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Rusty's Blog

A blog by Rusty in General

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Entries in this blog

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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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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Frome Trip

River Frome, Friday 10th February 2012   At the risk of repeating the content of Chris Plumb’s blog here’s an account of our day out from my persepective.   The venue was to be a stretch of the Dorset Frome on the DDAS book, according to their website a total of 1600 yards in length. Apparently the river colours up very quickly after rain so whilst we had agreed on the 10th for the trip it was very much dependant on the weather during the preceding week. The weather gods were undecided; th
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A grand day out

River Kennet, Newbury, Sunday 19th February 2012   If you haven’t yet read Chris Plumb’s account of his fantastic day I suggest you do before you read this somewhat more humble tale.   A couple of mere mortals presented with an entire lower beat of an iconic fishery with nobody else there, blimey this was a bit daunting. I‘ve been on a few of these days out now and whilst I have some [limited] knowledge of the upper beat I’ve never fished downstream. I was in two minds about it to be hones
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Wingham 2012

Wingham Fish-in, 19th, 20th & 21st May 2012   Well here I am again, having speculatively put my name down for a place on this year’s event you could’ve blown me down with a feather when Steve replied in the affirmative.   My 2011 experience at Wingham was invaluable in deciding what to take this year, I was able to pare down the gear to the bare minimum and plan cooking activities a little better. My tactics would remain as last year with corn on the hook and a mixture of liquidised b
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Sorry it's a bit late

River Kennet, Sunday 26th February 2012.   My second visit to this auspicious location in as many weeks, it gets better, the final visit of the season is next Sunday. I really hope that the 2011/12 finale proves to be a better day than this one because on this occasion a combination of bad luck and ill considered plans (on my part) conspired to make it a bit of a shambles.   The day started well enough, we met up with Paul (Chris P’s fishing buddy) at the chosen parking spot. The unloading
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Blog entry by pictures

River Kennet, Saturday 16th June   As with many other opening days this one turned out to be a disappointment for me in terms of fish caught with only three brown trout taking the bait, the anticipation was still there though and the river was looking in fine fettle. I’ve not been a member of NAA or TAA for long enough to remember it looking this good, it did have a tad too much colour but that’ll drop out over the coming days with little rain being forecast.   So the story of the day in p
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Last knockings success!

River Kennet, Newbury, Sunday 24th June 2012   Well I’ve done it! This won’t be a big deal to most of you but to me it’s the culmination of one of the best opening weeks of the season I can remember, it’s been pure pleasure albeit interspersed with a fair bit of frustration and bemusement. Species caught on the float are: chub, perch, roach, dace, gudgeon and now…barbel.   I was down to my last pint of maggots and fancied an afternoon session at the venue where CP did well with dace on the
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Another one!

River Kennet, Newbury, Saturday 30th June 2012   This session was supposed to be a quick couple of hours relaxing in the afternoon sun so I could get back home to cook dinner, watch a movie and then enjoy the trauma of Andy Murray scraping through his tennis match (in typical Brit fashion). Two pints of maggots would be plenty, I’d even have some left for Sunday if the weather was going to hold up.   Same modus operandi as last Sunday, light end tackle for dace and if a barbel came along t
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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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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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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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It just wasn't meant to be

River Thames, Saturday 5th February 2011   Today could certainly be described as “a game of two halves”. The first half punctuated by bizarre circumstances which lead to a lost fish and the second by unfortunate circumstances with the same outcome.   We were on the Thames in Steve’s Portabote, the plan for the day was to troll lures along a pretty reliable pike stretch but if that didn’t work out we had lobs, maggots and a float rod to pitch up somewhere and trot baits. An assortment of ve
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A bit of prospecting

Rivers Lambourn & Kennet, weekend of 29th & 30th January 2011   A double entry today, the first on the Lambourn giving the Shadowlander centrepin its debut. I won’t say too much about this reel because I’ll be writing a review of it in the near future. It’s agricultural but it worked, as a couple of grayling and brown trout will testify.   The Lambourn looked really good with a healthy amount of water opening up new swims but it was so cold I only lasted just over an hour, not a da
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An unexpected treat

River Kennet, Sunday 6th March 2011   I thought I’d seen the last of this venue for a while, the plan was for Steve to take my place on the final visit of the season but with a couple of days to go I learned that Chris Plumb’s fishing partner wasn’t able to make it (thanks Chris) so that meant we could both go.   We were on a bit of a mission, firstly to visit a special swim and then to catch a pike from it. Steve was going all out; there was no trotting kit in his hands as we yomped from
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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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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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Another soaking!

River Kennet, loads of places, weekend of 26th & 27th February 2011   Saturday 26th   With the season coming to an end far too quickly Steve and I decided to implement a plan that we’d been talking about for a while. NAA have an exchange ticket arrangement with Wasing Estates, it allows access to the Kennet upstream of the NAA Aldermarston stretch. Apparently this is predominantly a barbel section but that didn’t stop me figuring that there’s bound to be chub and perch there too. Steve
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Until next Winter

River Kennet, Newbury, Sunday 11th March 2012   Well this was it, our last chance to fish this estate water for some months. On previous visits we’d spent a lot of time roaming about exploring and (it has to be said) not doing an awful lot of fishing, this time we decided to pitch up in one spot and chill out for the day. Steve’s barrow proved invaluable as we loaded up enough gear to cover most options, the chairs, cooking facilities and food were all piled on before we then made our short w
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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
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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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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
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It's true, fishing isn't only about catching fish

River Thames, Abingdon, Saturday 23rd July 2011   About two weeks ago I awoke to find that I’d developed double vision. At first I thought that I’d slept strangely and that it would go away by the time I left for work. It didn’t go away and I had to turn back as driving was out of the question.   A visit to my GP saw me looking at waving fingers, smiling, winking and poking my tongue out to make sure may facial expressions were balanced. My blood pressure was through the roof and before I
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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
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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
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