All members & day ticket anglers should be aware that the annual river close season is now in force, from midnight March 14th until June 16th.
The only way you can now fish our stretch of the Derbyshire Derwent is to fly fish for the trout. Local byelaws apply.
Of course, our members can still coarse fish Wyver Lane Pond and our stretch of the Erewash Canal whilst the rivers are closed, for our stocks of carp, silver fish, bream & tench.
Also, don’t forget to renew your EA Rod Licence, which may expire during the close season. It is a condition of fishing club waters that all anglers are in posession of a valid rod licence.
The 2018 pike angling season is underway at Belper
October 1st marks the beginning of the traditional pike fishing season for anglers around the country. The beginning of October has this year coincided with dropping temperatures, after the long, hot summer of 2018.
Pike anglers have been out in force on our stretch of the River Derwent, with captures reported up & down our stretch, including double figure pike being caught as far upstream as Ambergate, and a true river specimen pike of 20lb+ reported from nearer to Belper town centre!
Venue regular, Jonah Cooper, was into some pike action earlier in the season. He reported the capture of the three pike below, up to 14lb, using our catch report page. Jonah landed the larger 2 pike on lure and the smallest fish on herring deadbait.
River Derwent regular, Jonah Cooper, with three pike up to 14lb
With large shoals of roach, dace, perch, chub and bream showing all along our stretch of the Derwent, the pike have plenty to feed on! They are therefore spread right along our length for the majority of the year, then during the colder months the predators will never stray too far from the large shoals of bait fish. Find these and you’ll find some hard-fighting Derwent pike. Anglers who are happy to put in some “leg-work” can be rewarded by finding large pike in some of the areas few other anglers ever visit.
Please remember to complete out catch report form, to send details and/or photos of your captures from Belper & District AC, directly to the club.
We recommend that anglers visiting the River Derwent to fish for pike, ensure that they are confident and competent at unhooking these delicate fish. Ensure you have adequate unhooking gear (e.g. long-nosed forceps, needle-nosed pliers and side-cutters), as well as a large landing net and unhooking mat. Please always use a wire trace, strike quickly and return all pike to the river as soon as possible. If you are inexperienced at pike fishing, please take an experienced pike angler along with you. If you’d like to try your hand at pike fishing, but don’t have anyone to show you the basics, please contact the club (we may be able to put you in touch with a pike angling member).
For more information & advice about pike fishing and pike welfare, please visit the Pike Angler’s Club of Great Britain website at: https://pacgb.com
Member and venue regular, Jonah Cooper, sent us details of a superb River Derwent barbel he caught recently, close to Belper.
Jonah regularly send us details & photos of his catches using our online catch report form. He kindly grants his permission for us to publish them on the site.
Here’s what Jonah had to say about the capture:
“[The barbel] took a piece of Luncheon Meat just before 9:45pm. I’d been fishing from about 4-ish and I was going to pack up for home in about 5 minutes before it took a huge run downstream. Cracking fish, returned safely.”
Well done Jonah! That looks a superb barbel; please keep the catch reports coming.
Alfreton-based angler and BDAC member, Andrew Kennedy, enjoyed a great early morning float fishing session on our stretch of the River Derwent near Belper last week, showing the river’s potential for both coarse and game species.
“I had a really enjoyable session on the Derwent last Saturday morning, before work. I got off the mark for the season with no less than 5 species! With chub, trout, barbel, perch and grayling all caught. I landed a total of 4 chub, ranging from 3lb to a specimen chub just shy of 5lb; all on the float. Most fish took trotted caster or worm, with the barbel taking a banded pellet on swimfeeder. Great fun and just reward for a dawn start!”
Have you been catching on BDAC waters? Please send us details of your captures, with photos too if possible. You can choose whether the information you send us is kept private by the club, or made public on our website.
Information on all captures is helpful to the club because it helps us to monitor fish stocks and growth rates on our venues.
All members & day ticket anglers should be aware that the annual river close season is now in force, from midnight March 14th until June 16th.
The only way you can now fish our stretch of the Derbyshire Derwent is to fly fish for the trout. Local byelaws apply.
Of course, our members can still coarse fish Wyver Lane Pond and our stretch of the Erewash Canal whilst the rivers are closed, for our stocks of carp, silver fish, bream & tench.
