1.30 - 4.30pm The Thames

Kappa kindly took me out for an afternoon introduction to U/L, borrowing his rods. The fish were in good form, and the extra flow meant they were a bit nearer, in which aided contact. Nevertheless, there was a dramatic improvement on my previous attempts at lure fishing on the Thames, where I have caught one or two pike but found the perch hard to find compared with my previous experience on the Kennet. Let me rephrase that - in 18 months I have only caught one perch on lure till today!

Altogether had 10-15 perch up to 1.5lbs, and one pike of a bit over 5lbs. The question for me is 'What made the difference?' Smaller lures? Not a big factor on this occasion, as I was catching some of the time on the same size plastics as I had used previously. Keeping in touch with the lure? Maybe, but I was only just getting the hang of that after the cast, and on the retrieve I don't think I had been too bad with my other rod. Using a fluorocarbon trace? Very possibly. But a big factor I'm fairly sure was registering more bites with the softer tip.

When Santa brings me my U/L rod, methinks I'll take my traditional lure rod along as well to do some experiments. I've already thanked Kappa for a really eye-opening session!