How did you get on?

[@Clive]

Couldn't decide where to go today after being granted an unexpected fishing day. The Vienne is low above the dams and slow below them. Weather forecast was for 27C, blue sky and little wind. In the end the decision was made yesterday when I found one of those telescopic loppers that Philip mentioned a couple of months ago. It was half price so the River Charente it was. There I could find deep water, shade and do some topiary in a couple of swims that have been difficult to fish this year.

Normally I prepare my gear the evening before fishing. Yesterday however I had to take the camping-car to the dealers for an estimate on the storm damage. They phoned at 2pm and I had to be there for 4pm. I didn't get home until after 7pm so preperation was limited.

I arrived around 10am armed with 2 pints of maggots and some lobworms along with ground bait. And loppers! What I didn't have was my floats, catherine leads and feeders. They were in my other box. So I got on with the pruning then put some bait in the downstream swim and set about fishing the upstream one using the single feeder that I had. I set up a Suveran 11' feeder rod with maggots packed into the middle of the feeder and blocked at each end with groundbait. Hook bait was double maggot on a 16 to 2.5lb bottom. Had a 4oz roach first cast, then two bream and a barbel, each around 3lb. In between fish I nipped down to the other swim and topped up with maggots. I fish this close in so the pruning would not have helped. I needed to settle the fish. I intended fishing the feeder until 1pm then, after lunch float fishing the downstream swim.

By 1pm I had 5 bream along with the barbel and roach all on double maggot. After lunch I used the smallest of the 2 floats that I had bought last time out. I had no others with me so a 6g bollo it was. Bait was lobworm and the target species was perch. I have seen several large perch in this stretch and now the swim had enough headroom to fish an 11 foot Avon I could cast inches from the bank in 8 foot of water where I had seen the perch previously. The perch were not at home. More roach and bream fell to bunches of maggots on a size 10 to 5lb bottom. The worms were not taken at all.

Packed up at 5pm so I could get the tyres on tarmac and a phone signal to order fish and chips. The recorded message said that chippie is closed for a fortnight. Ah well. Better luck next time.

 

[Steve Arnold]

Packed up at 5pm so I could get the tyres on tarmac and a phone signal in order to order fish and chips. The recorded message said that chippie is closed for a fortnight. Ah well. Better luck next time.

C'est la France!

 

[@Clive]

C'est la France!

He's a bl**dy Lancastrian. Never trusted them.

 

[chevin4]

The lake where I had taken Alan (Whitty) as a guest a couple of weeks is still.fishing well so it was a easy decision to go back there last week. Whilst it was a stormy day in Ireland and the western coast it was a lovely day in Buckingshire. I elected to fish the opposite bank from the trip with Alan I started the season is spoding out a couple of pints of dead maggots. I fished with three rods ie kebab rig on the 1st maggot feeder on the 2nd and used a method feeder and fake corn on the third which on the day didn't trouble the scorers. The better roach after many years are showing again I finished up with a couple of decent fish of 1lb 6oz and 1lb 7oz. The tench are still feeding and caught one of 7lb 2oz on the worm kebab rig. The kebab rig also accounted for a dozen or so perch ranging from around 8oz to 16oz. All in all and enjoyable day. This week I had a rest from fishing and the missus and I spent an enjoyable couple of days in Suffolk taking in Southwold and Minsmere. The ranger at Minsmere reminded me of the long time bailiff at Tring Reservoirs it was always a case you should have been here yesterday. Apparently if we had arrived in the morning at Minsmere we would have seen a White tailed Eagle. We saw very little but it was a lovely Autumn day and enjoyed a leisurely stroll around the reserve.

 

[terry m]

Despite a mild day, I fancied my first non lure pike trip this season. I picked a large local pit where I could sit behind my rods quietly and chill. 10 minutes in my first run produced a nice pike at exactly 16lb. Although the large head suggests it was previously a larger fish on its way down.
An hour or so later I lost another decent fish, although it didn’t feel quite as big.
Early afternoon another run produced a well proportioned fish just under 13lb.
Thoroughly enjoyed the day.

 

[Badgerale]

A rare Friday off, thought I could sneak a few hours on the river between kiddies getting dropped off and picked up.

It's not a very productive little river, but there is good fish in there of most species - i discovered a deep hole in a wide part of river a while back which i've been meaning to devote some hours to seeing if there are tench in there. After 2 hours and no action on the spam, I decided, no, there isn't. I moved to the complete opposite - a narrow, shallow, and tree shrouded stretch.

After 45 more minutes i was about to write the session off when a real reel screamer shot off downstream. Knew it would be a feral carp, as this stretch is infested with them, and to be honest i have mixed feelings about catching them on rivers... but hey, a big fish is better than no fish... after a bit of a bully away from stags it weighed in at 14lb 5oz mirror.

 

[John Aston]

A fast - rising river, a very warm wind and an overcast sky meant there were no excuses for not catching a Swale barbel . After a missed bite and a move , a huge bite on double lobworm on a #4 hook resulted in a long scrap in a big flow, a temporarily snagged fish and - eventually - a river PB of 10lbs 7 oz . So that will do nicely . Keen to build on my success , I fished on and had two more bites- one from an 8oz perch and the other from a very angry crayfish , a good 5 inches long .

