We started flicking hardbodies along the rocky drop offs but struggled to get more than an inquisitive glance from bream before they disappeared back to the depths they appeared from. As we continued to work our way down the bank we found a school of small salmon charging around the shallows and quickly found any lure twitched, rolled or paused anywhere in their vicinity was hit with gusto but no hook up availed. We persisted with the hard bodies and continued to get follows but nothing was committing to hit the lure. Finally I made the switch to a cranka crab and 8 casts later I connected to a solid bream, whilst attempting to sight cast to a different fish, a great fight followed but the eventually I steered the fish into the net.
My treble was absolutely destroyed by this fish and I was left with a single point having the other two completely crushed and eventually falling of trying to remove the hook. A quick changed of crabs but I wasn’t getting any attention until we found some pylons in deep water and my crab got hit on the drop by a large fish but the fish managed to miss the hooks. As the tide went out the fish moved off the rockwalls and started feeding on pylons and other pieces of structure that were in deep water. We skipped from pylon to pylon and worked the larger rocks we could see in the water in between eventually we came to a floating platform with bream circling underneath feeding on mussels, if you stood still you could hear the crunching, we slowly worked the edges of this platform with soft plastics until eventually my soft plastic was smashed and I was on, the fish took me straight back under the platform I was standing on and spent most of the fight almost directly underneath me but eventually it popped out from under the platform and was swiftly netted.
After a quick lunch break we hit the water on a different section of the river and worked deep structure and drop offs it was looking really quiet but we decided to fish one last spot before making the call to move elsewhere or head home. This decision proved worthwhile when first cast Basti’s soft plastic was nailed as he hopped it past and again a hook up resulted. Luckily this fish was swimming away from its lair when it hit the plastic and Basti made sure it wasn’t allowed to return, playing the fish out in open water.
This shutdown the other fish that were sitting here and eventually we decided to work our way back to the car, this stretch of river was relatively uneventful with one small hit and a follow from a relatively small bream. When we started the trip home we had managed to time it so we left at the same time as a lot of people were finishing work and were met with the congested roads associated with this (we really need to plan the timing of these trips a bit better sometimes).
Cheers Alex
Ps. The full sized photos and others taken on the day can be found here full album
