Big Dace – Attempt No 1 (River Ribble, Preston)

Sometimes you just get lucky….

Today I had a site meeting on Preston for a hotel I’m hopefully going to sell, but it left me able to meet a mate Andy from Yorkshire to fish a good session on the Tickled Trout section of the Ribble. Andy’s a great river fisherman with plenty of double figure barbel and chub over 5lbs to his name and does his best to point me in the right direction. The last time we fished a low clear river, I fished like an absolute turkey (with no success) pounding in pellets and boilies into the deeper water, while Andy went for hemp and caster in the faster shallow water and mopped up with the barbel. The exact same happened when I fished the Severn with one of my old man’s mates.

Taking those trips into account and Andy’s solid advice to go for the streamier water, I just couldn’t be bothered to walk miles from the car and therefore picked a deep slower stretch and pounded in 2 pints of hemp; about 2kg of pellets; c.£500 of Source boilies (OK – about £5 worth) and a pint of casters – what a goon…

Anyhow at least I did something right, I baited up from 3pm to 4pm without putting a hookbait in. To hedge my bets I set up three rods, two specific heavy barbel (1.5lbs and 2.25 lbs TC) outfits and a third lighter bullet ledger on 6lb braid and with a long (4ft) 5lb ultra fine fluoro hooklink. Suffice to say that Andy mopped up on the barbel with seven in all to a probable Angling Times appearance 10lbs 1oz, while I caught……..none.

However, after nothing on the two barbel rods (one on pellet and the second on a 20mm source boilie) for an hour except for taps from probably chublets, I swapped over one rod to the light outfit and started to bounce treble caster on a size 14 around the swim. Third cast and the light tip wrapped round and in comes a fantastic dace of all things. The small mouth and concave, dark, anal fin convinces me I’m not fooling myself by weighing a small chub. I’d have loved to caught it on the stick float and have had a camera with me but at 8oz, I was chuffed nonetheless. Another PB; a second “Weekender” target and close to my first “Dream” target.

I put the light rig away after an hour and a half of bashing small roach and getting twitches but no wrap arounds on a big black slug that cheekily tried to get in my bait box; then sit it out till dark on the heavy rods. Two chub and an eel (how it got it in it’s mouth I don’t know) take the 20mm boilie, while there’s just eel like taps on the pellet. The biggest chub is a good one, weighing in at 4lbs 2oz and only 2oz short of my PB. Not a bad day in the end then even if I did fish it exactly the wrong way!

Another go at the Perch next I reckon.

Cheers

Mr Fish