How did you get on?

[Hugh Bailey]

Looks a pretty river. Whenever I see a dog being allowed to swim in my local river, I ask the holier than thou owner if the hound is wearing a flea collar and whether it is or is not , I educate him on the dreadful poison it contains which can pollute the river, kill fish and invertebrates and cause the growth of algae. I have yet to meet one who knew.
Good to see you fishing again Hugh; keep up the good work.

It is a lovely river Mike. i Wasn’t in the mood to take anyone on, and actually, I think they use the bit I was in to swim their dogs each day, it’s easy for them to get in. Will remember the bit about flea collars - didnt know that.

will be a bit before I get out again but loved it and will look for a new, more suitable rod.

 

[Keith M]

Alan, that’s where my son and I were fishing yesterday evening. We were fishing in two swims in the bay just down from the nets and mats and first promontory as you go in.

Keith

 

[chevin4]

As Alan aka Whitty has already mentioned I took him as a guest to my syndicate lake on Wednesday. I was really looking forward to the trip as for various reasons i had not been fishing since the 28th July. It turned out to be a lovely autumnal day after a cool start. The lake can be fickle and the session was no exception. Alan had the slider working a treat in a favoured swim where one of the members had several tench over 7lb and 3 x 3lb plus perch in a session using the same method as Alan a few weeks ago. Ideally the wind needed to blow from the W or SW however the wind started NE switching to SE in the afternoon. I adopted which has become a traditional gravel pitch approach. I fished two Harrison Chimera 2 rods with Shimano 5010 baitrunners spooled with 8lb Progold. One rod was set up with a worm kebab and open end mesh feeder holding dead maggots and chopped worm the second rod was set up helicopter style with 3 maggots. Had I lost the 4lb 4oz male tench I would have put it down to a sizable carp such was the account it gave of itself. A good friend of mine who was an out and out carp angler in the eighties and used to catching big fish caught a small tench of 3lb a few weeks ago he couldn't believe the scrap it gave him on heavy gear. The larger male tench of 6lb came in without any dramas strange !! Alan caught a few rudd which is surprising everyone as the lake has never in its long history produced rudd until this season. I certainly enjoyed Alan's company and putting the world to rights over a cuppa

 

[Steve Arnold]

On Thursday Alistair and myself returned to the swim that has delivered about a dozen barbel over the previous two visits. It was dire! Little flow and no bites for an hour, then just little pulls that eventually resulted in a 2 lb barbel for Alistair.

We tried a number of baits and bait sizes but I think the better fish have moved on. It is a several mile stretch between weirs and that shoal may have grazed this little area and now moved on to fresh pastures and richer pickings.

So yesterday my wife and I took a cycle ride downriver and I refreshed my memory of places worth trying. We stopped for some lunch and a beer at a new little bistro.......

Pity it is only open in the summer vacance season and shuts next week, it's only 150 metres from a lovely stretch of river that has brought me many barbel this last few years (and big bream, chub and lost carp!)......

I have some ideas to fish upstream of here as my fish have come from the slipway just downstream in the past. There is also a perfect bit of barbel water a few hundred yards away, or course it is at a little HE station and fishing is prohibited. I think I will try there early one morning in the late Autumn, a bit of poaching is not beyond me!

When the fishing gets tough I am encouraged to think and try that bit harder. But it is not too much of an effort in this environment!

 

[Steve Arnold]

Last night we had a terrific storm with joined-up sheet lightening and plenty of sound effects.......but very little rain!

But somewhere would be getting the rain and I felt there would be some flow in the Lot. To be sure I decided on a pre-dawn start and went downriver of the confluence of the Cele and the Lot, just to be sure I would catch any extra flow that the rain might generate.

A lovely misty morning....with water coming over the weir!

Quite a strong flow and a 50 gr flat lead pulled round several yards before finding the edge of the current. It only took 10 minutes for a good barbel to find the bait.......

The mist hung quite heavy for a few hours and I picked up four more barbel between 4 lb to 6 lb.

All quite lean fish, they put up a good fight on my Zebco Allrounder 80gr rod. Must say I am getting to like this cheap, three piece rod, it's been tested well!

Then the sun broke through and the fish turned off.

I got buzzed by a Rafale fighter jet just before taking that last photo. It came around the downstream bend at about half the height of those hills and passed over me at what sounded like full throttle! I kept the camera out afterwards in case his oppo followed the same line, they often play games around the valley, but got only noise of another over the hill opposite!

Back home for lunch now and the temperature is around 30c, looks like I got the best of the day!

