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Rusty's Blog

Post Christmas perching

K&A Canal, Monday 26th December 2011   This was just a short morning session along the canal with a pot of lobs and ½ a pint of maggots. My attempt at an ambitious Christmas dinner hadn’t gone well the previous day and whilst I was keen to fish I wanted to make sure that I had plenty of time in the kitchen to figure out why my orange sauce didn’t taste of oranges despite being loaded with Cointreau.   In terms of the fishing there’s not much to report. It’s a long stretch and condition
Rusty

Rusty

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The Flying Tench's Blog

roach and perch 27.12.11 2-4pm

I went out yesterday walking the canal bank with a spinning rod in my hand looking for perch swims. Just one small perch to a spinner, but then it wasn't in the water that much. I found some likely swims, but it involved walking about a mile and a half which is too much for my back really.   Today I felt I needed to rest the back, so went to my most reliable roach swim on the canalised river armed with bread, plus a few maggots and worms left over from last week. With water temperature a resp
The Flying Tench

The Flying Tench

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Chris Plumb's Blog

27 December

Middle Kennet Estate - Kintbury   0730 - 1630   Mild and overcast with light winds - a lovely benign winters day. 10ºC. River VERY low.   4 Chub to 2lb 10oz. 5 Grayling - all between 10oz - 1lb 6oz, 14 Dace - nearly all over 8oz - 5 over 10oz, best 12oz (had 3 at this weight!), 3 Roach, 6 Brownies to 2¾lb.   A lovely day to be by the river - we were restricted by low water levels to where we could fish - but finding a shoal of big dace in the very first sw
Chris Plumb

Chris Plumb

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Chris Plumb's Blog

24 December

River Lambourn - Newbury   0745 - 1115   Cool and mainly overcast. 2º -> 6ºC. River low and clear (of course!)   33 Grayling; 10 over 1lb (!) best 4, 1lb 15oz, 1lb 13oz, 1lb 7oz, 1lb 6oz with another dozen around the 12oz mark. 3 Brownies - all small but bigger than parrs.   Christmas Eve sees the annual cleaning of my bait fridge as the maggots are served with an eviction order and the appliance is commandeered for Christmas duties. As usual for this v
Chris Plumb

Chris Plumb

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Rusty's Blog

The Lythe begins to earn its keep

Speen Moors, Thursday 22nd December 2011   Third visit in as many weeks, my obsession with this venue continues.   I had a bit of a plan today, the session ledgering bread on the 5th December was quite successful so I thought I’d try trotting bread. I hadn’t prepared any mash so would have to use some old maggots as loose feed but on the hook was going to be a large lump of flake. What is rapidly becoming my first port of call at Speen would be the ideal swim to try the new bait. Some of t
Rusty

Rusty

2
Chris Plumb's Blog

22 December

K&A Canal - Thatcham   0730 - 0945   Mild, with cloud clearing (rather too quickly for my liking) to milky sunshine. AT 48ºF, WT 47ºF   1 Perch; 2lb 6oz   Couldn't resist the lure of the canal with these mild conditions - though, alas, it was much brighter than forecast! Fished 4 swims and only managed 2 bites all morning - both of which came from the 2nd swim I dropped in and resulted in the blank saving stripey. Banker swim failed to produce - again!
Chris Plumb

Chris Plumb

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Rusty's Blog

Stillwater piking

Knotts, Wednesday 21st December 2011   Hoorah!! Today is the shortest day and we can now look forward to increasingly light evenings….ok by about 30 seconds a day to begin with but it’s a start…Summer is here!   To celebrate the coming of light we went piking on a stillwater that sees little predator pressure and one that we’ve never seen a pike caught from. Our combined experience of this lake is three visits by me tenching earlier in the year. We had, however, received helpful guidance o
Rusty

Rusty

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The Flying Tench's Blog

Float-ledgering in the rain 19.12.11

3-4.15pm   I once heard a rather feeble joke about someone who kept banging himself on the head cos it was so nice when he stopped. (There may also have been something about him being an editor.) But that's what it felt like today, fishing in very cold rain - though I realise it's nothing to what some of you barmy people do, fishing for hours in freezing cold!   The sky was cloudy so I decided to try for perch, but on reflection the WT of 4degC may have been too cold. But my real aim was t
The Flying Tench

