The Boards in Belturbet and a real pleasure they both were too. The first saw me head off on my own at stupid o clock in the morning to get a swim I had been told about. What is it with us anglers that we'll get up at ridiculous times of the day ? Some form of untreatable madness perhaps but boy am I glad that I've
got it. I've allways enjoyed arriving at a venue when it's still dark and watching the world wake up.
My pleasure fishing days give me these opportunities and sights like these remind me why I'm glad I've
got the fishing bug.
is quite easy. The parking is good and very close by, a great facility and one that seems to allways fish well in winter time. A couple of short trips and all the gear is in my chosen swim and it's time to get serious. Hang on, it's a pleasure session, I'll have a coffee first and watch the sun come up. It did come up as you can see from the photos, it's all lovely to see but despite the glorious sunshine it's blummin freezin and a bright day with no wind isn't generally condusive to good fishing. Coffee done and once again I've managed to have a coffee without a smoke, giving up smokes after 30 odd years is not an easy thing to do. First coffee with a smoke by the water at first light has been part of the gig for a long time, it's weird not having that smoke now.
Right then down to business, Roach are going to be the most common bite so "Gros Gardons" is the chosen
groundbait for the day, as ever thats mixed and left to settle while the hardware is sorted.
I'd brought my feeder gear and a 7m whip and had planned to spend time on both methods, as it went
I didn't. The feeder gear was setup but never picked up, as the whip just kept throwing up fish and I just
couldn't put it down. On the far side of the river it runs very fast but up to about half way across it runs
quite slowly. Plumbing up with the whip gave me depths between 6 and 9 foot so I started with a
Garbo 1.5grm Float. Rigs were tied up using Preston 4lb mainline to Kamasan pretied hooklengths,
a size 18 B511 to 1lb 8oz line. I changed the hooklength after a few fish as it became apparent quite quickly that B511 hooks are not made for swinging Roach. After my fourth fish the hook opened out so into the my
hooklength box and I opted for a Kamasan B611 to 2lb 12oz line. Much better and no more opened hooks.
It seemed that no matter what I did I could catch, Fishing over depth using small balls of groundbait laced with caster and hemp produced really hard to read, very shy bites. Coming up in the water and loosfeeding
also produced but the bites were easier to read. At somewhere around 2 feet off the bottom the bites
were not so quick in coming but easiest to see. I spent a lot of time at that depth and ran the float through the swim getting bites at the same spot regularly enough to keep doing it.
One of the good things about pleasure fishing is you can stop at anytime and have a coffee or a chat with fellow anglers. During the morning the boards filled up with several other anglers and talking to them gave me some thoughts for future visits. A guy to my right fished a waggler all day and was busy enough to warrant doing it though I definitely out caught him. I chatted to a guy up to my left who fished a stick float in the faster water and allthough he wasn't getting as many bites the stamp of fish was much better than mine.
He had some right good proper roach and I decided I'd have a go at that on my next visit.
After a break which consisted of several coffees and no smokes I was back on the whip line and the fish
were still happy to oblige me. By 2o clock it was time to pack up and have a look at what was in the keepnet. A couple of trips back to the car and some of the gear mountain is packed away, one of the lads
took a photo for me of the final bag and I finished up putting the rest of th gear away.
was good at it and it's something I've never done so the chance to spend time watching him was welcome.
It's a skill I'm really keen to master and hopefully this will be the year to do just that.
The day ended with a reminder of why I enjoy it all so much and even with my less than top
of the range camera I think you'll get the idea,
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