"The fishing was good; it was the catching that was bad"

My last trip out fishing, had ended in a distinct lack of something, fish. So I decided that it would be nice to go to a old haunt and try to catch as many species of fish that I could within a short session on Sunday.

So i grabbed the maggots from the fridge and some kingsmeal along this a selection of spinners and crank baits and headed out to a nice stretch of river and weirpool that I use to fish over 20 years ago.

Now this stretch of river had 20 years ago always been a brilliant place to fish. Not due to the size of the specimens, but the shear different types you could caught.

It was nice because I could kill two bird with one stone, drop of the boy to a cricket match and secondly go for a few hours fishing.

Off we went and within an hour I had pulled up along side a side stream of the river and reached over and picked up the polaroids.

For the next 1 hour I wondered the banks looking for signs of life in the river. The odd small dace would dart out into the current after being chased by a small perch, but not real sign of the large chub or vast shoals of roach, dace and gudgeon that used to frequent the river and weir pool.

Undeterred, I decided that the best plan initially was to go in pursuit of the pike that used to live in the depths of the weir pool.

So 9ft spinning rod and baitcaster came out of the car along with a selection of lures.

Lure after lure was cast out and retrieved without the slightest attention, tormentors, crank baits, spinner baits and even the old trusted Ondex spinner got a rare outing. Nothing.

So back to the car and a 13ft trotting rod and the maggots and bread was taken forthwith with a view of having at least some fun with the dace and roach.

A swim at the edge of the cabbage was baited up with a mix of bread and maggots and soon the water was alive with fry and 2" long dace.

The float tackle was cast out and I waited for the flurry of bites. Within a second of the float settling the float went under and one of the tiny dace was soon on the bank.

That I'm afraid was it, I did have lots of bites but mostly from the tiny dace, the weirpool seemed devoid of fish.

After a couple of fruitless hours wandering the bank trying to find a decent fish or two fish, I happened across a chap who kindly informed me that 9 months ago, a pair of otters had taken up residence at the edge of the sluice gates.
Now 9 months on, the otters had moved on, along with with fat belly's. Its seems that in only 2/3 of a year they had nearly wipe out a mile stretch of river. The only fish left were the odd shoal of dace, roach and the occasional small perch.

As was once said "The fishing was good; it was the catching that was bad".

Sometimes it does not pay to try fish old waters, as they never seem to live up to the dreamy days of years gone by.