Catch fish with Mike Ladle.

Catch Fish with
Mike Ladle

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21 January 2005.

All purpose tackle.

I shall be on holiday for a couple of weeks at the beginning of February so this may be the last entry 'til I get back.

For anyone unfamiliar with the site always check the FISHING ARCHIVE and TACK-TICS pages. They now extend back as a record of four years of fishing and I keep adding to them so it's always worth looking at the latest entries. The Fishing Archive is effectively my diary and will take me some time to bring up to date but often several pages are added in the space of a week.

Ben (aged 7) came to stay at the weekend while his mam and dad were away. He brought his Christmas rod and reel with him so we HAD to go fishing. The tackle is what I would call 'all purpose'. His rod is a four or five piece 'travel rod' which casts up to about 50g. It is light and long enough to fish a float on three-pound line and to catch minnows and it is certainly powerful enough (with the 15lb line on his other spool) to deal with the biggest pike or salmon he is likely to meet.

Anyway, the idea was to Christen his gear with a few fish. The local lakes are always a bit iffy in winter so the best bet was the river. We'd had a fair bit of rain so the water was rather coloured - not ideal for piking - so we decided to try the float gear. We riged up a float that carried a couple of AA shot, tied on a size twelve hook, bought a half-pint of mixed maggots (Ben likes the coloured ones) and set off.

All-in-all we had two sessions but on the first one (Saturday afternoon) I was so busy seeing to Ben's tackle I forgot my camera - so no pictures - even though we caught a fair few fish. He was keen to go again the next day and this time I brought the camera. The fish seemed to be anywhere that the flow was slow and steady. The slacks mostly contained minnows (Ben enjoyed catching them) but the streamier sections were full of dace. Most of the dace were small but there were a few good ones and every so often a grayling would engulf the maggots and put a decent bend in the rod.

When the first swim slowed down a bit and my little pal (I won't be able to say that for much longer at the rate he's growing) got rather restless we moved to a pool with a bit less flow. Ben cast in and almost at once the float went away. He struck and up came a beautiful little rudd - his first ever. Together with gudgeon and roach it made six species in all for the new gear. Now he's desperate to catch a carp 0r a pike or a bass or a barracuda (he's coming on holiday with us in February) or anything big. Watch this space.

Typical small dace.

These fish are pretty keen biters and not as quick as the old books might have you believe.

A better fish.

These larger dace really make the rod tip dance as they rush around .

A reasonable grayling

Grayling really do pull hard and tend to shed the barbless hook by wriggling.

The best of the day.

Ben was chuffed to land our biggest dace of the session.

His first ever.

Even tiny rudd like this are distinctive and beautiful fish.