The Flying Tench

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Chris Plumb's Blog

18 December

Middle Kennet Estate water.   0800 -1600   Cold, frosty and bright. -1ºC -> 5ºC. River very low   5 Chub; 5lb 15oz, 2lb 3oz & 3 chublets 2 of which were circa 1lb. 47 Roach; Most in the 6-8oz bracket - the 5 I put on the scales were 9oz, 10oz, 12oz, 14oz & 1lb 2oz but an awful lot weren't much smaller than the 9oz fish - probably had nearly 20lb of roach in all! 2 Dace & 6 Brownies biggest circa 2½lb.   Chalk this one up to the river keeper
Chris Plumb

Chris Plumb

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Rusty's Blog

The Lythe gets its debut

Speen Moors, Saturday 17th December 2011   Today was one of those sessions when it’s good that your fishing partner has a similar angling outlook to you. We’d planned the trip with high hopes that today would be one of those sunny wintery days when just being by the river is good and that this week’s rain had bolstered the Kennet. The first part of this ideal was in jeopardy as I trundled along the A34 with wipers frantically trying to clear the windscreen. I had my fingers crossed that the r
Rusty

Rusty

3
The Flying Tench's Blog

Lambourn 12.12.11

3-4.30pm Went to the swim that was so productive last week with high hopes. I wondered if I had worked something out about how to snitch the bigguns. Not to be. 5 grayling from that swim, but nothing over three quarters of a pound.   Tried 2 other swims. The second was bite-a-chuck for tiny grayling. Had 5, but as many got off, not sure why. Anyway, ten grayling in all, and it's got to be encouraging having so many small grayling around - they are obviously spawning well. I guess the EA kne
The Flying Tench

The Flying Tench

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Chris Plumb's Blog

8 December

River Kennet - nr Thatcham   0745 - 1015   Cool, overcast and breezy with some light drizzle. Travelling light so forgot thermometer (in other bag!). River low and looking rather threadbare.   2 Chub; 3lb 2oz, 2lb 15oz. 3 Grayling 10 - 12oz+. 1 Brownie c12oz   Every year I try and get a chub in every month of the season - so that's December ticked off! In truth I was hoping to make a re-acquaintance with the 5lb+ fish I caught from this swim back in the su
Chris Plumb

Chris Plumb

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The Flying Tench's Blog

River Lambourn - can the scales lie?

3 - 4.30pm. Because of back trouble I'm trying to fish where I can sit for a fair bit of the time; but with a cold day, clear sky, but not particularly high air pressure, I decided I decided there was not much option other than to try for some grayling. At least I could see how the back coped.   I haven't fished the Lambourn in earnest since the work done by EA, and the river is currently very low, so I wasn't too sure how my limited trotting skills would cope with the clear, fast, shallow
The Flying Tench

The Flying Tench

1
Rusty's Blog

Gave the 'pins a rest today

Speen Moors, Monday 5th December 2011   Today was probably the best days chubbing I’ve had at this venue, I only caught three fish so that’ll tell you how difficult I’ve found it in the past. Generally I trot maggot but today I thought a static approach might be more productive so it was out with the avon quiver tip rod, bread flake for hookbait and mashed bread as feed.   Three swims were targeted, all were quite a walk apart so pre-baiting wasn’t really possible and as usual I started la
Rusty

Rusty

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Rusty's Blog

A change of scene (not by much though)

River Kennet, Friday 2nd December 2011   It’s been three weeks since I’ve been fishing, the last time that happened was when I couldn’t drive back in the summer…..I was beginning to get a hankering again.   Steve and I met up at Happy Tony’s Angling Emporium as he was unlocking the shop. Bait bought we thought about where to go, the options were numerous, any NAA stretch of the Kennet was within easy reach as was the Lambourn but eventually we decided upon exchanging our tickets for a sess
Rusty

