Marky Barrett and the River of Rudd
At the time of writing the new river season is exactly a month old and when I left you last time I was full of anticipation of the start of the season, hoping that all the hard work that we had undertaken to draw the fish into the area would pay dividends – well it kind of did – but not exactly as we had hoped!
I arrived at the river around 5pm and soon got the gear sorted out so I could just sit back and wait for midnight whilst enjoying multiple cuppas and the odd fag or two.
Midnight soon ticked around and the rods duly went out – only for one to tear straight off again! It felt like the plan had come together but after a few seconds the reality of the situation dawned on me as the resistance on the end said ‘bream’. Sure enough the first ball of slime, all three pounds of it, had grabbed my chocolate malt and tiger nut boilie despite the fact that it was 20mm and fished on a long hair. Don’t you just love ‘em…
Sadly this was a portent of what was to come and by the time dawn came around I had lost count of the number of bream I had landed but it was certainly over a dozen and I was completely shattered, covered in slime with eyes like the proverbial pi** holes in the snow! It didn’t take too much to convince me that an early pack up was in order to let the bream just get on with it…
I wasn’t due down again until the following Sunday but in the meantime my mate George and his dad were going down to do the Friday night. They had only been there twenty minutes when George put the first carp of the season on the bank at 21lb 8oz. It was George’s first ever river carp and he was quite rightly over the moon with it. If that was a great start twenty minutes later it got a whole lot better when he banked a stunning rudd of 3lb 8oz; a huge fish by any standards but absolutely amazing for a river.
I couldn’t wait for my next session as it would be the first where rudd would also be my target species and I had a session on the float planned – it was just a shame the typical British summer weather didn’t want to play ball.
Despite the conditions it was out with the float rod; in my case one of my favourite ever rods a Leeda Assassin 15/17ft model that I had bought for the princely sum of £15 from a car boot sale. I absolutely love this rod but sadly it is now no more as somewhere along the line I managed to squish the top of the middle section. I have subsequently tried forcing the two sections together and this held – for a while – but the first session of this year was to see its final passing and unless I can find a replacement mid section then the rod is history!
However its swansong was a memorable evening on the river as the rudd fed with gay abandon and by the end of my evening session I had a dozen or more of a pound plus in the net, including three that topped the 2lb mark. It really was a great fun as my trotted bread was taken time and again and the bars of gold just kept on coming until I could no longer see the float; then it was hopefully down to the carp – and not the pesky bream – to play ball.
I cobbled together a hasty meal and sat back with a Harry Potter book to pass some time and I hadn’t long put the adventures of Harry, Ron and Hermione down when a different kind of magic occurred – that of a screaming alarm. Faster than you could say “Expeliarmus” I was on the rod as a typically ferocious river carp tried to put as much distance from me as it could. After that initial mad run I gained some vestige of control and started to weave the fish back through the myriad of lilies and weed until finally it lay beaten in the net.
On the scales it went 21lb 10oz and was a lovely dark example of its kind with a somewhat pug nose. A few self takes in the morning were in order so the fish was slipped in the sack for a couple of hours whilst I stuck the kettle on and tried to calm down a bit. Only a big fish can give me that buzz and those of you who devote long periods of time to catching big fish will readily empathise with exactly how I felt.
With sleep now a distant possibility it was back to Hogwarts until it was time to pack up. Sadly there is still no wand available to help with this onerous task but I nevertheless loaded the car up and headed home with a spring in my step.
To sum the rest of the month up would be to say more of the same. I managed a string of good rudd topped so far by a beauty of 2lb 7oz that should actually have gone a bit bigger but I really didn’t care as it was such a stunner. However, it hasn’t been all triumph as the carp have been very elusive and the bream the complete opposite! I also had a bit of a mare when trying to do a feature on tench fishing.
The tench were not feeding at all, the weather was all wrong, with a biting northerly wind and to cap it all the mice that have infested my garage had eaten a hole I could put my fist through in my umbrella, I was not a happy chappy, still it was nothing compared to their next trick!
I was standing in Hooked tackle shop in Newmarket getting some bait for a forthcoming trip when I spotted a mouse making its way across the car park… Naturally I passed comment on it to Spencer the shop owner. No sooner had I said that than I noticed two more mice climbing out of the bumper of my Scenic! I shot out to try and get rid of the rodent intruders and knelt down in an attempt to see where they were coming from – only to hear a sickening crunch from the pocket of my combats as knelt on my HTC smart phone, completely 
buggering up the screen.
With this Spencer was in tears of mirth and I was doing my best Basil Fawlty impression around the car park; well it had to all go wrong at some point didn’t it?
Next month I will tell the tale of the war on the mice and on the fishing front rudd, carp, crucians and tench are on the hit list.
See you then.
