Old spot and another new spot

I'd been eyeing up  a couple of new spots on the upper stretches of my 'other' river with dace in mind as they gather on the gravels and cleaner runs and I reckoned it would be fining down enough by Wednesday and the weather looked ok. In fact I set off in cold wet fog and when I did get to the town stretch the river whilst down still looked a bit brisk so I drove up to Chicken Town and revised my dace plans a tad as I was bound to have to work my way through a fair few browns to get at a few dace. In the trees the fog hadn't settled and the big coat was soon abandoned though the neoprenes stayed on. Without polaroids you might think the clear runs were barren but a sprinkling of reds (and the odd white) were soon working their magic and with more control from the pin the bites were slower as the fish weren't having to chase the hook baits quite so fast. As I expected the first trot bore fruit and one of the Loafer's fab little balsas  blipped under. No surprises as to the culprit, this fab little starburst wild brown. Chubby little thing too

 

They kept coming and I was soon into double figures including this biggest I'd get before moving to the next likely spot with a decent root structure and a deeper pool across.

 

As I'd hoped some dace were resident amongst the browns, as evidenced by the flash of silver as something twisted after the passing grubs. An altogether different fight, twisting and jagging rather than than the juvenile dashing about of the brownies.

A further 16 trout and 7 dace followed before I decided to head back to the town stretch and a quick pint and dry roast peanuts (lunch of champions) amongst the day time session drinkers on two pints at a time courtesy of Brexit Tim. A chocolaty thing that did the £2.29 job. And yes, the toilets are upstairs.

 

Across the road and the first trot down the wavy crease and the hoped for dace was twisting and turning in the fast current and in the net. A plump female as were most  that followed with only one definite sandpaper rough male

And this absolute unit of a she dace.

The trees above were little troublesome so I dropped down below by a pampas grass, a shorter run with several roach amongst the dace and this, my 29th and last brownie.

I also bought back a leaf that turned out to be a minnow.

 

I still felt the first run looked the best so went a shade up out of tangling tree reach and give it my best for the last 30 mins and popped a few in the net for a final shot.

I'll have another go before  the end of the season weather permitting