Martyn White | Thursday, 9 January 2025
Just a quick one from me today. I got out yesterday for my first fish of the year. Just some carp on my local river, I didn't want to travel far as we've had pretty changeable weather and I wasn't sure how good conditions would end up being.
As it was the, the weather wasn't bad and the sun stayed out most of the day. Despite this, being mid-winter it was cold and the sun was still low so spotting fish was often tricky. I'm pretty sure I missed a couple of eats because I couldn't see well enough and would rather miss a fish than foul hook one that didn't actually eat. If they don't eat, they don't count. Anyway, we'd had a good bit of rain at the weekend so I was hoping that there would be a bit of water in the river, but it was still very low which meant the fish were more concentrated than normal, fewer shots and more fish spooked per hook-up.
I started with a chartreuse glo-bug, a great winter option for low flow and shallow water. Bright, because carp actually lose visual acuity in cold water. Unweighted for soft presentations in skinny water. Slow sinking for fish that aren't super active because of slow winter metabolism. While I was rigging up, I noticed a couple of nice fish circling in shady patch of slack water by a bridge, so I gave the glo-bug a squeeze in the water so it wouldn't float and gave it a drag and drop and got a nice, confident but slow eat. Moving down stream, I had half a chance at a better fish but I lost sight of it in the glare and couldn't find it again. Moving on I picked up another fish then started getting refusals. I felt like tat was probably due to the light changing, so I changed to a peachy pink glo-bug and picked up another couple of fish. After that, a large flock of coots decided to start swimming in front of me then spook, flushing downstream for about 50 yards or so where they waited for me to catch up before repeating the process and spooking every fish in the vicinity. Unfortunately I couldn't get in front of them, so decided to call it a day and head back for a cup of tea.