Wednesday 26 November 2014

Wormtastic

This weeks fishing trip started a few days back for me receiving a package through the mail from a friend who had sent me his camera he uses for fishing with the instructions, " Lets see what you can do with this" He keeps getting at me and asking why I can get such good results using a compact.

My camera is a small Kodak Easy-share 14megapixels that I use for fishing as I have to replace it at least once or twice a year with water damage normally after falling in or in the last instance dropping it into the river.
The Kodak gives me the results I want and its relatively cheap to replace.
The camera Kevin sent me was similar in size and built by Canon with 16megapixels, Ive seen Kevin's photographs and they are sorry to say not excellent so I am at a disadvantage this blog entry for photographs as you will find out as the story unfolds.

After the success of the last trip up the Dales for the Grayling I didn't hesitate to grab my fork and turn over the midden again in the search for dendrobaena worms which because well kept gives me an abundance when I need them so in a matter of a few minutes I had enough for the day's fishing.

This morning it was grey dank and no surprise raining again. The drive up the Dale was mostly covered in Fog and it was going to be one of those days I thought, The river was down on last week but with overnight rain I was on the lookout for it rising again whilst there.

I arrived just after 0900hrs and was soon set up and trotting down my first chosen swim and it didn't take too long to connect with fish all be it out of season trout to start with but the Grayling soon made an appearance and the camera got its first outing.



A run of the mill grayling for this stretch but very welcome after the couple of trout.
 The first thing I learned about the camera was it doesn't pick up the true colour of the float tip or the whipping like my own camera does.







I moved down the run a couple of feet and within seconds the float dipped away again and another Grayling was soon on the way to the net, smaller than the first so I wasn't going to wade out to photograph it so unhooking it in the water it dived back to where it came from with a flick of its tail.

The next hour went by relatively quickly as I was now getting a smallish Grayling every other trot through,  23 in total so to save worms so I wouldnt run out like last week I started chopping them in half as there was still a lot of water I wanted to cover and the smaller Grayling weren't getting such a feast, towards the end of the run in the quieter water I found the better Grayling again, as if they were sitting back and letting the young ones have there fill before they had some.




And I soon found myself having a better grayling every other trot through, after getting another 8 fish in the net I must have caught the unluckiest fish in the river.









This fish has got to be the most unluckiest fish as I think I have had this fish on the bank 3 times now at various stages, the deformed mouth being the obvious giveaway, I have yet to confirm the markings with the previous photographs I have, but something that surprises me as Grayling are known to be territorial to a certain degree in that they tend to not travel too far in any direction but the last time I caught this fish it was almost a half mile downstream so if the patterns do come back the same I at least know this fish has moved a good way upstream.
















The camera I have to say Kevin I'm not too impressed with at this point and I'm just glad I took a couple of photographs of the fish, one of the reasons being the flash kept going off when not required and the focus on quite a few of the pictures are way out, and there is no difference from what I was doing with my camera to what I was doing with the Canon.

The fish dried up so I moved first in a downstream direction to a  small new hole that I discovered on my last trip, it doesn't look much from a distance, but the river comes across some shallows then drops away into a deep gulley for about 25m with overhanging  cover, prime Grayling territory and sure enough within 5 minutes or so the Grayling made an appearance.















The only thing about the hole being if you want to grab a picture you have to wade across the top of the shallows to get to the bank, disturbing the water downstream so decided after this one picture to just stay put and see what turns up. I stayed in the hole for almost half an hour and took a further 4 Grayling and 2 trout before like the other runs it went quiet. I certainly wasn't complaining it was turning out to be a very productive morning and as I made my way upstream I started counting the fish that had come to the net since starting and with the aid of my reminder...my threaded beads, I soon got a total....42 fish caught.

On the walk upstream I decided to put the camera through its paces with some arty shots of varying things as I walked upstream to my next set of runs.





The river through a gap in the trees.










wading stick, centrepin & rod.



Berry's with droplets.

When you can take time to focus the camera properly and let it auto focus its not too bad in the detail that it produces but its a different matter when your against the clock when you have fish on the bank, I like to grab a quick snap of the fish on the net & get them straight back without the minimum of fuss and my camera allows that all be it not all the time but certainly to a greater degree than Kevin's camera.


 
I was soon in the spot that I took most of the fish from on my last trip and what a difference a week makes, the water was much slower, there was more rocks showing and trying to find a decent trot through without getting snagged up was going to be hard. One thing that was good was the torrent of water I had to wade through wasn't as bad but it still had a bit of force behind it.


Back to photographing on the rocks like last week to save me the trip but I was soon to discover it wasn't the same run as last week with this being the only Grayling coming from it and only an out of season trout adding to the tally from the run, so heading off back to the bank I headed to a spot to grab some lunch and grab a sit down for a half hour or so.

As I sat and had lunch with my back against the trunk of a big tree which overlooked this small feeder stream and waterfall I seen some movement in the pool below the cascading water, I wasn't quite sure at first as I only saw it from the corner of my eye to start with but after a few moments I saw the movement again...a trout attempting to get up the cascading water, obviously to spawn further upstream, I tried to grab a picture of the fish as it was in the fast water from where I was sitting but the camera just wasn't fast enough and out of the 17 pictures I took of the fish not one is reasonable enough to be considered post-able.


I moved from where I was sitting to try and get a better look at the fish which was virtually black in appearance and as soon as I got close to it, it disappeared at speed downstream.

I headed to another run and started over after grabbing a bite to eat and a quick cup of coffee, the rain was getting harder again, it really hadn't gone off for most of the day but it was a fine misty rain to start now it was increasing in severity.

Not too long passed till the float dipped away and the tell tale fight of the Grayling brought a smile to my face again, and before long I was back amongst the average sized Grayling for this stretch but very welcome in the rain.



Another 40 minutes or so flew past as the fish came to the net in varying sizes and added another 14 fish to the tally before like all the rest of the runs earlier in the day dried up and stopped producing.

The sky was darkening over the top of the Dale and I knew before long the light would soon start fading so decided to head back downstream to where I had started and see what I could winkle out before the walk back to the car.

It took less than 5 minutes to have my first grayling on the bank from the runs I had started in this morning, and they seemed up for a feed again.













As the light faded I took a further 5 Grayling from the run and the camera flash ruined nearly every one of them before the light did fade and I called it a day with this last fish of the day.


64 fish for the day again like the previous session all on worm and a river that rose 0.27mm steadily as the day passed. The camera took over 120 photographs of the days fishing of which nearly half of them I wouldnt use on the blog for one reason or another so Kevin I now know what you want to do with your camera, take still photographs where you have time to set up the shot & buy a Kodak easy-share for your fishing. Normal Camera service will be resumed by me next outing. A great day all be it weather wasn't superb but the fish certainly made up for that.



4 comments:

  1. A very respectable grayling session.....

    I think its time to dig the centrepin out once more

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  2. Good to see those worms working well again George, I know your not impressed with the camera but the eleventh picture down in particular looks great.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Another wormtastic day Brian, long may it continue, saves me buying bait....lol I do like that photo myself and probably say that was the best photo of all the pictures taken, I'll stick with my kodak...lol cheers George

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