A good day .

 

[Alan Whitty]

Lovely fish from the Swale John, well done.

 

[mikench]

I’m not sure why Gordon and I agree to meet up so early when it’s dark. The trip down to our club complex was horrible as I had to negotiate about 15 miles on dark unlit country roads in the rain before negotiating a 5 mile stretch of the M6 in full flow. I hate dark mornings. On arrival the rain ceased and the forecast no longer featured rain.

We are working our way through the 7 waters on offer with 2 to go. The above water is small and triangular and we picked pegs recommended by the 4 stalwarts who had set up at 6.30 in the dark and who were sat motionless on boxes with poles ready for the off once daylight broke through. It turned out to be a pleasant dry and mild day albeit windy. Curiously the wind designated as a SWesterly proved to be the exact opposite so we were ideally positioned had rain arrived. Gordon had over 20 decent fish on the float including, roach, Rudd, and assorted carp. I had a bakers dozen of commons and F1’s plus a small chub, an ide and a roach all on the feeder. None of the carp exceeded 4lb but put a bend in the rods as they sped torpedo like for the lily pads. We enjoyed the day a great deal and the journey home proved uneventful in the sunshine. Cheers Gordon. Good to talk and I hope we can manage a trip next week. I’ll leave you to post a few pics of your fish.

 

[wetthrough]

17 miles of Smart Motorway for me @mikench not fun. No fishy pics I'm afraid. The fish just wouldn't oblige but here's one of the boss.

I only took a few as much to test the camera as anything. My Samsung/Android has been losing pictures. Just put a new SD card in just in case. the old one had been in and out of various devices and they don't last forever. Managed it without losing anything, I think! Great day thanks Mike and thanks for the 8mm pellets.

 

[nottskev]

Another afternoon after perch, with the same results. It's the 4th time in the last couple of weeks I've tried to catch them. Today it was noticeable that, despite the warm weather, there were hardly any of the small fish around, the chublets, bleak, dace and little roach that were abundant on previous sessions. Even the pike which turned up only gave the keepnet one shake and wandered off.

The swim I was fishing has a lot of variety in features, contours and flow, and I searched around for the perch which definitely hang out in the area, But I only caught this one and a few tiny samples

But my perch fishing approach definitely appeals to the barbel, and a fair bit of the afternoon was spend coaxing these in on my perch gear

 

[Steve Arnold]

Alistair popped around at lunchtime yesterday, he could smell the bacon cooking I am sure! He also prefers to talk with Sally about gardening rather than with me (fishing stuff, always, of course!).

But eventually the talk got around to fishing and I had seen on my RiverApp that there would be flow downstream of our usual patch. Sally took the hint and graciously gave me a fishing pass for the afternoon, well I had done my chores!

So I mentioned to Alistair a weir that should get flow until about 7 pm, a bit further than I would like for a short session but it can be productive. The flow needs to be just right, too little and it shallows off, but too much and there is a horrendous back-eddy under the fishing position. In a winter spate even 6 ozs on a short line gets tossed back at you!

The flow turned out to be perfect, but there was a lot of weed. I had two barbel quite quickly but they had to be teased through several patches of weed before reaching the net....

Alistair managed a bream and a barbel, amazing how these river bream get a 20mm boilie in their mouths.....

Then I had a nice chub of 4lb 7ozs.....

We had some entertainment watching a tiny rubber canoe, well overloaded, negotiate fallen trees. Somewhere in the tangle is a pass for canoes...

It took them some time to break off branches but they made it safely out of the mess.

This year I have been using ESP tungsten coated braid as hook lengths for much of my fishing. Many swims on the Lot are rocky and mono or fluoro often gets cut off on the take. But this swim was fairly shallow with lots of soft weed and few rocks, so I decided to use a mono hook length. Of course, my last bite was a blistering run from a very heavy fish. That did not end well and I wound in to find my hook missing!

Alistair had a carp here about this time last year, with that memory leaving me a bit miffed on this evenings lost fish!

 

[maggot_dangler]

Hi folks al last got a bit of time for fishing had a couple of days on the local section of the Shropshire Union Some nice perch 27 of them yesterday almost all in excess of 8oz and a couple of ever present Gudgeon not quite as good today apart from couple of roach well over the 1lb mark and yet more Gudgeon itching to get back on the river but once again legs and back are doing everything they can to stop me and it is gettin up my wick to put it mildly .
See what tomorrow brings if i wake up feeling ok then i will try the river been too long .

