Home Features Diaries Back With The Flow Part 3

Back With The Flow Part 3

February 3, 2004

An amazing fish at 7lb 13oz
The next few days the temperature plummeted and the river continued to fall and lose colour. I continued to catch a lot bream up to 7lb, plus several tench of around 5lb and a couple of small chub up to 2 1/2 lb. However the river had been crowded, with up to 10 anglers on the two mile stretch, and this had meant that I’d had to fish further upstream away from the area that I had been concentrating on.

On the final evening of the season I arrived early to find an angler by the name of Gary just setting up It turned out that the swim below him was free so I dropped off my gear and went back for a chat with Gary who had taken fish to 6lb 4oz from the stretch that season.

Andy Nellist and his amazing 7lb 13oz chub (click for bigger picture)

On dusk a couple of fish rolled in my swim but it was impossible to see if these were bream or not. I decided to bait lightly at first and then introduce more bait several hours into dark to see if I could avoid the bream. At 8pm Gary popped round and said that he had had a lot of bream including some quite good sized fish for the river. I had a lot of crayfish activity but no bream and on this stretch that was usually the precursor to catching a large chub.

I was fishing 10mm assassin-8 boilies on both rods and at 9.50pm, having had no bites, I decided to change one of my rods over to a meaty fish bite.

At 10pm my right rod twitched and then I had a slight but slow and definite pull that I immediately hit. The fish went mad, shaking its head violently and charging all over the swim. I managed to reel in the other rod by holding the butt between my knees and then threw it up the bank. The chub continued to fight very hard and by now I knew it was a big fish.

As I drew the fish over the net in the torchlight it was clear that it would be over seven pounds but I was not expecting what happened next. As I went to lift the fish from the water in the net it was far heavier than I had expected. I lay it on the unhooking mat and drew back the folds of the net and was met by the most incredible sight. The chub before me was utterly immense, being both long and having a huge girth. I measured her length at 23 inches, the same as my fish on the Ouse, but this fish was much broader and was fat. I struggled to zero the scales having to take a long deep breath to steady my hands and then rolled her into the weigh sling and lifted her from the ground. The scales confirmed that my first seven weighed an amazing 7lb 13oz. A truly amazing fish.

Andy with a 4lb 1oz perch caught in 2003 – Click for bigger picture)

Gary, who had been packing up when I landed the fish, did the honours with the camera and I returned her to the river and the crayfish which no doubt make up much of her diet. What a way to end what had been an incredible season.

A move to the lakes and then back to the rivers
I then moved onto lakes to concentrate on tench, perch and bream and had the most astonishing fishing of my life. I had 17 tench over 9lb from two different waters with 6 doubles including a new PB at 11lb 11oz, 8 perch over 4lb from two different waters including two braces of fours and 7 fours in an eight day period and followed this up by catching 16 double figure Bream to 14lb 13oz. A serious outbreak of blue green algae forced me to stop breaming at the beginning of August. A week later I was off on a family holiday for two weeks and then a week after getting back I started a new job at the beginning of September in central London. The new job meant that I would only be able to fish Saturday nights for the rest of the season and at first I was too knackered to do even that. When I finally managed to get on the river on 27th September I had not been fishing for five weeks.

Low, almost still and clear water
With river levels low I had decided to target the southern river but knowing that there would be little flow on the it I would fish my Harrison 1