Also, don’t forget to renew your EA Rod Licence which expire on March 31st. It is a condition of fishing club waters that all anglers are in posession of a valid rod licence.
Over the weekend the club has been working hard making improvements to fishing pegs on our stretch of the River Derwent at Belper.
Club and committee members made a fantastic contribution to river access during the club’s latest work party. Some of our wooden fishing platforms were rotten and in disrepair, so our team worked tirelessly to remove the old platforms and replace them with two brand-new platforms.
These platforms allow anglers to float fish the river with ease, as they move the peg out several feet from the bank. Of course, this benefits leger and swimfeeder fishermen too, but this extra distance from the bank makes float control whilst trotting so much easier.
These platforms also benefit anglers with reduced mobility, providing a safe, flat and comfortable platform to enable bank fishing for all.
These peg improvements are the latest part of our wider work to improve river access and fishing pegs along our most popular stretches of the Derbyshire Derwent. We’ll provide further updates as and when more improvements are made. If you’re a club member who would like to provide your time to help on future work parties, please get in touch.
Just before Christmas several club and committee members fished a light-hearted 3-hour match on the River Derwent, just upstream of Belper town centre, and landed some fantastic winter bags of silver fish!
The top 5 anglers weighed in: 11lb 2oz, 10lb 14oz, 9lb, 7lb 2oz and 3lb 14oz, with the predominant species being dace and roach. That is some serious winter sport for any river!
Our club runs a full programme of matches, held throughout the year, and this Christmas Eve river match may become the next addition to our match calendar.
We run a series of short summer evening matches, which often need 16lb+ to win!
If you’d like to sample some of our red-hot, winter river fishing for yourself, or if you’re a match angler who would like to join our club scene, then please consider becoming a member.
A historic, rare and special capture was reported to one of our water bailiffs, recently. A visiting angler spent a few hours lure fishing whilst visiting the area and had quite a suprise when he hooked and landed a “silver tourist”!
Derbyshire Derwent salmon!
The cock salmon was hooked close to Belper town centre, on a small Fox spinner which was intended for pike & perch. Despite being hooked on 50lb braid, the fight from the fish was of such intensity that it still took 45 minutes to land!
This salmon – caught from the Derbyshire Derwent at Belper in late 2017 by a lure angler – might be the first salmon caught on rod & line in Derbyshire for over a Century! It was safely released, alive.
This salmon capture is highly significant. It may be the first salmon caught on rod & line in Derbyshire in well over a century! Certainly we cannot find any mentions of captures from the Derwent, and earlier in 2017 another cock salmon was found dead at Belper weir, which was the first salmon recorded at Belper for over 100 years!
Belper is only a few miles from the centre of England (Morton parish, Derbyshire) – as far inland and away from the sea as an English town can be. So in order to get here, this salmon has successfully negotiated the Humber estuary and passed through large towns and cities such as Hull, Gainsborough, Newark, Nottingham and Derby. It has overcome numerous weirs – including many formidable ones on the Trent, such as Collingham Weir – and has swum over 140 miles inland, upriver! That is one incredible journey, and we’re pleased to say that the captor released the fish alive and reported that it swam off strongly – hopefully far enough to meet a female at their spawning grounds.
Who knows, the parr this fish helped create may already be hatching in the Derwent…?!
The River Derwent once had a thriving salmon population and this significant capture is yet more evidence that salmon are migrating further up-river and in greater numbers than has been seen for decades. The whole River Trent catchment is seeing an increase in salmon numbers which is great news for Derbyshire.
Other recent mentions of salmon in the River Derwent:
Have you spotted or caught a salmon in the Derwent?
Although the above capture is historically rare, recent conservation efforts seem to be slowly increasing the number of salmon travelling upstream in the Trent system, including the River Derwent. If you have any verified sightings or captures of salmon from the river, please send us an email via our contact page.
The annual match, held on the River Derwent at Belper, was won by Thomas Webster.
Thomas Webster was triumphant in this year’s John Mason Memorial Match, held on our Wyver Lane Pond stretch of the River Derwent at Belper (just upstream of Belper’s River Gardens).
His superb 7lb 14oz bag of roach & dace, caught on pole, was enough to clinch the title and win him the John Mason memorial shield for 2017.
Thomas Webster with his winning bag of River Derwent roach & dace.Angler, Thomas Webster, is presented with the John Mason Memorial Shield
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