Eggs In The Morning

When we arrived at the river we found it still running high after last week's rain. Still fishable, but high. It was quite good to give John a bit of practice with wading slightly more challenging conditions with me there to help out if needed. The real danger here is fear or lack of confidence, so it's much better to have someone there than to experience it alone for the first time. After tentatively making our way to where we wanted to start fishing, we got rigged up and found a few fish near a sluice. Unfortunately it was running a bit fierce and John was struggling with managing his line and presentation.

I decided we'd switch to looking for bass in slack water and work downstream to where the river widens and splits in the hope of finding some maruta in a more manageable situation for John. I went with a crayfish and got John to fish a mid-size BTD. This caused a bit of an issue and John ended up spending half an hour "practising" his casting rather than fishing. He really needs a bit more of that off the river but after offering a bit of help I went for a mooch about. Hopping my crayfish in a big bit of slack water below an eddy, it didn't take long to get into a fish. At first I assumed I'd hooked a big smallmouth, but it quickly turned into a mid sized barbel, not what I was after but not a disappointment either. Once it was landed and John had got a look at it, I started working my way downstream picked up surprise maruta on the crayfish and then went round a bend behind an island to a wide riffley pool that was full of maruta. I went back up to get John and got him re-rigged with a new leader and little tungsten backed flashy hare's eary bug. I showed him how to approach the fish, quickly caught 2, handed him the rod and watched him miss about 7 fish in 10 casts.

We identified 2 problems; the first being that John was waiting to feel the fish, probably pretty common with beginners. The second being that he can't see at any distance. Neither can I but I cunningly wear glasses. I've now explained to John how to ask his optician for polarised lenses, so I'm hoping he'll act on that soon. He probably needs plain specs too, so that may be the stumbling block as it requires acceptance of being an old guy. We'll see. As a temporary measure I added a bigger indicator section to his leader with some black and red 20lb amnesia blood knotted together with the tags left long. I'm not sure why I had that in my back, maybe I subconsiously knew he's blind. Whatever the reason,red amnesia is really bright and there's a tonne of contrast between the red and black. I actually found it a bit off putting because it was too visible, but it was enough for him to see at ranges of up to maybe as far as 15-20 feet which is close, but enough for maruta. After that he managed to get into a few fish but didn't land many because he's not setting the hook properly. Eventually he managed to make a couple stick and learned that fish don't always behave themselves when you try to photograph them (POD).  After a few had been caught that school  swithced off so we went down the riffle and found some more, but they were bunched up tight and spawning so they had to be left alone. Luckily for us the top of the pool below was crawling with carp and barbel feasting on the maruta's eggs. They're prolific spawners and once they start, they will spawn multiple times before returning to the sea and it doesn't take long for the residents to switch on to them. Instaead of looking for other maruta I decided to take advantange of the situation and put on a tan worm with an orange bead and gave John a fluorescent pale pink worm with a gold bead. Weirdly I've found these patterns to be more effective than egg or spawn patterns in this situation, it's probably just opportunistic feeding on the part of the carp and barbel. I caught a couple and then just helped John, he was already happy and ready to go after getting a couple of maruta earlier but I was pretty sure we could coach him onto either a barbel or carp. I showed him the drag and drop for the carp that were hanging in the slack below the riffle, but again his vision proved to be his Achiles heel, even at short range he couldn't see where his fly was which made an accurate presentatin impossible. We stuck to him drifting the worm down to the barbel hanging at the bottom of the riffle. It took him a while to get it right and again definitley missed a few opportunities because of not seeing hook ups and a weak hookset on the eats he did pick up. Eventually an obliging fish picked up his worm and took off, hooking itself. This was followed by a tense fight and me trying to keep him calm and hoping the fish didn't take off down stream. Eventually I slipped the net under a nice barbel and John's new biggest fish! An excellent result to end the day and I'll be heading back shortly, I'm not sure John is free but there's no chance I'm passing up those barbel.