As for most anglers time is something I don't have enough of for my fishing. Especially since my little boy came along (but would not change that for the world). So when a chance of a days Rudd fishing with a couple of friends came up I jumped at the chance! The plan was to target the Rudd in a section of river we knew held massive specimens. I had fished the river a few times for them but as yet the bigger specimens had evaded capture. I pulled up to the river around 7am to find Giles and Chris getting the boat ready for the day ahead. With the boat ready and loaded with bait and tackle it was time to try and track the nomadic river Rudd down.
We decided to have a few casts near to out starting point as this area had produced good sized Rudd on previous trips. A few handfuls of crumbed bread were sent into the depths to try and attract fish to our bread flake hook baits. Bites were fourth coming from the off but small Rudd were the culprits! We upped anchor and headed up the river with me acting as lookout at the front of the boat. It was not long before I spotted some large Rudd scatter as the boat edged closer to them. We maneuvered the boat into position and dropped the mud weights. Chris was lightening quick and had his float sailing out into the river before the mud weights had hit bottom! In a flash Chris was rewarded with a bite from a better fish and turned out to be a lovely Rudd over 1lb in weight. The fish don't seem to hang around for long after one or two have been caught and as quick as they had arrived they disappeared! We spotted a few more good fish but nothing as big as we know there are in this river so decided to head straight to the section of river they were most likely to be.
As we were pushing upstream I spotted some huge Rudd and got a tad excited! I had not seen Rudd of this size before and was champing at the bit to get a bait out for them. With 3 of us on the boat it was difficult for all of us to present a bait at the same time in the same area. I had a cast upstream as it was an area that gave me plenty of water to fish. It's not easy float fishing upstream as you have to keep reeling line in to keep up with the flow of the river. As the float was making it's way back towards me it dipped from sight. I struck and was into a much better fish then anything I had hooked in the river before. It fought doggedly and buried it's head in the weed every chance it got! Eventually I managed to get it into netting range and it went in the net 1st time of asking. It was easily the biggest Rudd I had caught and we all thought it looked well over 2lb in weight. We settled on a weight of 1lb 13oz after weighing it on 2 sets of scales as we all thought it looked much bigger. It looked huge to me and whatever the weight I was over the moon with it!
Again we moved onto the next area. We got as far as we could in this section of river and decided to fish around the lock as we have had good fish there in the past. There were some very big Rudd in this area. I actually thought they could be Bream or Chub but I was in no doubt when I saw the scales sparkle in the sunlight. All of us were catching nice sized fish to over a pound but again the bigger fish were not playing ball. We decided to head back to our starting point for some refreshment as sitting out in the warm sun all day builds up a thirst! Our plan for the late afternoon into the evening was to head all the way to the lock and work our way back down river.
The weather surprised us in the evening and warm sun and light winds were replaced with cloud and a brisk breeze. This was not much good for fish spotting but maybe the fish would feed more confidently? One of the tactics to find the fish was to feed bread crust and see if anything rises to feed on the floating bread. Unfortunately the bird life new this and followed us everywhere! It did work and before long we were anchored up and fishing again. Rain had now started to come down and I thought it may be the end of the fishing. I saw a rainbow and said maybe a big Rudd would be the gold at the end of the rainbow? Again it was a bit cramped with 3 of us fishing downstream so I had a cast upstream. I was a little deflated by now as the conditions were not great and the birds had seemingly ruined the fishing. But my float slowly pulled under and I struck into a better fish. This fish was playing dirty and buried itself in the weed just in front of the boat! I didn't think it was as big as the one earlier in the day but Giles was much more confident that it was bigger! Maybe I just didn't want to think it was big as it looked like I might lose it? With steady pressure the fish popped up and was scooped into the net. It looked bigger then the one earlier but I didn't want to get my hopes up. The fish weighed in at 2lb 1oz and was a stunner! Chris took some great pictures and it looked amazing in the light of the setting sun. Truly gold at the end of the rainbow!
