River Kennet, Newbury, Saturday 13th February 2010

Spent a pleasant few hours on the CSAS stretch of the Kennet today. NAA do an exchange ticket and so with morning shopping quickly dispatched I thought I’d give it a try.

It was a bit of a last minute decision so I could only get there for 11 o’clock but what a wonderful stretch of the Kennet it is. Regular readers won’t be surprised to hear that I blanked (anyone see a pattern developing yet?) but it was great fun exploring a new bit of the river. It’s long enough to spend a day there, I fished all of both banks in four and a half hours but I didn’t spend a great deal of time in any swim, just a few trots and move on.

The main reason for going was to try out the Truepin Trotter. It turned out to be a bit of a disappointment I’m afraid, I thought I’d run the reel in sufficiently for it to be usable but found that I couldn’t trot any line other than directly off the rod tip. The reel wouldn’t spin freely enough, it was like having the drag permanently on so casting to the far bank would result in the float swinging back towards me. I’m sure it’ll get better with use but other Crouch reels I’ve had have been run in much quicker.

The real issue I have with the Truepin though is the sharp corners on the reel foot. The narrow drum version uses a similar foot but because it’s not as wide the sharp corners don’t get in the way. On the wide drum they do protrude a bit and I was forever catching my fingers on them, this annoying ‘feature’ would prevent me from buying the wide drum version.

Swapping back to my Youngs Bob James and normal service was resumed…still blanking but at least without painful fingers.

Now looking forward to the forthcoming AN Itchen day out. Surely I can’t blank there….can I?