was flat on the surface of the water . After some thought on this I realised the line need more shot and after a while I had the float working moving along the water in the correct position. The issue I had was the float was flying downstream at rate and I was finding it very hard to control the float.

After many hours of painstaking trial and error we all left home for a warm drink. The group was actually rather  down as not a thing had been caught due to the weather conditions, cold and windy, along with the lack of river fishing know how.

On reflection the day was interesting but more research will be required on river fishing techniques before we try again. Since that day I have seen numerous river fishing techniques including how to control the float when trotting the river.  As I have had no time to try out these skills I will write them up when I have a clear understanding.

I think river fishing will be something to try in better conditions but I have definitely not ruled it out as catching a large Chub on the river, or any other fish for that matter , will be an amazing feet to say the least and there is something really exciting about river fishing .

Any way see you soon

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