🎣 A Christmas Day angling session and December 25 fishing thoughts
As I’m looking to fish every day of 2025 – my first full year of retirement – then naturally that includes Christmas Day as well. The video, from the kitchen at home, was filmed prior to leaving for a short first-light session on a pond.
It’s a place I’ve fished many times previously and, based on past sessions, I had every reason to be confident. As per the predictions in the video though, famous last words, as they say. Although I had plenty of bites early on, none of them materialised into fish on the bank.
The overnight drop in air temperature – it was a very chilly start to the day – combined with the driving northerly wind, meant that it was always going to be a challenge. Ordinarily, I would have stayed longer but, being as it was December 25, I didn’t want to be bankside too long.
That leads nicely to my thoughts on Christmas Day fishing. In a nutshell, it’s quite simple. If you want to fish, then do so but if you don’t then stay away. I never went when my girls were at home and even now, I certainly wouldn’t do anything other than an hour or so at first-light.
However, for others, they may be on the bank all day and that’s where I think it’s important to ‘live and let live’. I’m not a fan of judgmental attitudes where, for example, an angler seen fishing on Christmas Day is assumed to ‘have no life’.
It’s got nothing to do with us what he gets up to and how long he stays at the water’s edge. For all we know, he may be a widower and it’s angling that keeps him together, especially at this time of the year. We don’t know, plus, it’s not our business anyway.
Back to the session, I fished a single maggot on a Drennan Super Specialist size 18 hook under a 0.8g Drennan crystal waggler float. Casting about 1.5 rod-lengths out in three-feet of water, I loose fed maggots.
I had enquiries every cast early on, but you could see that the fish were ‘playing with their food’, and the downturn in conditions was having a detrimental effect upon proceedings. Never mind, there’s always another day. There’s always tomorrow.
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