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Rusty's Blog

A blog by Rusty in General

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Entries in this blog

Goodbye snow!

River Kennet, Newbury, Saturday 26th January 2013.   It was nice to get out after a week of me working from home and a boiler working overtime to keep me warm. The said heating device caused a mild panic attack when it failed to do its job one morning. Only after I'd phoned British Gas and several other unavailable heating specialists did I discover that there'd been a power cut overnight and I simply needed to re-set the heating timer. Ever felt stupid?   The venue was a short club stretch
Rusty

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Generosity from a Venue (only a little bit mind)

River Kennet, Newbury, Saturday 20th February 2010   This was a sort of a pre fish-in day out hastily arranged given the nice weather forecast (and the crap one for Monday) and a call from Steve.   Not a dawn raid so again arrival at 11:00am found the river looking perfect and the sun doing its best to convince me that Spring had finally sprung. Steve had arrived earlier and was busy covering as much water as he could with his lure rod and pup German Shepherd in tow.   I chose ‘the’ ack
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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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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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Fortune Favours the Stubborn

River Lambourn, Newbury, Monday 28 December 2009   A bonus trip out on account of brownie points gained (so far) over the Christmas period. Arrived about 10:00am so as to avoid rod rings icing, they still did though until about 10:30am when the sun got its act together.   Sweetcorn was the bait again but this time it was an altogether more successful session. This bait has at last proved to me that Grayling are fond of it, less pleasing is that Trout like it too but right now it’s a case o
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First time livebaiting

River Thames, Saturday 4th July 2015   This a was an experimental day, another trip to the ‘Drive In’ fishery to try out Kappa’s CD rig or at least my interpretation of it given what I had to hand (see here http://www.anglersnet.co.uk/forums/index.php?/topic/7445162-perch-livebaiting-rig/).   The paternoster link to the weight sets the presentation depth so I though two feet off bottom in ten feet of water would be a good starting point, no real logic to this just a gut feeling that the nume
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First foray into tenching

Knotts Lake, Sunday 3rd April 2011   Well here’s something I didn’t think I’d be writing about in the blog, a stillwater session targeting tench. In two seasons NAA membership I’ve visited their lakes just once and that was to test the rod that I refurbished last year. Apart from that I’ve been dedicated river man even to the extent that I stopped fishing during the close season.   Spring and Autumn are my favourite seasons, it seemed churlish to deny myself some of the pleasures the early
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First Entry

Welcome, thought I'd give this blog thing a try for the 2009/10 winter season. I have high hopes having joined a couple of associations with access to some of the best river fishing in the area (the country?). We'll see how that pans out but first I need to sort out a very lightweight and portable means of cooking hot food, over the coming months I'll be spending a lot of time roving in the cold.
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First Closed Face Reel Experiences

River Lambourn, Newbury, Saturday 16th January 2010   A short morning session planned with Steve (JV44), we weren’t going to be there for too long so the weather forecast wasn’t important, had we actually looked we may not have gone. I wonder how Mike (Arbocop) did on the Kennet.   I’ve never seen the Lambourn looking like this before, about four inches up and a colour which would be just short of perfect for other rivers. It was cold and windy so we only lasted a couple of hours but didn’
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First chub (and perch) of the year

River Kennet, Brimpton, Sunday 8th January 2012   Bit of a backup session this, plans to fish another venue were postponed until this coming Sunday so I needed somewhere else to go. Disappointing but not all bad news, it’s only a few fences, signs and a river keeper’s shotgun which separate that bit of the Kennet from the other sections after all.   Trotting maggot for chub would be the plan and the swim was to be at the far end of the fishery, a spot where I’d caught previously (the only
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First Aquaintence

K&A Canal & River Kennet, Newbury, Sunday 7th February 2010   I’m not generally a fan of canal fishing, I tend to regard them as featureless arrow straight stretches of water devoid of all fish. Obviously this isn’t the case as my local tackle shop proprietor keeps telling that the K&A canal is fishing very well at the moment.   With an overcast & relatively mild day forecast for today I abandoned my Lambourn Roach expedition and bought a tub of lobs and a pint of red maggo
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Finishing unfinished business