Rusty

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Chris Plumb's Blog

2 December

River Lambourn - Shaw   0730 - 1230   Frosty and bright start - clouding over by mid morning. 0ºC -> 6ºC. River low.   56 (!!) Grayling; 3 over 1lb - best a lovely fish of 1lb 12oz. 2 Roach (small). 8 Brownies small ( but bigger than parrs).   Nice sociable session with Paul. Original plan had been to do some more prospecting for perch on the canal but the weather forecasts had been predicting a cold clear Friday morning all week - so Plan B was the lad
Chris Plumb

Chris Plumb

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Chris Plumb's Blog

27 November

River Frome - Wool   0745 - 1445   Bright and sunny and VERY breezy - lashing rain for 1st hour! River low and clear.   11 Grayling; 3 smalluns - all the others between 1lb 9oz - 2lb 2oz (2X2lbers). 1 Dace (small). 9 Trout (all small). 1 Salmon 4½lb, 1 Salmon parr.   A challenging session due to the strong downstream wind - made presentation a nightmare and I must have spent half the session with my float waving around in the sky everytime I tried to rebai
Chris Plumb

Chris Plumb

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Chris Plumb's Blog

23 November

River Lambourn - Newbury   0800 - 1130   Bright after a frosty start - 1st frost of the month. River very low.   29 Grayling, 11 over 1lb (!!). Best 3; 1lb 14oz, 1lb 8oz, 1lb 7oz. 1 Roach - unweighed but needed the net. 1 Brown Trout parr.   Pure co-incidence that my first visit of the season here corresponded to the 1st frosts of winter. Usual catch a couple and move on tactics until I found a pod of sizeable grayling feeding confidently under the branches of a willow. More importantly
Chris Plumb

Chris Plumb

2
The Flying Tench's Blog

Near blank at Speen Moors

A friend mentioned he'd had some reasonable roach at SM in the summer, and I thought I'd see if they were still there. Other commitments usually mean I can't get to the bank till about 2.30pm at the moment, and today it was nearly 3pm before I had a line in the water.   Trotted magic bread as usual. Amazed how much water was coming through, given the recent lack of rain. Just 3 small ones and I didn't have the feeling there was going to be anything of note; and then there was quite a heavy sh
The Flying Tench

The Flying Tench

0
Chris Plumb's Blog

18 November

Middle Kennet Estate water   0730 - 1630   Mild and mainly overcast with some 'milky' sunshine at times. River VERY low.   7 Chub; 4 over 1lb - biggest 3lb 1oz. 8 Perch; 2 over 1lb - biggest 2lb 3oz. 2 Bream - both circa 1lb. 3 Doz+ Roach - most quite small though 2 warranted the scales - one at 13oz the other a lovely fish of 1lb 4oz. 2 Doz + Dace - all quite small. 20 + Gudgeon. 8 Brownies - most over 2lb - biggest 3lb 8oz. 1 Rainbow - 2¾lb.   A lovely d
Chris Plumb

Chris Plumb

2
Rob Ward's Blog

Estate Lake Pike

Saturday 12th November - Cheshire Mere   Graeme took me Pike fishing for a day on a big Cheshire Mere on a guest pass from his club, the Mere is around 47 acres and is boat only - the club have one punt for use of the members.       The Mere is horse shoe shaped, it's actually an Estate Lake and was created by damming a stream about four hundred years ago.   We also had another club member with us, Andy, who had booked the punt for the day. He also had a fish finder and had been
Rob Ward

Rob Ward

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Rob Ward's Blog

Autumn Barbel

My friend Graeme and I started to get stuck into the Barbel on our club stretch of the Ribble in the Autumn, we mostly fished short evening sessions midweek and spent the first few exploring the stretch trying to find likely fish holding areas. We identified one particular swim that looked promising, from up the bank you could see a sandstone ledge about half way across with a pronounced crease on the surface, this effectively channelled the flow through the inside of the swim. One of the reason
Rob Ward

Rob Ward

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Rusty's Blog

We need rain!

River Kennet, Newbury, Saturday 12th November 2011   A pleasant morning spent trotting for whatever came along at a venue badly in need of some water.   It’s a wading venue and when the river’s at normal levels most of the gravelly sections can be accessed, it’s only the depth of water that restricts certain areas. On this occasion, however, nowhere was inaccessible. Standing in a chub swim which has previously seen water lapping around my bits only resulted in wet knees.   On a more po
Rusty

Rusty

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