Chasing the River Fishing Crown: A Rainy Day Fishing Adventure at Dongjiang River
The weather app said there’d be light rain today, but when I rolled out of bed, brushed my teeth, and peeked outside? Not a single drop in sight! Glanced at the clock—7:30 already. No time to waste, I grabbed my gear and headed to Dongjiang River. It’s been raining nonstop for days, so I figured the fishing crowds would be thin. Maybe today would be my lucky day? I decided to head upstream, since my usual spot has been totally dead lately—no bites on the hand rod at all.
I pulled up to my new spot around 8:00, and sure enough, a light drizzle started. But there were already a few anglers there! As I unloaded my stuff, two night fishermen were packing up to leave. One look at the water level and my eyes went wide—it was at least 1 meter higher than usual. That’s a big change, no wonder my old spot was useless.
Prepping Bait and Testing the Waters (With Zero Bites)
Winter fishing means one thing: fishy bait is non-negotiable. I mixed up my go-to combo right away:
- 2 parts LingLuoQiao bait
- 1 part all-purpose fishy bait
- A dash of shrimp powder for extra kick
A guy next to me said the water was about 4.5 meters deep, so I grabbed my 5.7m hand rod, rigged it up, and started casting with dough bait. Left cast, right cast, wait… wait some more. Thirty minutes passed, and not a single nibble. Nada. Zilch.
Just then, another angler showed up, grumbling. He said he fished a spot nearby until 4 AM last night without a single bite, but he was too stubborn to quit, so he came back at dawn. Another guy, who’d been there since 5 AM, had 5 spinning rods, 1 hand rod, and two fish nets in the water. I thought, wow, he must be hauling them in! Turns out his big net was for black pit fishing, and the small one was for whitebait—he used the big net to let tiny fish slip through. Talk about a false alarm!
Ditching the Bottom: Switching to Whitebait and Problem-Solving
By 9 AM, I still hadn’t gotten a single bite on the bottom. The only action was from guys casting for whitebait, and even they only caught one every now and then. Waiting around like a statue wasn’t going to cut it, so I switched tactics: whitebait it was! I grabbed two 4.5m rods with size 3 Haixi hooks and got to work.
I set up at around 1.2m deep and cast nonstop for 30 minutes. Finally, I saw the float dip—but I pulled up empty! That happened over and over. What was going on? Was I yanking the rod too early? I tried waiting 2 seconds after the float dipped, and boom—my first whitebait! But then I kept getting bites that felt like I hooked something, only to pull up empty again. Was my hook too big? Or was it dull from use?
I swapped to size 4 sleeve hooks, but suddenly the bites dried up. So I mixed up some crucian carp bait and tossed two egg-sized lumps as a surface chum. Within seconds, I could see whitebait darting up to snatch the floating bait. I cast with pulled bait, saw the float pop up, yanked the rod—and nothing. Empty again!
Then I noticed needlefish zipping around the surface! No wonder I couldn’t land anything—those guys have short upper jaws and long lower jaws, so hooking them is like trying to catch a needle in a haystack. I decided to fish a bit deeper to avoid them, and sure enough, I started hooking whitebait left and right. But after a few casts, the bites slowed down again. The surface chum was gone, so I tossed more in. That’s when I had a lightbulb moment: why not fish with chum on the hook?
The Winning Hack: Chum-Coated Bait and Double Hook Success
Here’s what I did: I rolled up my pulled bait, pressed it into a ball of loose chum, and covered the hook with it. When I cast, the chum would float up and attract the needlefish, while the bait sank down to the whitebait hiding in the middle layer. Genius, right?
First cast with this setup: the float dipped, popped up, then dipped again. I yanked the rod, and felt a solid weight—way heavier than a whitebait! I reeled it in slowly, and there it was: a beautiful bream! A light drizzle started again, but it only lasted a few minutes, so I didn’t even bother grabbing my rain jacket. I was on a roll!
Once I got into the rhythm, it was nonstop action. I’d cast 5 times and land 3 fish. The guy to my left even switched to a short rod to try and copy me, but he couldn’t get a bite. Meanwhile, I was getting double hooks with whitebait twice in a row! I figured out the pattern fast:
- If the float dipped or went under? Whitebait, every time.
- If the float popped up? Needlefish, so I’d just let it go.
- If the float dipped slowly and steadily? Bream, and I’d reel in a nice one every time.
After 30 minutes of zero bites, the guy to my left packed up and left, looking totally defeated. The other anglers around me were barely catching anything, while my net was filling up fast.
The Afternoon Slump: When the Fish Disappeared
By 11 AM, the bites started to slow down. I tried moving the float up to fish deeper, but I’d only get a bite every few minutes, and half the time it was empty. I switched back to the long rod to try bottom fishing again, but nothing—nobody around me was getting bites on the bottom either. By 12 PM, I packed up the long rod and went back to the short one, fishing as deep as 2 meters, but still no luck.
A few more anglers packed up and left, muttering about how terrible the fishing was. I stuck around for a little longer, and managed to reel in one last bream from the deep, but that was it. The light rain picked up again, and the wind started blowing, so the water temperature must have dropped. I figured the fish had moved to even deeper water, where my short rod couldn’t reach.
The Final Haul: I’m the River Fishing Crown!
I packed up around 1 PM, soaked a little but totally stoked. Here’s what I ended up with:
- 8 saltwater bream (tastes way better than freshwater, trust me)
- 20-30 whitebait (plus a bunch that got away when I was unhooking them, or slipped out of the net)
Most of the other anglers had either caught a tiny handful of fish or nothing at all—some even left without catching a single fish! I felt like a total rockstar, walking back to my car with my full net. If you’re planning a winter fishing trip at Dongjiang River, here’s my best advice: don’t waste time on bottom fishing if there’s no action. Switch to surface or middle layer fishing, and try that chum-coated bait hack—it’s a game-changer. And don’t get discouraged if you start with zero bites; sometimes you just need to tweak your setup a little to hit the sweet spot.
Already counting down the days until my next trip—who knows, maybe I’ll keep the river fishing crown title!
