They call me "Four Rivers" Noggs after fishing 4 different rivers in 9 days.
Friday was the River Severn near Shrewsbury. My mate was barbel fishing whilst I was doing my usual bit-bashing on the feeder catching dace and small chub on every cast. I work on the basis that, if you feed long enough, sooner or later a decent fish will show up which it did but not in the way I expected. I was reeling in another small dace when I saw what I thought was a jack pike flash at it but turn away just before I lifted it out. As it happened, the dace dropped off the hook and fell back in the water at the side. Just there was a ledge with water about 4 inches deep which the dace proceeded to swim along parallel to the bank. Odd behaviour. Then I noticed it was being shadowed by a large perch about a pound and a half. No wonder it wouldn't come off the shelf. I thought, "hello, I'll have a dabble at that". So I dropped my feeder in at the side baited with double maggot. Within 2 minutes, my rod pulled over and, after about a great fight I landed a 3lbs perch, an easy personal best. Later on, as the sun dropped, the barbel started feeding and we had 2 each. Smaller than the Wye barbel but better fighters pound for pound I think. Oh yes, heard another cuckoo.
Saturday was fly-fishing (or, in my case, thrashing the water fruitlessly) on the Hodder on the Duchy of Lancaster estate. Dramatic setting for a day of dramatic weather. Started late with storms threatening over the hills. My mate got a nice brownie and a couple of large greyling whilst I had a salmon (parr of 4 ozs) but it was a race against time with the river obviously about to rise.
Sensibly we left the tea stuff in the fisherman's hut and stayed close so we were able to make a dash for it when the first drops began to fall. So we spent a wonderful 30 minutes sitting in a tiny hut drinking tea and eating our sandwiches whilst the storm raged around us. As it eased, my mate reckoned we had 30 minutes before the water turned brown and changed to his sea-trout gear. As it happens, he was right but he managed to catch one before the river became unfishable. Wonderful day though with kingfishers, dippers, hares and sundry wildlife but not a single human other than us. So here's a moral dilemma for you.
As we were going up river we came across a gull lying amongst the rocks at the water's edge. It was alert but, clearly unable to move for some reason. Obviously, as we came back downstream the water was rising and the gull was sitting there unmoving with the water rising around it. What, if anything, would you do about it ?
