Gary's day

After a cold and wintery week we headed to the Stort Backwater today. Expectations were for a tough day scratching around for bites as the river was quite clear.

Out of the bag came peg 10 for me, not a peg I have ever fished before. It is one of the deeper pegs with 7ft off the bank but only a top 5 wide. A start on breadpunch about 3/4 of the way over had bites coming but the fish were tiny with anything near 1oz being a bonus. A swap to maggot made no difference but at least I got a few goes at hitting the very shy bites from the small dace I was catching.

About half way through Phil over on peg 12 shouted over that Tony on peg 14 had just had a big perch. I was now a long way behind.

The 3/4 line completely died after an hour and a half and desperation had me trying the inside on a top kit given it was so deep. A small perch of 2oz on the first drop in had me excited but that soon faded and it was back to micro dace. And that was it for me for the rest of the day: occasional flurries of small dace and a couple more small perch on the inside; a couple of 1oz dace on the 3/4 line; and not a sign over by the boats.

At the weigh in I had around 70 fish but of much too small a size for a bit under 2lbs . The winner today was Tony off peg 14 who stuck it out for about a dozen perch for 4lbs, then Mark had a mixed net if smaller fish for 3lbs and then Phil with just over 2lbs. Picture today is Tony with a couple of his perch.