Compensation water

Last weekend, the start of my pike season, a semi static session on my local river. Two rods with simple running lead rigs, backbiters for indication and a selection of frozen bait. The plan was to fish a peg for about an hour then move to the next. 

A cold, foggy start to the morning

Over the course of the morning I covered 6 pegs, with no interest in any of them. Although the river had looked spot on, it remained fairly lifeless, just the odd silver fish surfacing with no sign of any predators.

I bumped into a couple of anglers dropshotting and they hadn't caught anything either. After a bit of a chat it was mutually agreed that 'compensation water' was to blame for the lack of feeding fish.

The river can suffer from high abstraction by farming and heavy industry and compensation water is released from a reservoir to counter this. This reservoir is located high in the Pennines and the water is often very cold so this can effect the fishing for a few days after it has been released.

During the session I checked the water temp, 10.5°C, a couple of degrees lower than normal for this time of year. Well that's the excuse for last weeks blank, just need to think of one for tomorrow now!