Pete

 

[Ray Roberts]

Not fishing today, but a visit to three club waters for a look see. The first was a lake with a long carp fishing history. It looked very nice though the water level was a bit low. The second was a water that was supposed to have a system where there was a limited number of anglers and had to be booked. As a way of keeping numbers down this was a roaring success as there wasn’t a single angler fishing it and only three on the first lake. I got the shock of my life at the back of the second lake when I stumbled across what I hope was an attempt at making a bird scarer and not a victim of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre! The third place I visited was a stretch of the Medway that I haven’t seen before. It looked really nice I covered about a mile of it and it looked great. There was only one guy fishing with two kids. One of the kids started yelling for his dad on the way back as he has a decent fish on, which had taken a small live-bait suspended under a float approaching the size of the Graff Zeppelin. As the dad was on the other side of the river the boy’s companion legged it around to the opposite bank to get his landing net and to his credit he managed to net the fish. It was probably around the two pound mark. It looked good for some lure fishing and I hope to return on Tuesday.

 

[Pete Shears]

A morning spinning at the big reservoir off the dam wall resulted in 5 pike to 11lb 10oz and 25+ small perch before they moved out of range
with the strengthening wind making accurate casting difficult.
Back next week possibly deadbaiting trying to find bigger ones.

 

[Ray Roberts]

A morning spinning at the big reservoir off the dam wall resulted in 5 pike to 11lb 10oz and 25+ small perch before they moved out of range
with the strengthening wind making accurate casting difficult.
Back next week possibly deadbaiting trying to find bigger ones.

That sounds like a good day’s sport to me, size doesn’t always matter, or so I’ve been told.

 

[nottskev]

I got to the res a bit earlier today, around 12, as I had to be away by 5. With nobody else there, I walked round to my favourite swim

Lots of fish patrol the margin to the left and I set up to free-line punched meat or hemp paste with a few no4 stotz spread over 8' of the line to keep it pinned down. Something told me to bring plenty of feed, and this time I'd coloured the groats - my cheap hemp supplement - with turmeric and Robin Red. It looked good to me, as a fan of Pilau Rice.

Carp and barbel were onto the feed from the off. I lost count of what I caught, but thanks to my habit of leaving my phone by the mat and taking a pic of whatever I'm unhooking - it only adds seconds to the time taken - I can say there were 12 carp and 8 barbel. Despite being a mile down a private track, and another mile from a main road, a woman walking an old spaniel stopped to chat. Having remarked on each other's accents - we both said "You're not from round here, are you" - she told me her son had declined a place at Oxford because some snotty kids sneered at his Doncaster accent at interview, and we discussed sociolinguistic research on reactions to accents amongst the public. I was so tickled with this that I didn't ask her to step back from sky-lining my swim while her dog tried to eat my bait and was all for jumping in after the hemp I was feeding.

It was one of those days when you seem to catch everything that swims past. My pet ide showed up and as usual I took the bait out to avoid catching it and let it eat some of the feed. It still contrived to get caught twice, though, when I didn't spot it

Here's a selection of the carp and barbel

 

[seth49]

usual fishery yesterday and it was hard work, had the tench first drop in on the pole, which was a good start I thought, but then not a bite for the next two hours, it was very busy with the the good weather a total of 12 anglers on the 25 pegs, I fished a different peg for a change which is usually good but not yesterday, I had the few in the picture plus another tench an F1, and a couple of skimmers after I took my keep net out to fish the margins, and that was it, very few line bites or missed bites either, the carp were crusing around on the top and never came in the margins, so that was it for the day, syndicate fishery tomorrow should get a few more there hopefully, it was a pleasantly warm day which was the best I could say about it.

 

[Ray Roberts]

I fished the Medway yesterday, covered several miles and fished hard for four Perch. The one in the picture weighed about four pounds and was caught on a 8 inch jelly worm mounted on a 6oz jig. Okay then, about six ounces and that was the best of them. I also tried for pike with no success.

My wanderings took me a couple of miles and the back of my right knee started to become painful. I have no idea what I have done but I don’t remember twisting or straining it. Now being the sort of person I am (stupid) just to dispel and remaining doubts. I carried on fishing along the bank until dark and then had the fun walk back to the car with a gammy leg and carrying my gear.

it was a very warm and sunny day and I put the poor fishing down to that. I met another angler who showed me some photos of previous catches on this section and he had previously had some decent perch on live-bait. I also met the bailiff at the car and tapped him up. He put me onto a different section, which I will give a go once I can walk properly again.

 

[seth49]

Back on our syndicate water yesterday, still not fully light at 7.30 am, as it was very foggy for the first couple of hours, which luckily appeared after our arrival, so didn’t have to drive in it,
cool as well at 3 degrees with no frost though.

started on the pole and stuck with it all day, the fish came in spells through the day, catch a few and then nothing for a while, before catching a few more, the top fish is a nice crucian of around a pound, unfortunately the sun bleached the colour out of it in the photo, the second came out ok.

started getting some very delicate bites, the float would go down about an eighth of an inch and hold, started lifting at these and connected with F1s, and small carp, plus a few tench and roach.
finished with 2 crucians, three tench, three small carp, 4 F1s, and 18 small roach and perch, so a better day than Tuesday, although it was a lot colder till the sun was higher in the afternoon, glad I took my heated waistcoat I needed it in the morning, not a bad day I enjoyed it.