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Dave Gladwell's Fishing Tips

Sometimes only the perch feed after the flood for a while like this stone of fish (Photo © Dave Gladwell)

November may be fireworks and everything off with a bang, but not so with fishing! This is the awful month when things start to get hard. Big hooks and baits only seem to work in the Rivers on occasional days.

Those conditions are more likely to be high colour and very strong flows. The first frosts are famous for producing fishless early mornings and a flush of fallen leaves. Along with those often comes gin clear water when the first four feet are seen into like tap water.

The evening and last light however can change fortunes dramatically. Just when the temperature has fallen sufficient to see your breath and chill the ends of your fingers, the last casts always appear the most fruitful. Just when you have convinced yourself there are no fish in the swim you selected, amazingly fish start to rise.

Why they elect to do this is never really reliably explained by any one reason. In angling however all the best solutions to posers generally have more than one tangent to them. Probably this is the case here too. A number of factors could well contribute to these most frustrating phenomena.

A pair of four punders from above Ellingham Mill
(Photo © Dave Gladwell)

Fish do seem to have an aversion to strong light in the colder months. On many still waters the winter residence has been selected because of its lack of strong or direct light. Possibly eye flukes over the years transferred via water snails and bird excrement, have engendered slight weaknesses in the roach? Predators are more liable to hunt out moving baits in clear water conditions.

That includes alongside hungry pike, cormorants who will have roosted up well before dusk who generally finish hunting early so that they can spread their wings out to dry at the tops of trees. Then perhaps more insects fall off of overhanging foliage, released by the failing strength of their grasp, as the temperature falls and light fades?

For my money, today, the very practice itself has a more simple logical reason to supplement the others with. Once the Last light rising” pattern was established some time in the past from a variety of reasons, the small fish in the shoal came to copy their larger leaders behaviour. A shoal instinct developed and a genetic trend begins to form a substantial pattern of their existence. The art of self-preservation in all creatures is far less complicated than in the human being. Evening rising is experienced all over the Country on many rivers and lakes so it is not a geographical syndrome.

Therefore my tip of the month is to keep the options open for a late tea plus a torch to pack up with; and dispense with the early breakfast!
Finally this evening activity without fail belies the location of shoals and an evening walk can save you hours of frustrating daytime trials in barren swims.

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