Vaughanie's fishing prowess beggars belief. All fisherfolk are given to telling tales and listening to Vaughanie you might be forgiven for occasionally wondering if he is having a lend of you. Not that I've ever been an unbeliever but a fishing trip with the maestro soon puts paid to any doubts.
I christened the new rod and reel today. Weather was pretty dreadful. Heavy showers occasionally fading to constant drizzle. The intrepid angling pair weren't in the least deterred. On balance I figured if I didn't go swimming in the slippery conditions I was going to be pretty drenched through with rain, so I didn't take the camera. No photos, sorry.
Vaughanie recommended a short cycle trip down below the Kent Street Weir fishing from the bank near Castledare for bream. With the winter rains, the bream have come up looking to feed and spawn but the weir is still up, so most of the bream are trapped below. As the high tide retreats from the tidal flats and channels a wash of worms and bugs flow back into the river and the bream apparently feast on this nutrient rich flow.
Burley seems to be a staple of the Vaughan "method". Today's burley was a batch of old wrigglers (maggots) in bran gently tossed into the water directly where we're going to fish. A batch goes in immediately on arrival with a couple of refreshers at hourly intervals whenever the action seems to go off the boil. Vaughanie is using a stick float with a trace that he keeps resizing up and down as the fish move from feeding near the bottom to a little higher. I'm fishing the bottom with a small sinker, nylon stopper ball and swivel and then an 8lb trace with size #6 mustard hook. We're using river prawns for bait. They're soft but that doesn't prove to be a problem.
Vaughanie is keen that I should use the wonderful rod holder he's so generously given me. So I'm dropping my line just 3-5 metres into the river and slipping the rod into the rod holder, taking up tension until the weight of the sinker is just taken on the end of the rod. Fishing along the outside bank of a bend in the river it's apparent that there's a fair drop off directly in front of us
For the first 20-30 minutes Vaughanie's concerned that the change of tide appears to be running late. We can see water still running up towards the weir. The effect on the fish is profound. For the first 20 minutes neither of us sees any action. Within minutes that changes. Suddenly we're both taking strikes. Vaughanie lands a couple of legal bream in the space of as many minutes carefully returning them in the hope of something better. I'm watching the tip of my rod in the holder doing a bounce and a jiggle before the tip suddenly takes a deep dive. Another, easily legal bream but it is returned too as we're hoping for something tipping 30 cms. At about this point we notice that the tide has started to run out. Timing is clearly everything.
Vaughanie's insistence that I use the rod holder proves to be a winner. Rather than holding the rod in my hands, becoming over excited and whipping the tip around at the first sign of a nibble, with the rod in the holder I'm encouraged to watch the early nibbles, let them go and wait for the full blown strike and run that is sure to follow before quickly retrieving the rod and landing the fish.
Within a short while though the nibbles and subsequent strikes are coming so quickly I don't have time to use the rod holder, so it's a case of exercising some discipline. A careful cast just out beyond the sought after deep channel, draw in the slack until the rod is just feeling the weight of the sinker. Keep the tip of the rod around eye level and let it do the work. Wait for the bream to take the bait and run before winding like blazes and leading them back and forth across the bank dodging the submerged trees and other traps.
Vaughanie is urging caution over Thomas the Tank Engine as he calls the larger bream that inevitably join the fray. Sure enough I twice sacrifice tackle to these denizens of the deep that seem particularly adept at running under trees before I've even managed to get the rod into my hands. On one occasion the strike was so powerful it simply snapped the six pound line I was using. Just to prove these monsters are there, with landing net in hand Vaughanie lands a 3-4lb bream after a short but frantic battle. We return this 40cm beauty to the water for another angler to enjoy.
You'd think the rain would have assured us of a little peace and quiet while fishing. However, there seemed to be a crowd down at Castledare Railway this day. At one stage we had a dozen or so people in bright raincoats and brilliant umrellas standing within touching distance on the bank behind us doing their best to terrify the fish. Regardless, in the space of 2 hours we had exhausted our bait supply and landed a couple of dozen bream keeping a bag limit of nicer specimens each.