Saturday 9 July 2011

The Crayfish Dance


I had not got down to the river till evening,spotting the light coloured derriere of a deer as it bobbed away into the undergrowth,it was a nice still evening except for odd scatterings of showery rain mixed between the blue sky,the sounds that link evening to night began in earnest,the howling call of a vixen setting off a rather rousing cacophony of barks from nearby dogs.

The silhouette of a Pipistrelle bat skipped in and out of view between the reed beds,flitting about to and fro collecting a feast of insects,the scene was set and completed when a couple of owls sat in a tree nearby me and duly began their hunting routine,which was keeping the mice at bay to say the least,I could have done with the owls growing some gills and hunting the crayfish which were out in force and giving me nightmares,stolen boilie stops,chewed up anti ejection sleeving,you name it,they were doing it.I decided to place some loose feed just a bit further away from the main centre of crayfish headquarters,so as to give me some breathing space and this worked for a while and two or three hours later,I had a resounding,thumping bite and it was not long before the silvery back of a summer Chub of 5lb 5oz was sat in the net,a fish I am pretty sure would go bigger come winter time.



The night sped on,as ever it does when you wet a line and the battle for the land time forgot,the tale of fisher versus the crayfish legions began afresh and unabated,I eventually opted to change my boilie rod for some extra hard freezer baits,in the hope that I would sustain the clawed onslaught for longer,perhaps long enough to allow the fish a chance to pick up this tasty snack,although I wouldnt have blamed them if they had opted to go for a nice fresh crayfish instead,I mean after all who wouldn't?


Time passed,the rod tip responding every so often with a reply of,tip tap tap,these crayfish were really on the ball tonight,wait what was that,thump thump,the rod tip looped over and relaxed again, "crayfish darting backward with the bait damn it" I muttered to myself,not so long after the rod hooped over again and the tightened baitrunner decided to clock off at the rate of knots,it was at this moment I was sat thinking "ye gods,that must be one very big crayfish".

I told my legs to get up and strike this run,they moved but were seemingly not connected to me,my torso wanted to go to my rod,however my legs walked on the spot with me still in the chair,I cannot quite describe what had just happened but eventually I some how managed to get my brain to tell my legs that this was simply not what I had in mind and scrambled for my rod,in the fashion of something akin to a clockwork teddy bear.

I was met with a surging powerful response as the fish kited upstream trying to head for numerous snags including some thick pads and reed beds,it hugged the bottom bullishly,I felt the line tripping over unseen obstacles,before a torpedo shaped flank appeared in mid river,it looked a solid summer Barbel,the thoughts of "please don't slip the hook" played many times through my mind.



It was eventually greeted by the waiting net,a lovely summer fish,one ounce under 12lb and a nice reward considering the amount of crayfish activity that there had been,I went home early morning a very contented chap,I am still trying to fathom why my feet walked on the spot but didnt propel me out of my seat when I had the run,whilst I packed up I came to the only possibly logical conclusion that I had in fact been doing the crayfish dance.





14 comments:

  1. The Crayfish Dance....what a great post! And, I would love to see a video of you and your dancing partners. :-)

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  2. Thanks Erin,

    If only I could dance as good as a Crayfish that would be something of an achievement for me lol.


    kind regards

    Mark

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  3. Hi Mark,
    Acouple of great Fish there my friend, And the Owls in the tree would have made a top picture, The best way to stop the Crayfish destroying your bait, Get some Crayfish Tails from Lidl and put them in as a free offering, Great Blogging,
    ,,,Paddy,,,

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  4. Thanks Paddy,

    I really wish I could have got a picture of the Owls,but it was too dark for the camera to get a picture of any quality.

    Thanks for the tip,I was thinking about a tin of cat food dropped in the spot in a corded sack or similar,to decoy the Crayfish

    I will certainly give the Crayfish tails a try,thanks a lot mate.

    Kind regards

    Mark

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  5. Hi Mark,

    I`m looking into buying a crayfish trap and setting one up while i`m fishing, signal crays on the barbie.

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  6. Agreed Nick,

    they make for a very tasty snack indeed.

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  7. Great fish. Those dont come around often and when they do it is great to have one on the line. I hooked one the other evening and when it took off i thought to myself this is no barble...far too strong...this fish went crazy. It pulled far more than my PB of 12.5lb. When i got it out it weighed only 6.5lb.....very strong fish.
    Well done on that great catch.

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  8. Thanks Lureapike,

    your very right,it was a special moment and one I won't be forgetting in a hurry.

    kind rgards

    Mark

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  9. Beautiful barbel. I can't wait to get on the Ribble after seeing all these blog posts with big barbel and chub.

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  10. Thanks Kcon,

    I am sure when you hit the Ribble if it goes anything like your recent fishing trips have done,then I think you will be having one very good trip.

    kind regards

    Mark

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  11. Hi Mark

    Congrats on a couple of fine fish. I've been plagued by the crays myself this last couple of weeks.

    I'm interested in your methods here as I fish a tributary of the Thames also and I'm trying to ascertain if there are any barbel in it :)

    Firstly, it sounds like you're hair rigging frozen boilies? are you groundbaiting at all or using PVA mesh maybe?

    Secondly, are you catching these chub on a hair rig also? I take it you're using a fairly short hair if that's the case (?)

    Sorry for all the questions - I'm a traditionalist at heart and I'd like to give the boilies a go!

    All the best
    Russ

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  12. Hello again Russ,

    Yes I am hair rigging the freezer baits,but that is on a long hair around about 2+ inch in length.

    The pellet rod is on a much shorter hair rigged bait band,I am not ground baiting,I am generally using Pva mesh bags clipped on to a low resistance run ring,so that its next to the bait and dissolves closer to the hook.

    I do tend to use back leads if I can and failing that I try to where able to slack my lines off.


    Hope that might be some use Russ.

    Kind regards

    Mark

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  13. Thanks for the info Mark. Extremely helpful. I'll give it a go.

    Interesting that you don't just attach the pva bag to the hook itself. I take it this is not so reliable?

    All the best
    Russ

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  14. Yes,

    Whatever you do russ do not attach a pva bag to the hook,it will ruin presentation and lift off the river bed whilst dissolving and then when it does finally dissolve,the free offerings will be much further downstream than you will want.

    pva mesh attached to either the weight (gripper weight) with some pva string,or use a low resistance
    kwik Run Ring and just slide the sleeve up and clip the mesh onto the clip,next to the weight.


    kind regards

    Mark

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