En route to weekend break with the missus we stopped off to do a bit of fishing on The River Alne near the wonderfully named Wootton Wawen. I really liked it the one and only time I fished here a few years ago so a return was long overdue. All twist, turns, overhanging trees and pools it was my sort of river, the sort you could jump across in some places with the odd deep hole in others, I had a nice mix of trout and coarse fish the last time so would be happy with more of the same this time.
After parking up I spoke to another angler who was roving like I was to do, however he was dismayed that it was all minnow, he said couldn't get through to anything so I feared the worst. The water was low and clear so I set up in a spot where I could see some dace. I caught one first run through but then the minnow took over but at least it was a start.
Moving on I tried another hole, the sort where a little too far upstream I got minnow and if I let the float run too far down I got... yeah you guessed it, however in between there was a sweet spot requiring a demon cast under the trees, here I caught a few more beautiful dace before bang...
It was small stream fishing at it's best as a battle with all the snags, trees and nettles was won resulting in a nice chub, I thought it was a trout at first so it was a welcome bonus and probably the reason for the gap in the minnowtropolis.
Then the trout showed up but I quite like them, I don't get many round my way and they always impress me with their scrappy speed and power plus the variations in colour. For a while it was a mix of trout and dace, nothing huge but they were all netters.
I even managed a small perch among the dace and trout, then I had a quick dabble upstream before we had to leave. I briefly left the missus with the sheep, reading her book (why they were all reading it i'll never know) and headed off to a small pool upstream where I had 7 dace in as many casts, all really nice ones too, of course there was still time for another spotty marauder, released to fight another day.
It was a lovely couple of hours spent deep in the English countryside sitting on the sloping banks of a gently meandering stream, what could be better? I ended up with 28 fish and managed to avoid all the trees although I could have done with a shorter rod at times but that was half the fun, that and avoiding all those pesky minnow.
As we packed up it was evident the weather was turning and it was getting much hotter, with the rivers also low this may be the best fishing of the weekend I said out loud, but deep down I thought to myself I'd take that all day long.
I did spend the rest of the journey in the car thinking of sheep based literature puns but in the end I just thought I'd just leave it to ewe.