 

[markcw]

Had a day on Staits Lake at Cotswold water park.
Was going to go on Gilmans , the lad I was was with wanted to try his new carp rod out so Staits it was . This was the lake I drew in the disabled match early on this year .
My mate had also acquired a pole so he was getting used to that as well.
Anyway . I set up my Speedcast feeder rod with Inception reel loaded with 5lb Guru N gauge line. A PI banjo feeder of 20g and 7lb guru hooklength with a 14 guru hook and quickstep fitted .
Also set up my matrix MTX margin pole .
3 topkits all with 4x14 PI shallow floats on 5lb reflo line , hooks were a 16 tubertini 808 on the set up with 6/8 hollow elastic , the 14 solid slip had a 14 Guru mwg hook with bait band and the 16 solid slip had the same.
Depth was a uniform 2'6" from the margin to 7 metres so swapping rigs around was no problem if need arose .
Out went the feeder rod with a cast just shy of 40 yards to the island . Bait was soaked 2mm sonubaits sticki pellets on the feeder and a bread mushroom on the hook.
I had baited the left margin with the sticki pellets and some Cell 6mm hard pellets. The right margin was the 2mm with a few pieces of corn.
Having had one bite one the feeder after 20 minutes I went onto the margins to see if anything had moved in .
I started on the left and kept putting a few grains of corn on the right .
I had a run of roach from an oun ce to just under a pound on the left margin .
I decided to rest the margin and go back on the feeder with 8mm drilled pellet , Again nothing was showing along the island swim .
I went to the next peg to see how my mate was doing , He had a few skimmers on groundbait feeder and corn . And missed a few bites on the pole . I told him to shorten the line between pole float and pole tip to around 24" and hold the tip above the float ,that way he will connect with more bites . Even though I usually have around 12"-18" on mine , the margin rigs had 9" between float and tip.
I went back to my swim and tried the right margin using con with the bait band pulled into it.
A succession of large roach and a few bream of around 2lb fell to the corn .
I then latched into a carp that just decided to carry on going 16 elastic shooting from pole. and the hook pulled out , it must have been lighty hooked because of the way I lifted into the bite. I ended the day with around 45lb of silvers and a small carp of around a pound and one lost large carp.
My mate had around 20lb of silvers alternating between feeder and pole , he never tried the margins .
All in all a good day , Even when it rained for a few hours . I used my AS1 seatbox and the brolly holder in the rear does what it's there for even with a 50" flat back brolly.

 

[S-Kippy]

I’ve fished the Bridge Pool several times with the Big Feller before it got ridiculously expensive. You needed a ton of bait too to get through the vast dace shoals to the sea trout. Some huge perch there as well. I think our best day was over 30 sea trout…..and the dace are absolute clonkers too. Didn’t dare try bread for the huge mullet as there were too many duck. Both of us hooked fish we couldn’t stop which were either big sea trout or salmon. Get the tide right and it can be a fabulous days sport. Way too much money to fish now though once you add on bait ( a gallon minimum…preferably more) and fuel.

 

[Alan Whitty]

I sat on the seat just at the bottom left corner of your shot eating lunch a few weeks ago Skip, watching kayaks and paddle boarders going up under the bridge on their way up the Royalty...

 

[peterjg]

I had a smashing day yesterday on the Kennet. Caught 18 quality roach and 3 snotties - and not a single crayfish, very unusual! Several of the roach were over the pound. Started before dawn, one rod upstream legered pellets and the other rod legered bread. I kept swapping the bread for sweetcorn but the bread was better. Also had a few roach on trotted wheat. Quite a lot of leaves float down now though.

 

[S-Kippy]

I sat on the seat just at the bottom left corner of your shot eating lunch a few weeks ago Skip, watching kayaks and paddle boarders going up under the bridge on their way up the Royalty...

It’s a really lovely spot. Last time Phil and I fished the Bridge Pool we were hailed from the bench and damn me if it wasn’t Old Jack who used to work for Phil and fished with us on works matches. He’d retired and moved to Christchurch and didn’t seem even slightly surprised to see us. He was a technical glassblower and a bloody good one too according to Phil.

 

[@Clive]

A visit to the middle Vienne today. The weather forecast was for light rain showers and a temperature of 21C. So it was long trousers and a light rain coat. It was a long walk to where I wanted to fish so I took one rod and minimal gear in my Aldi day bag. The rod was my old Wizard. Plan was to float ledger, but on arrival there was far too much flow. I could hear the roar from the hydro dam some way upstream.

