Catch Fish with
Mike Ladle

Information Page

For anyone unfamiliar with the site always check the FRESHWATER, SALTWATER and TACK-TICS pages. The Saltwater page now extends back as a record of over four years of (mostly) sea fishing and may be a useful guide as to when to fish. The Freshwater stuff is also up to date now. I keep adding to both. These pages are effectively my diary and the latest will usually be about fishing in the previous day or two. The Tactics pages which are chiefly 'how I do it' plus a bit of science are also updated regularly and (I think) worth a read (the earlier ones are mostly tackle and 'how to do it' stuff so if you are new to fly fishing or spinning these are the ones for you).

07 January 2007.

Dace only.

Yet again, when my grandson Ben came over the other day, it was too high and mucky for serious river piking. Last week I went fishing with Nigel and caught a load of good dace (and a single gudgeon) under even worse conditions. Typically I forgot the new (replacement) camera so had no pictures for the site. Anyway, I decided that another dace session was in order so we bought a few maggots, set up the float rod and went to the same spot - a hatch pool with only a slight flow down the middle of the slack water. The dace seem to like the shelter of such places when the river is very turbid and turbulent. In addition this is the time of year when they are beginning to gather in mill streams for spawning.

We only had an hour before it was time to take Ben home but the dace were very obliging and he managed to land one after another. On the barbless hook it was very easy to unhook and replace the fish and in all Ben and I landed about forty fish and dropped quite a few more. They were all dace and the bigger ones put up a reasonable struggle. The slack water at the head of the pool seemed to be populated by only the smaller specimens while further back, in the flow, the fish were often larger. All in all an interesting session.

Looking back to January 2003 when we fished the same place, with the same tactics, under similar conditions we caught not only dace but also, salmon parr, gudgeon, grayling, perch, roach and rudd. I wonder what the difference is?

Ben hard at it.

The first fish.

Dace.

-and a bigger one.