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River Report… Jeannette Halliday
There was another great turnout of 81 lined up for the draw in the next round of the River Yare Nisa Feeder series on Saturday 25th. The high probability of a flood tide for this match meant that I expected to have opposite results from the previous week and I thought that the bream in the river might have switched on, ready to have a munch.
I put my hand in the bag, anticipation rising, and drew peg 82. I’ll have to admit I was a little disappointed as this wasn’t the best of draws but, ever the optimist, at least I was really close to the car park at Bradshaw Lake so I wasn’t faced with a marathon walk down to the peg! At the peg I set everything up, from feeder rods to running rigs on the pole of 2-3-4 grams and Cralusso bubble floats of 3-4 grams.
The feeder setup was the first to produce, with two hand-sized skimmers as well as a roach in the first quarter of an hour. Listening to the pegs around me I realised it was going to be a hard match, so I kept on putting the few small fish I got in the net. I noticed that John Taylor, at peg 80, was catching a few small roach on the pole, so I began to think about changing my setup. The thought had barely crossed my mind when all of a sudden the tip bounced back and I was connected with a large hybrid (which you can just see in the back of the net in the picture). However, after this nice take things continued to get progressively harder with the feeder set up and I cast my eye back to John with his pole. He was still plugging away and making bites, although Mick Mirgeaux and Nick Larkin, both a few pegs to my right and upstream, were struggling with their poles.
I hedged my chances, cupped in another couple of balls, and had a look over the pole line. The going was still hard and I realised I needed to change something big time in order to experience any sort of success as the fish just weren’t feeding confidently on the running rig in the deepest water in the river. I decided to try with a Cralusso bubble float, inching it through the peg and occasionally holding back against the float in an attempt to evoke a response. A response what exactly what I got and some better stamp roach joined the contents of my net. At one point a pike even got hold of one of the roach but it let go allowing me to land the roach safetly. It did get me wondering if that pike was the reason I was experiencing such shy roach, though.
Once again I decided it was time to try something different in order to bring them back into the peg. For a while I began to catch well – swapping baits and changing rigs really can help your catch rate. However soon the water began rising and I realised I had made a serious mistake not bringing the wellies! I decided to hop back into the van and get everything packed in before the tide got any higher.
