River Lambourn, Newbury, Sunday 20 December 2009

Over confidence has a habit of slapping you in the face and today it did just that. I could only spare a few hours out on what was probably going to be my last trip this year, I wanted to catch something and the Lambourn Grayling have been kind to me in the past.

Generally I’ll trot red maggot but today I chose to try the killer bait (according to everybody else) sweetcorn. The EA are working on my favoured Swan stretch so off I went to Shaw, the river was gin clear and looked beautiful in the mid-morning sun.

The outcome was an all too familiar story I’m afraid, one bite which I missed and then nothing for the rest of the session, not even a Trout. It’s a fairly short stretch and so I was able to explore most of it but I just couldn’t find the Grayling.

The work that the EA are doing on the Church section looks really good, they’ve manufactured some narrow shallow sections with gravel bottoms, these then lead into deeper wider sections. Once it matures a bit and sorts itself out there’ll be some cracking trotting swims there. I hope the Swan stretch is as good.

There’s always a positive out of a fishing session and today it was the Wallis cast. I was baiting the hook and sort of had everything in my hand how it’s supposed to be so I gave it a try…it worked. I spent the last hour or so practising and found that provided you’re not too ambitious it isn’t very difficult. The key to big distance is perfect timing and so that'll have to wait for a while.