Winter finally arrives

Its been a while since my last update but sometimes life gets in the way and the fishing has to take a bit of a backseat . A close family member was recently hospitalised after an accident so my thoughts have been dragged away from the riverbank and on to more important things of late .
I have been out on the bank a couple of times though since the last entry and the first week of December brought with it the first real wintery weather ive experienced this season . Bitterly cold strong winds coupled with a mixture of frosts and rain served to put a bit of a dampener on the fishing as my recent results clearly show!

Just prior to the weather turning i had another after work session on the Derwent in the same swim i caught the Barbel from last time around. It was very mild and breezy but even though it was dark i could see that the river level was about 6 inches down on when i caught the Barbel . As a result the flow had dropped considerably and with it the Barbel seemed to have disappeared too .  Over the course of the evening i went on to catch Chub of 4.6, 4.10 and 4.12 .

After that trip the weather turned ugly and with it my thoughts turned towards Pike. Most of the local rivers were carrying a bit after the rain and i really didnt fancy them so i headed for the Soar which seems to behave completely differently to the Trent, Derwent and Dove . This is probably because it flows from the opposite direction to the other three as a result it wasnt carrying and i needed a bend in the rod so thats where i went.
I spent a morning leap-frogging along a short stretch near my house and managed four takes, landing two and losing the other two to hookpulls. The biggest was around 8-9lb but they served  to boost to my confidence considering the weather conditions.

The next day i went to a different stretch hopefully for more of the same but despite working it for about 5 hours with a variety of baits and methods i never had so much as a sniff. The weather was in stark contrast  to that of the previous day though being very bright and sunny with an exeptionally strong, cold wind.

My most recent trip was, once again, to the Soar and this time conditions looked good . It was much milder than what it had been and was overcast, i was looking forward to a good day. My plan was to jump from swim to swim down the stretch giving it an hour in each before moving onto the next. The first swim had a nice overhanging tree with about 7ft of water underneath and it looked cock on ........

.... and it was as the first Pike of the day quickly took an interest and the float began to bob about before sliding away. After a brief tussle a lively Jack of about 5lb was soon sliding into the net. At this point disaster struck and the net broke at the spreader block! I ended up gloving the Pike out but obviously my session ended there as i didnt fancy gloving out a lump should i be lucky enough to hook one . I went home with the intention of returning with another net but it started to rain heavily and i got roped into some DIY as i walked through the door so that was that then, doh!