River Test, Timsbury, Sunday 29th November 2009

The annual Anglersnet visit to Timsbury stayed true to form, it rained frequently and heavily at times. My plan of stuffing everything into pockets and carrying only a rod & net worked a treat, my kit and bait remained dry throughout the day. It's surprising how little you really need to take with you for a days fishing.

The main river was well up and a sort of watery coffee colour, not good. The fast carrier looked perfect and the slow carrier was...unavailable to us (I was politely asked to move on). The lease on that stretch has expired and the owner is developing the site into a sort of activity campsite. Not sure how that's going to work out in the future but it did impact the days fishing, most were fishing the fast carrier and it was a bit crowded at times.

The main river did produce fish (Grayling & Trout) so it can't have been that bad, my forays were fruitless however. Eventually I managed to sneak a small Perch and a reasonable Roach from the most unlikely of swims, the latter just about needing the landing net so I was happy that I'd caught a Timsbury Roach.

Timsbury is about getting together with other AN'ers and it was great to do that, the fishing takes a bit of a back seat really.

If the weather's ok I'll be out on the Kennet tomorrow.

Edit: oops almost forgot about the reel, a newly acquired Free Spirit Searcher (a Match Aerial clone). These reels don’t have the best reputation for out of the box build quality and mine was no exception. I had to work on it a bit to get it running properly and today was its first outing. With a few hours running under its belt it’s loosened up nicely and I'm sure that a couple more session will see it starting up as well as my other reels.