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Rusty's Blog

A blog by Rusty in General

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Entries in this blog

Recent activities

Rivers Thames and Kennet, Friday 26th to Sunday 28th February 2016   Three consecutive days fishing, each with a different reason for going.   The first day out was Friday, it’d been a chaotic week at work so I took the day off and headed to the Thames for some casual roach fishing. I didn’t want to think about it too much, just take the float rod and fish where I knew they’d be. Water levels were falling and the colour was dropping out so it wouldn’t be long before the roach left the sanctu
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Just a bit more time would've been good

River Kennet, Newbury, Sunday 10th October 2010   A bonus trip this one, a change of plans yesterday meant a mad dash to the tackle shop for bait but with maggots and lobs secured thoughts of which venue ensued. It didn’t take long to decide and with that a leisurely start of 9:00am saw me arriving full of confidence, I had three pints of maggots and the entire day to trickle them in the river.   Target species where chub and perch, the latter being quite partial to maggots at this venue.
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Eden Trip

River Eden, Cumbria, weekend of 16th & 17th October 2010.   A change of scenery for me with a long arranged trip to Cumbria to meet Tigger (Ian) and to fish the River Eden at Wawrick-on-Eden. I’d read Ian’s previous posts on his expeditions and fancied broadening my horizons a little so with B&B booked for Friday, Saturday and Sunday the long haul ooop north started Friday morning, all 285 miles of it! The slog up the M6 was straightforward enough, counting up the junctions and passin
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Signing back on again (if that's ok)

Firstly apologies for the interruption in service, I was trying to be too ambitious with writing things up at a time when I’d been out on a number of occasions, I should’ve kept it simple. Secondly I reckon that everything’s getting a bit intense on the main board so I thought I’d retreat to this sleepy backwater again where normal anglers can report on their successes or failures. I like the fact that it’s also a place where some very good anglers report their catches with no fuss so it’s the b
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Well....I did catch perch

Speen Moors, Sunday 23rd January 2011   Time spent at this water is never wasted, most clubs have a premier venue and in my opinion this is the one for Newbury Angling Association. Despite that apart from some good perch I haven’t done very well here at all, I’ve only caught two decent sized chub and one of those was on a lobworm when after perch. It doesn’t seem to matter though, just the thought of fishing at Speen fills me with optimism and today was no different. With my new found interes
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Everything I enjoy about angling in one day

River Kennet, Sunday 20th February 2011   My last day at this venue for the time being but as it turned out it’s been the best yet.   To do it justice you really need to spend the day roaming the fishery and with last weekend’s weather putting a stop to that I was looking forward to stretching my legs a bit today. I couldn’t, however, resist the temptation to start where I’d caught perch last week so I made that particular swim my first port of call. Not a great plan in terms of roaming, I
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A new Rusty PB

Knotts Lake, Wednesday 27th April 2011   Same venue but a different bank this time (thanks Paul G), I said goodbye to the “cawt anyfink mister” calls from the K&A Canal walkers and pitched up on the other side of the lake quite close to the first swim I’d tried weeks earlier. I could’ve float fished into open water or ledgered close to the overhanging trees, casting was the problem. I could swing a small bomb to the trees but not a float, vegetation behind me prevented an overhead cast at
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The downs & ups of angling

River Kennet, Friday 24th & Saturday 25th June 2011   A couple of sessions to report on, the first a Friday afternoon dash to a good chub swim after spending the day working from home. Newbury is not a good place to be during the rush hour, I’d chosen the back lane route and smiled to myself as I passed over the A34 and noted the huge traffic jam which was being reported on the radio. I felt less smug as I found my own little snarl up on the outskirts of town but it didn’t matter because
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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
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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
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Post Christmas perching (postscript)

River Thames, Goring, Thursday 29th December 2011   Just a quickie this one. I popped back to yesterday’s venue (now known to locals as Steve ‘n' Alex’s place) trying the ‘peak time’ trick, i.e. turn up just as the predators were about to feed and then go home an hour later with a fistful of 4lb perch photos. That didn’t happen I’m afraid, the tackle shop had no lobworms and I was down to my last ten rounds of ammo so I had to be conservative with them. As dusk approached I thought a bunch of
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A couple of fives

River Kennet, Sunday 15th January 2012   What a strange day this was, a pretty good one in terms of chub average weight but it was a day of two ends rather than of two halves.   My plan was to pitch up quiver tipping for the morning with breadmash for feed and flake on the hook, the afternoon was to be spent trotting a section I haven’t yet fished. I did wonder when I arrived at my chosen swim whether I’d be able to drag myself away later in the day but that decision could wait.    
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No holiday snaps, just fishing and eating

River Kennet, Speen Moors, Monday 1st October 2012   Eager to continue the chubbing theme I thought I‘d have a good crack at the Kelly Kettle swim today. It’s on my usual circuit at this venue but I don’t often sit it out there for any length of time, today though a concerted effort was in order. Two loaves of bread were stashed in the airing cupboard overnight and in the morning they were suitably dried out for bread mash making.   I won’t dwell on the fishing too much because you’ve read
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Zero perch....0lb 0oz

Saturday 12th January, K&A Canal, Thatcham   That’s the thing about my AN blog, it’s a record of my angling trips so if I shout about the good days I suppose I’ve got to shout about the bad ones too. That’s what I’m doing now.   This early doors trip was always going to be touch and go, I’d guessed that Thursday would be the last day for mild conditions and hoped that the water would still be warm enough through Friday to this morning. To be honest it was just about, at 6 degrees I was g
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Dumbfounded

K&A Canal, River Kennet and then back to the canal, Saturday 9th March 2013   This is why I don’t gamble, I would’ve bet every item of fishing tackle I own on today’s session being successful. If you could order perfect perching conditions from a menu what greeted me on arrival is exactly what you would’ve ordered, I was that confident that even on the journey to the venue I was compiling witty PB blog narrative in my head.   Setting up did nothing to dispel my confidence, the ledgered l
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A bamboo PB!

