River Kennet, Newbury, Sunday 28th February 2010

This trip was in some doubt up until….oh hang on, no it was never in doubt. Whatever the skies dumped on the venue I was going to be there, roaming and trotting if at all possible but pitched up under shelter if absolutely necessary. Thankfully plan B wasn’t implemented, although rain and wind were present for most of the day neither were hostile enough to inhibit my favoured method.

Parking up at about 8:30am it was pleasing to see nobody else there and so I had the pick of the venue. I wandered all of 5 yards to a great little pool which I’d been told was a good for Dace, and so it proved with a fish first cast. More Dace followed and I probably achieved a PB (most were about 7 inches long with the odd longer one) but I was having so much fun I didn’t really care. A couple of Rainbow Trout made an appearance as well which made me jump a bit, float dips, expect a Dace and something tears off downstream with centrepin screaming. This mini session was interspersed with hand warming/coffee drinking/sandwich eating activities and so I was there for perhaps two hours before I felt guilty and headed off to explore.

I tried many different swims all looking either chubby or perchy but Trout were the only takers. Lobworm or maggots the result was the same, a Trout would get there first. I’m not complaining, the weather was still bad at this point and a 3lb Trout in a strong flow focuses the mind a bit. I lost count of how many I caught, five I can remember as being particularly hard fighters and there was maybe another four.

Respite came at about 3:00pm when the rain stopped, the wind dropped and the sun made a brief appearance. It was then that I came across the mother of all Mr. Crabtree swims, a small oval shaped pool about 10 yards across by 20 yards long fed by run off from a stream. The far bank was reed/shrub lined with a couple of pockets of slack water, the near bank was obviously looked after with nicely manicured grass and a small bench…bliss. I hadn’t messed up a Wallis cast for at least five goes so I was confident of dropping a lobworm in one of the pockets. I cast short and wide but to my relief the current gradually took the float towards one of the pockets and then to my amazement right in it. I knew I was going to catch a monster Perch and sure enough the float dipped and I struck into something solid. I was mentally preparing the AN 4lb Perch post when there was a thump thump and I had to tear up the script. The Chub was a beautiful specimen, I didn’t weigh it but to keep the pedants at bay I’d say between 2 & 3lb. What do you think?

That really made my day, not the size of the fish but its condition and the way in which it was caught. After that it was a sort of leisurely wander back to the car trotting likely looking swims but almost half heartedly, using up the maggots really.

No more fish were caught (by me) and at about 5:00pm I headed home thoroughly chuffed with my day.