Kennet & Avon Canal, Tuesday 29th December 2015   Today’s session was just to round off Sunday’s trip when I didn’t make the planned dusk perch assault. With the forecast looking a bit wet for the next couple of days I thought I’d better get on the bank while I could do so dry and relatively warm, a bonus was that the recent strong winds had abated so I was looking forward to a flat calm canal and easy casting. 90 minutes fishing may not seem very long when it involves a 30 mile round trip
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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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End of Season Countdown - Day 6

River Kennet, Speen Moors, Monday 14th March 2011   Sorry for the late entry but I’ve had a busy couple of weeks and the blog has had to take a back seat. No season, however, is complete without a last day account of events and so with day 5 spent recovering from the LIF outing here’s how the final day went.   Early and frosty are two words which immediately spring to mind. This was one of my few attempts at fishing for perch at the right time of day but scraping the car in the dark was no
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End of Season Countdown - Day 4

River Itchen, LIF, Saturday 12th March 2011   Day three of the countdown was spent in preparation for the LIF fish-in so not much to report unless you want to read about polishing, lubing and loading Witchers and the domestic activities undertaken as a result of losing Saturday. No? I thought not.   Well what a day, I couldn’t have hoped for better weather and a better turnout. Last year’s event was pretty miserable and I was beginning to think that I was jinxing them (conditions have been
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End of Season Countdown - Day 2

River Thames, Pangbourne to Goring, Thursday 10th March 2011   A tough day on the Thames with Steve but in the best tradition of blogs the bad days must get reported along with the good days. Today was a monumental blank. It started quite well, I’d forgotten my camera which all anglers know means you’re going to catch several species all of improbably high weights. Steve, however, had remembered his camera so we were back to square one.   We drove all over the place, either trolling as we
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End of Season Countdown - Day 1

River Kennet, Newbury, Wednesday 9th March 2011   The start of my end of season finale was to be at a Kennet venue which has reliably produced chub for me in the past, in fact my PB of 5lb 8oz has come from this place so it seemed an ideal venue to try out the cheap Shadowlanda centrepin. Hopefully it would have to deal with more than a few minnows and small grayling.   I wasn’t prepared for what I saw on arrival, I know we’ve had some rain recently but the high water level and fast flow s
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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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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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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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Couldn't keep this in perspective

River Kennet, Newbury, Saturday 2nd October 2010   After last night’s great little session I couldn’t help but head for Speen Moors again. I wasn’t planning to wade but took the chesties just in case and thought I’d take a look further down first to see if the well protected chub were still in residence. The water was more coloured than last time and I couldn’t see them but I did spy a certain Mr. Plumb preparing to empty the river of anything worth catching. It would’ve been rude not to say
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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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Closing week

What an end to the season! The opening day was pleasant enough but between then and now there really hasn’t been much to say about my fishing trips. Blank after blank had me wondering whether the angling gods had got it in for me or whether I’d just got myself in a rut fishing known swims and taking success for granted.   When the reliable swims eventually failed to produce (as they often do) I had no plan B and just kept on flogging the same dead horses. Eventually I got fed up with that but
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Chocks Away!

River Kennet, Thatcham, Wednesday 16th June 2010   Well here we are, first day of the 2010/11 season and I have to start with an admission. I did fish a stillwater a couple of weeks ago to test the rod that I refurbished during the close season so strictly speaking I didn’t quite make it. I can, however, categorically state that I haven’t used a centrepin for 3 months and so it was with some anticipation that I left home at 3:30 this morning and headed for the Kennet. This was a stretch I had
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Cheerio 2011

You can guess where, Saturday 31st December 2011   The last session of this year and I look back on 2011 with mixed feelings. From a personal point of view the year could’ve been better but from an angling viewpoint it’s been fantastic.   Tenching started in April, fishing during the close season isn’t something that I normally do but I wanted to try bait and tactics in preparation for the Wingham trip. I had some success too with Tincas weighing 4lb 8oz and 5lb 7oz, monster fish for me;
Rusty

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