NAA Stillwater, Warwicks, Sunday 17th May 2015.   Another foray into fishing lakes. I had planned to visit the vintage tackle fair at Redditch today but a change of plan meant that I was in Devon over the weekend and couldn’t really arrange things to be at the fair early. Probably just as well, last time I went to one of these events (my first) I took plastic naively thinking that I’d be able to buy stuff, no chance, it was cash or no sale. So this time I had cash and it was burning a big hole
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Different lake same result....

NAA Stillwater, Pallets, Monday 25th May 2015.   …….no silvers! Is it really too much to ask to spend a day fishing just catching small fish on a club water? It seems so because today I tried a previously unfished venue known to contain lots of small rudd. My plan was to fish maggot on the float and see if any reasonable examples came along, nothing too scientific or ambitious. Clearly the angling gods frowned upon my idea for despite being reassured by a couple of anglers I spoke to yesterday
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A new season is upon us

A bit of a marathon blog entry this but I always forget how much planning and organisation is needed when you intend to fish several different venues in a short space of time. I haven’t had time to write individual entries. One venue would need a bivvy and the kitchen sink, one would need waders, one maggots, one lobs, one trotting gear, one quivertip rods etc etc. and I still haven’t managed to squeeze in a tenching trip to Marsh Farm or a visit to Speen Moors.   Monday 15th June - River Tham
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A Barbel at last!

River Kennet, Newbury, Sunday 11th October 2015   Following on from what was a very successful social event at Rutland (but somewhat lacking in terms of my Zander return) I wanted to get back into familiar territory so with bleary eyes after a long Saturday morning journey back from Oakham I dragged myself off to the tackle shop for maggots and lobworms. The plan was to fully explore the Newbury town centre stretch on Sunday.   I’d tried some of it the weekend before with some success, a chu
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Another potential swim (I'm getting the hang of this)

River Kennet, Newbury, Sunday 12th September 2010   Another trip to the venue that was the reason for my joining NAA and the reason for being so disappointed last Autumn. Sorry if this is getting a bit boring but I’m fishing it a lot during the warmer months so that I can explore as much as possible in friendly weather conditions. They’re not always ideal fishing conditions, the fish don’t seem to be taking any notice of that though. My success has been modest in terms of fish caught , howeve
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One more time (but that's it for a while)

River Kennet, Newbury, Sunday 26th September 2010   Another exasperating day after the chub that appear to be poking their tongues out at me. Well perhaps today wasn’t quite as bad because this time I didn’t see any sign of them in their usual haunt, I’d hatched a plan to get to them as well!   So, enthused by the thought that they must have moved upstream, or at least somewhere more accessible, I headed towards the top of the stretch and got in again. I tried all of the places where I’d e
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All up to date now

River Kennet, Thatcham/Newbury, Sunday 7th November 2010   The more I fish this river, the more I learn about it and the more confident I can be about where the fish are hiding. All sounds jolly logical doesn’t it but today I went back to a where I’d caught a barbel last weekend knowing that conditions would be completely different this time…so much for the learning then. I had another venue in mind just in case but was keen to try the Colthrop stretch again purely because it’s so secluded, y
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Blimey, bread does work!

River Kennet, Newbury, Friday 21st January 2011   One of the benefits of working for the same employer for 33 years is that you tend to accrue a fair amount of annual leave, 33 days in my case. I’ve only had one holiday this year so I’ve got some days to use before the end of March, today was one of them.   A complete change for me with a new bait and an unfamiliar method. I’ve not had much success with bread but it’s such a cheap and convenient bait to use I was determined to give it ano
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Couldn't have blanked at a nicer place

River Kennet, Aldermaston Mill, Tuesday 8th March 2016   The clue’s in the title, a blank of biblical proportions with not a single bite coming to the four anglers on the river. The background to this trip was curiosity, I’d read about Aldermaston Mill on the web and seen a few YouTube videos but most of the information I had was quite old. I knew the venue used to be very good for barbel & chub with queues at the gates before opening time being the norm (as was the mad dash to grab a prim
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What a wet and windy day that was (did ok though)

River Kennet, Sunday 13th February 2011   This was one of those occasions where anticipation of the day out overrides any common sense that the weather forecast might be trying to hammer into your head. You look at the forecast and try to imagine what ‘light rain’ means, then you look at the wind strength and conclude that you can deal with that provided the light rain isn’t happening at the same time. But of course it always does happen at the same time.   It would, however, have taken ga
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