Wintle’s World of Angling – Medley Rules Okay!

Mark Wintle, an angler for thirty-five years, is on a quest to discover and bring to you the magic of fishing. Previously heavily involved with match fishing he now fishes for the sheer fun of it. With an open and enquiring mind, each week Mark will bring to you articles on fishing different rivers, different methods and what makes rivers, and occasionally stillwaters, tick. Add to this a mixed bag of articles on catching big fish, tackle design, angling politics and a few surprises.

Are you stuck in a rut fishing the same swim every week? Do you dare to try something different and see a whole new world of angling open up? Yes? Then read Mark Wintle’s regular weekly column.

The Medley Channel and the Rainbow Bridge (click for bigger picture)

Back in early July I tried to organise a Fishingmagic fish-in on the Thames. For reasons that are hard to explain I allowed us to be persuaded to fish a stretch at Long Wittenham rather than one of the stretches that I am more familiar with, such as the nearby Oxford DAA water at Clifton Hampden or Medley at Oxford. The biggest problem was that the Thames is often a slow starter, and in clear conditions with half a gale blowing, little real knowledge of the best swims, vague ideas of the right tactics, and carrying far too much gear, we really made a rod for our own backs. As far as fishing was concerned, the trip was close to a disaster and saved by the opportunity to meet Jeff (‘Cheeky Monkey’) Woodhouse, Peter Jacobs and Andy Nellist. My miniscule catch only came courtesy of poaching Andy’s swim. It was easy to be wise after the event but my original plan of trying Medley might have been more productive that early in the season.

Back to the 60’s and through to the 90’s
My association with the Medley reach, which starts on the upstream outskirts of Oxford and continues up to Godstow Lock, goes back to the sixties. For many years, I spent up to three weeks, usually a week in July and a fortnight in September, staying with an aunt and uncle at Wolvercote. One advantage of staying there was that I could keep an old bike in their garage. This was ideal for going fishing at Medley, as parking is not brilliant.

Unlike the reaches further upstream that are much narrower and deeper, Medley is a wide and shallow length of river, with a width of fifty to sixty yards and a depth of around six feet, flowing gently over gravel. The best part is that it flows from North to South, so that prevailing South Westerlies are off your back.

When I first fished this reach some time back in the late sixties, I could catch bleak off the bottom and gudgeon on the bottom. As I improved as an angler in the seventies, I started to get a few roach and dace, and had my first taste of serious open match fishing there back in the final days of size limits in 1975. Hemp and caster fishing revolutionised Thames fishing back then, though it seemed easy to catch undersize fish. I drew next to mega-star of the time, Chris Love, and had a lesson in waggler fishing. Not that it did him much good either as he returned eleven one inch chub, one after another.

By the start of the eighties I had my own car and started to fish Medley every year. As my waggler skills improved, so did my catches. I found plenty of roach and, in some areas, chub as well, up to about three pounds. The decimation of perch through disease in the mid seventies had abated so the perch slowly returned. And of course, there were always plenty of small fish; dace, bleak, gudgeon and silver bream.

Three chub from Medley Channel

The bronze maggot took over some time in the eighties as the Nottingham Trentmen came down for easy pickings, yet for pleasure fishing I found that caster was better, partly because when you’re on your own you seem to draw every bleak for miles around. In hot weather, hemp and tares were the killer bait, especially on one of the swims down from the top lock where close-in cabbage beds gave the big roach the confidence to feed. But my holidays there ended around 1990 as my relatives got old.

I made few visits through the nineties. The fishing changed again. At the start of the nineties, bread punch took the venue by storm in the winter months for big bags of small roach. Then the fishing changed once more as chopped worm started to produce bags of tench and bream, and in more recent years, good catches of big perch (a 59lb match bag last year included fish to 3-10). Finally, in the last couple of seasons, Medley has become famous for its mega chub, mostly caught at night (night fishing now banned) on boilies.

There is a consistency to all of this. Through the decades, and not forgetting the many excellent catches by local anglers like Bill Taylor and Peter Stone that predate me fishing it by many years, Medley has provided lots of excellent fishing of all types. The methods and species change but there’s always a chance of good sport for the expert float angler, and a chance of a big fish.

I took a chance
The heavy rain at the start of September had affected many rivers, improving flows at a time of year when many rivers are usually stagnant. With this in mind, I decided to take a chance with a trip to Medley.

