Last Session

Well the year was coming to an end and Jay managed to convince me of one last session before it did. We opted for a stretch of river on the Tees that niether of us had fished before, Jay opting for pike and I decided on some chub for a change. We havent had much luck with pike on the Tees and I havent had a chub in ages. The river was still a few feet up and pushing through quite fast having not recovered propperly from storm frank and storm Eve was already banging on the door. The banks at Dinsdale are very steep and backwaters, slacks and eddys seem to be in very short supply but at the very end of the stretch I found a slack area just upstream of a trailing bush. I'd mixed up some cheese paste and some liquidised bread and fed few bits into the swim and sorted out my gear. It would be fair to say that by the time I got fishing storm Eve was well and truly upon us and the gale force wind was hammering the rod tip, Jay enquired as to how I differentiated wind and currentfrom a bite and all I could do was shrug. The tip finally did something slightly different, I struck and to my surprise I was into a small chub of around a pound and a half. I changed swims and had no visible bites so I returned to my original swim and was soon connected to my second chub of the day which seemed to be intent on getting into the bank under my feet. Finally it was in the net and I weighed it just out of pure curiosity, pleasantly surprised to see it go to 3lb 10oz. I moved swims after getting no more bite like indications and the storm grew and grew, the rain was so heavy that you could scarecly see the far bank and broken branches were falling all over. As I fished on a strange, though not unexpected, thing happened as I expected a bite less I tried less. I stopped being so stealthy and my casts became less accurate and so it became more of a self fulfilling prophecy.

And thats the way it ended, we decided to pack up early and get out of the torential rain. I know there are some anglers who would have caught more and who knows how many bites I didn't spot but it was great to be on the bank with a good friend doing something I havent done for years. I'll be back. Good luck to everyone in the new year.