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’ acknowledged Chub hot spot hoping that perhaps the nice weather had warmed the water in the two hours that I’d been there and tempted them to feed (because we all know that it’s the cold water that has prevented me from catching one don’t we?). Alas it was not to be (again!) so I moved to the opposite bank a few yards downstream and immediately tempted a Brown Trout of a couple of pounds. Ok so not the targeted quarry but it was good to see the float dip and pleasing to get some sort of bend in the rod. Three more smaller brownies quickly followed from the same swim……and then they buggered off.

I suppose it just emphasises the nature of this water, it holds some very good fish but they’re not everywhere, you have to get on your bike and when you do find them they won’t necessarily be in the same place next time. Hmm, reading that back perhaps I’m stating the obvious, fish will be fish.

Steve almost fared very well indeed, retrieving a lure which looked unbelievably real in the water a Pike reliably estimated at 20+ followed the lure and turned away at the last second. I know nothing about lure fishing but it seems that Steve was so surprised to see the fish that for a moment he stopped retrieving. Apparently that’s not good but I have to say that if I had spent three hours retrieving a lure with no luck and a Pike of that size appeared at my feet I’d probably drop the rod in the water.

It was fantastic day out, roll on Monday….without rain please.