Wet and wild
HATS off to anyone that stuck it out on the banks last Saturday, that was a bit of a wild one.
Obviously Sunday turned into a great autumn day for fishing but I’m sure a lot of you have the similar work and home commitments so you’ve not got the flexibility to wait for the weather these days.
I had planned on fishing a drifter float for pike alongside my deadbait rod – it’s been in my box for a while but I’ve never really bothered with it. Usually I’ll float leger on the canal or fish inline floats off the boat. Off the loch shore it’s alarms or lures, but I knew it would be windy and I fancied sailing a bait temptingly into the waves.
A bit of googling about, some tutorials from Dr Paul Garner and Drifter Float Fishing 101 from Fox Rage had filled me with confidence. As Craig Renwick put it “The drifter float rig is an absolutely deadly method that’s designed to suspend a bait at a set depth and cover as much water as possible using the wind to carry your bait along. This sometimes overlooked rig is particularly effective for covering a lot of water, catching pike from the bank that are well out of normal casting range and also catching pike from areas that are normally inaccessible to anglers.”
I was fishing in North Ayrshire on a loch that’s dreich at the best of times, but it can produce some huge fish. On dark mornings when you’re lugging your gear over a flooded field it’s best to remind yourself that fish don’t care about it being wet.
A long trudge up the bank, that turned into a wade before getting to the mark I was after before setting up camp. I don’t take masses of gear but after a summer of fishing with lures and flies, my seatbox and rod quiver felt a lot heavier than the last time they were out.
Brolly up for some shelter, sit down with a coffee and get the baits rigged up, simple enough plan. This brolly’s a few years old, it has taken all sorts of punishment and survived until it Mary Poppins’d its way towards the water when my back was turned. However I managed to grab it, the locking mechanism slipped so it neither closed or sat open properly.
The weather got much worse, the early morning bites never appeared, my rod on the alarm kept making bleeps as I couldn’t balance the swinger to deal with the wind and waves, the drifter float bobbed around and got snagged up repeatedly.
I finally admitted defeat and trudged back, brolly under my arm.
Once I’d dried off, bought a big breakfast and reflected there’s always another day. Anyone can be an angler in perfect weather!