Wye PB for Ryan!

4lb 2oz stripey for Magoo! Well done bro!

Hi Guys!

It's been a week or two of PB's all round for friends and family and despite the continued low water conditions that are leaving the fishing very hard on the rivers, we've managed to locate an odd fish willing to snaffle a hookbait!

Stuey and I were talking on the phone the other morning and he was feeling the pressure of the little fish activity on his favoured venue too. The Dorset Stour has suffered many blights in recent years, floods, droughts, otter predation, cormorants and many other problems too. But all in all and despite these issues it's still a river that holds a few surprises up its sleeve!

2lb 5oz stunner for Stuey!

A few minutes after we'd finished chatting on the phone I got a Whatsapp message from Stu. 'Check this Perch out bro'! Was the wording.....I checked it out and my word!

What a monster! Stu had seen a group of fish mooching around under his feet by an over hanging bush and one of them was a rather large perch. Stu did his usual and approached with caution and set up a very simple single split shot ledger rig and a worm on a size 4 hook.

He gently lowered the bait down into the area and the perch looked at the bait with dis-contempt and turned away, leaving Stu perplexed.....Minutes later the tip flew around and he was into something rather powerful.

A bit of stripey success for Tash

The fish went under the nearside roots, out into weed and finally rolled on top ready for netting. It was at this point Stu knew he had something a little special. At 4lb 2oz, it was very bloody special!

The perch was a fantastic capture, a PB for Stu and of course much conversation was to be had post capture. I took the mickey and said he'd need a big bloody chub to better that perch...Well, the chub didn't show but an awesome 2lb 5oz roach did and made his day even more successful! He followed the two chunks up with a couple more roach to one pound and a few more nice smaller perch to just under 2lbs. Well done matey!

I took Natasha out that same afternoon after school as she was gagging at the bit to try and catch an alternative species. She liked the look of Stueys perch, so we grabbed a few worms, red maggots and some prawns and headed to our club water to see if we could find a nice stripey for her. Things started well with a nice pound roach and a skimmer. The bites were finicky to say the least and despite the swim being full of silvers, the perch really didn't want to show themselves. We had to wait until the sun was dropping behind the trees before she got her chance at a perch and finally the float darted under and she was into a nice fish.

Wye PB for Ryan at 9lb 5oz

Sunday night I had a nice invite to fish with good friend Ryan. We didn't get away until rather late, so time was a little limited and we had to make the most of what little light we had. Most of the better swims were taken but again, no one was catching a thing....We dropped into one of the shallower pegs and if I'm honest.....it was feeling very unlikely we'd catch a thing.

The usual approaches were adopted by the pair of us. I went for a straight lead and pva bag approach and Ryan went for two feeders with ground bait and pellets inside. It was some time before I got the first bite of the evening and despite playing the fish with kid gloves, it failed to see the mesh of the net due to a hook pull. On later inspection it was visible that the hook point had been blunted on the bottom.

9lb 4oz for me!

I felt there was a good chance that that fish was my only likely bite all evening. I was rather surprised to see Ryans rod fly into action a few minutes later. A really good first run signaled a good fish was on. I reeled in my rods to make room for the great scrap and after a few minutes she was in the net!

Thank god we hadn't blanked! At 9lb 5oz it was a Wye personal best for Ryan! Not happy at being left out, I had to wait until packing up time but I finally got myself into a nice chubby barbel of 9lb 4oz as well. A good end to what seemed a very stale evening!