I’ve had a frustrating summer; it’s been difficult to fit in trips to rivers further afield with the changeable conditions and nightmarish traffic problems, and I couldn’t wait to fish somewhere different. First call on reaching Oxford was to see Fat Phil at his tackle shop in Abingdon Road (opposite Weirs Lane) for a day ticket and some bait. Phil put me right on where to head, and armed with three pints of hemp and the same of bronze maggot with a few reds, plus a pint of casters, I set off for Binsey Lane. This was close to where I fished last summer.

Tackle and tactics
This time the conditions were very different. Instead of gin clear water, there was a lovely tinge of colour with a gentle, steady flow. The boat traffic of summer was long gone. Setting up was simple. An all-black waggler locked with 3 AAA shot; three no. 4 shot in reserve under the float and six no. 8 shot strung out down the line. A size twenty hook completed the rig. The bottom at Medley is gravel but I can usually get a bait stand and keepnet bankstick in. Not this time. I resorted to emptying my box and filling it with water to use as a stand. Phil had recommended fishing down the middle, which is just about within catapult range with the wind off my back. It was easy fishing; cast in feathering the line, ‘pult some hemp and maggots in and trim the line to stay in touch. I didn’t even need to sink the line with such a favourable wind preferring to leave it floating on top as this makes striking more positive. It wasn’t long before I started to get bites; first fish was a fine perch of a pound then I dropped a couple of roach. It took a while for the penny to drop; these roach were too big to swing in and had to be netted. I changed hooks a couple of times, as I seemed to be bumping and losing too many fish, eventually settling on a Kamasan 611 no. 20. This did the trick.

The rowers were a pain in the proverbial
The hours ticked by and the fish came steadily; roach to a pound six ounces and perch to a pound and a half, nearly all requiring the landing net. Even a couple of skimmers and dace put an appearance but it was 50% roach, 45% perch and no bleak (around 80 fish in total). About the only pain in the proverbial were the ubiquitous rowers that seem to be taking over more and more waters. For short spells these made fishing difficult, though there was usually an hours respite before they reappeared. An angler walking by asked how I was doing; it was only when I replied that a good angler should have had forty pounds that I started to realise that the weight was mounting up. After four hours, it had almost got boring and I fancied a change before the drive home. I had enough time to fit in an hour or two on the chub pegs on the Medley Channel where I’d had four chub last time.

Medley in Autumn looking upstream towards the Poplars

Before leaving, I tried the keepnet on my 40lb Avons. It hit the stops with the net still in the water. 35lbs plus, no problem. Now for some sitting down fishing for chub.

Chub, roach, perch and even the Crays get in on the act
Unlike the heat wave conditions of the previous summer, I had no swimmers to worry about. There did seem to be several people hanging about near the Bailey Bridge; more on them later. First stop was the same swim I’d fished last year. I changed to a 2 AAA waggler set three feet deep with just 2 no. 10 down the line. Time to dig out the casters. I began by feeding pouchfuls of caster across then casting tight to the bush. Not so good this year (though checking out photos from last year it seems I was fishing ten yards further downstream this time!), I got two chub of around a pound, lost a big one, and then caught some roach. But all was not lost. The swim fifty yards further down was always the real flier. I quickly moved there.

It didn’t take long to get the chub interested and within twenty minutes I’d had three good chub between three pounds and 3.14, before the roach moved in, solid fish of twelve ounces interspersed with net perch. I couldn’t help thinking that if I’d fished this swim properly, with a waggler far bank line and a stick float line it would have also produced a good bag, judging by the way the river was fishing. With the fish still biting, I reluctantly packed up.

Those people by the bridge that I mentioned earlier? They were crayfish fishing. Two hundred between them using bits of string and a piece of meat on the end, then someone mysteriously turned up on a bike with a big bucket to collect and pay for them, and disappeared!

I’d had the sort of day’s river fishing that I sometimes think no longer exists but Medley had produced the goods again, well over fifty pounds of fish, all on the waggler. Fat Phil had been very helpful, and got his reward by finishing third in a match there the following day though weights were much lower; 16lbs won with three 8lbs in the frame. If I can figure out where and when, I shall try to get on the Upper Thames this autumn: Thames fishing when it’s right takes some beating.

Next week: River Fishing Crisis – Part 1