I started out with a 2oz ledger and a soft pellet bait. Pellets and hemp was catapulted out too. I got a wrap round after 20 minutes but lost the whole rig on the strike. It had broken above the stop swivel. A new rig brought a small barbel then two more rigs were lost in three casts. Something was wrong! Turns out the link swivels I was using for the first time were faulty and sharp bits were cutting the line.

By the time that I had sorted the problem I had lost confidence in the swim so moved about 200 metres upstream to the next fishable place.

After about 15 minutes I started getting twitches on the line. I was touch ledgering and the bites were very hesitant. No matter how I mounted the pellets I couldn't hit the bites. Even a half pellet didn't work. I cracked open a tin of sweetcorn and got two of the culprits in the first two casts.

It went quiet for a while then I got a bream on soft pellet then two more carassins on sweetcorn.

The rain finally arrived around 4pm

 

[Badgerale]

After the tench on my local drain today.

It looked promising this morning, comfortable temperature, overcast, lovely calm water - completely flat baring the jumping of roach and the wiring of pond skaters.

Sweetcorn on the quiver, baited a few balls of groundbait with hemp and corn. One rod by the lillies another in the middle. Can't fail I thought.

Not a nudge in three hours.

My third blank in a row. Twice on the river after chub, and now today for tench. I'm not sure if I should put it down to the erratic temperature (which does seem to have been bouncing up and down lately) or if I need to change my approach.

The pike seem very active, which probably doesn't help.

 

[Steve Arnold]

We had a couple of days with the camper-van at Moissac on the lower Tarn. It has a reputation for big silure and carp so I planned to have a dawn start on our first morning.

I had put out plenty of pellets and boilies the evening we arrived, it looked good for a fish or two. But just plenty of small tugs and nothing big enough to manage a double 20mm boilie bait. As the sun appeared the little bites dwindled to nothing, that was it!

Then I packed up as we were meeting friends at the Chinese buffet for lunch. After that pig-out we were only fit to sleep the afternoon away! Next we went around to our friends for drinks at their rented tent/chalet thingy.

It was my intention to fish into darkness, but this appeared.....

......so I drowned my sorrows instead!

That's a fair excuse for another blank though!

 

[nottskev]

I checked the river level this morning and it looked ok for what I thought I'd do in the afternoon. When I got there around 2pm, I realised it had been rising steadily and the stretch I'd gone to, pacey at normal level, was a bit of a mess and rose another 6 inches while I was there. Float fishing for the barbel was out of the window and it needed two ounces to keep a bait down and still under the undercut bank. It looked like a job for the big bait-dropper, and I put in several loads of hemp and pellets, at which point it landed in a snag and another ten quid's worth of gear joined the tackle graveyard which is my local river.

It was all a bit hit and miss, but it doesn't take many bites to make a barbel session worthwhile, and I had four fish in three hours before the sky blackened signalling the next downpour and I hastily packed up. These were the two biggest and they really pulled their weight in the rapid flow

 

[@Clive]

Another day on the Vienne. I was hoping for a good result as Tuesday's. The flow had vanished. It seems that Tuesday was a freak. When I checked the River info there had been a release of water that coincided with my visit. It was back to summer normal now.

I took a fibreglass Richard Walker Avon as it is over a foot shorter than the 11' 3" Wizard and would be better in the tight swims. Also it is two piece that is handy to transport made up between swims.

It was a long walk through woodland to get to the first swim. There was a channel of around 10 foot between the bank and a vast weed bed leading to a fallen tree weed raft. I trotted sweetcorn for 30 minutes, then layed on, then ledgered without a bite.

I missed out the second swim as bright sunlight and clear water showed weeds that I hadn't noticed when I reccied it.

Third swim was the one I had fished for the first time on Tuesday. I started off ledgering a soft pellet after feeding with hemp and pellets. After three fruitless casts I put two grains of sweetcorn on. I was touch ledgering and felt a slight pull. I lifted into it and ŹZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzz the Trudex screamed as some zoo creature ripped 20 yards of 6lb mono of in a second. I clamped down and broke off. I know when I am beaten.

I swapped back to float and fished a 4g float a BB over shot and over depth. I fluked a bream, hooked and lost a nice carassin and then the float never went under again.

