Just back from my fourth coarse fishing session of the winter, and it has been a most enjoyable time. I've caught more roach in those four sessions than in the last thirty years, and what is very pleasing is that I am catching at least four year classes of fish from the 3" 1+ sprats up to the 4+ 10 ounce quality fish. This bodes really well for the future as there seems to be a huge number of these fish about at the moment.

The perch are showing nicely too. Today's bag clocked in at the best part of 25lb and was about 60/40 roach & perch. Nothing huge, but a whole lot of fun. I caught on worm tipped with red maggots on a feeder, and trotted red maggots on the centre pin. The river is very low, but this is excellent for juvenile fish survival as they don't get washed out in floods, and the warmer weather means there is food about so they grow well.

Low flow years in the river may look catastrophic to us, but we're not fish!

Excellent, Bob. When I did some perch fishing in the autumn, my tactic was to fish lobworms or bleak while feeding maggots to bring the prey fish in and attract the big perch. I had bleak, roach, dace and chub boiling like piranha for the maggots. I could have had a fish a chuck on a whip all day long.

I do hope the cormorants don't come calling on your stretch of river, Bob. Because that sounds like lovely fishing. Are you picking up any dace ?

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"In wine there is wisdom. In beer there is strength. In water there is bacteria." - German proverb
JH based near Southampton

Excellent stuff I've noticed a lot of juvenile grayling this winter when trotting, hoping its a good sign as you say. Not a lot of perch or roach in the river I fish but small dace are beginning to show again after a long absense too.

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JohnH

There are some dace around, and I've had one or two decent specimens up to 10oz. They are patchy in their distribution and tend to be very mobile. I'll try looking for some in about a month when they start to shoal up for spawning. Cormorants are "discouraged" by the river keepers. As it has been a mild winter and the lakes have stayed ice-free the black horrors haven't been around much.

JeffR

Grayling can disappear so easily. Being short-lived a couple of bad recruitment years in a five year life span can knock a big hole in the population very quickly. There aren't many about where I fish unfortunately.