 

[peterjg]

I started on the Kennet again yesterday, after all the rain it was up and coloured and hammering through. The swim is deep (around 9ft) with a slack close in and with the fast water along the far bank. Normally the roach are in the fast water (I guess to avoid the pike?), legering across in the fast water I caught 3 snotties and a roach. Then I hooked a fish which felt like a roach, when netting it it looked huge! On the mat I opened the net - it was huge! The eyes, scales, mouth, fins, colouring all l looked right - but there were too many rays in the anal fin, a roach/bream hybrid weighing 3lbs 10ozs. I tried casting in the slack but it was full of pike, I even had my water thermometer grabbed by a pike!
Midday I moved to the nearby K&A canal. Caught 9 roach, decided to pack up when I caught the tenth - that's when they stopped feeding! Typical! I eventually caught the tenth roach and got soaked in a cloudburst walking back to the car. There's a lesson there somewhere?

 

[nottskev]

I was hoping to float fish for perch on the river but the level wouldn't come down no matter how often I checked it. I hadn't been to the res for ages so I plumped for that. On the way, there was no traffic and the lights were all green. So I suspected the fishing would be tough to redress the balance.

There were three others on, all fishing carp-style. The wet summer meant little was pumped out for irrigation, and with the level up the brim, the fish come right to the bank to feed. It's the place where floats are banned, and I've ended up free-lining down the side. After a bit of experimenting, I feed hemp and fish a home-made wafter type bait, a bit of a pop up wrapped in a paste made from crushed hemp and egg, pinning the line to the bottom with bits of putty and greasing a bit of line at the rod tip. With the rod resting on the bank, the bit of greased line shows bites. I suppose I could stick on a two ounce lead and let them hook themselves, but I prefer watching for and striking bites

I started fishing around 2.30, but I had to wait til 4 for the carp to come into the swim. Practically all my fishing is for fish you don't see so it's a novelty seeing all the swirls, backs and tails. Some big fish came in the swim, but the first three bites all turned out to be barbel, and the smallest ones in the res, too. I wondered why they picked the bait up and all those carp didn't.

I did eventually catch a few carp, but these were also the res's smaller ones. They're all good-looking fish, though. Naturally, when you hook one, the rest all leave the swim and you need to feed generously to bring them back. As usual, I failed to bring enough hemp and had to eke it out to catch half a dozen.

 

[markcw]

I was hoping to float fish for perch on the river but the level wouldn't come down no matter how often I checked it. I hadn't been to the res for ages so I plumped for that. On the way, there was no traffic and the lights were all green. So I suspected the fishing would be tough to redress the balance.

There were three others on, all fishing carp-style. The wet summer meant little was pumped out for irrigation, and with the level up the brim, the fish come right to the bank to feed. It's the place where floats are banned, and I've ended up free-lining down the side. After a bit of experimenting, I feed hemp and fish a home-made wafter type bait, a bit of a pop up wrapped in a paste made from crushed hemp and egg, pinning the line to the bottom with bits of putty and greasing a bit of line at the rod tip. With the rod resting on the bank, the bit of greased line shows bites. I suppose I could stick on a two ounce lead and let them hook themselves, but I prefer watching for and striking bites

View attachment 28101

I started fishing around 2.30, but I had to wait til 4 for the carp to come into the swim. Practically all my fishing is for fish you don't see so it's a novelty seeing all the swirls, backs and tails. Some big fish came in the swim, but the first three bites all turned out to be barbel, and the smallest ones in the res, too. I wondered why they picked the bait up and all those carp didn't.

View attachment 28102

I did eventually catch a few carp, but these were also the res's smaller ones. They're all good-looking fish, though. Naturally, when you hook one, the rest all leave the swim and you need to feed generously to bring them back. As usual, I failed to bring enough hemp and had to eke it out to catch half a dozen.

View attachment 28103

View attachment 28104

View attachment 28105

You say you greased the line, have you tried running it between end of thumbnail and first finger to slightly put a coil in it and watch that . ? Similar to the old fashioned way of bleak fishing using a whip .

 

[John Aston]

I must have missed the post about floats being banned. Crikey .

Nymph fishing involves casting upstream and drifting the fly downstream . Takes are often subtle and fast but are usually easy enough to spot with care - we use Mucilin grease which floats the line beautifully .I'd also be tempted to tie on a bit of grass or sheep wool to act as a float . Or ignore the ban altogether on the grounds of absurdity .

 

[Alan Whitty]

Agreed John, I just wonder if they've banned 3 or 4oz leads, or method feeders, some fishery owners or controlling clubs simply have no idea at all about methods we use for fishing, or simply take poor advice...

In addition to the above, it is totally criminal to ban a method that is the essence of all things angling....