Just a bit more time would've been good
Entry posted by Rusty
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River Kennet, Newbury, Sunday 10th October 2010
A bonus trip this one, a change of plans yesterday meant a mad dash to the tackle shop for bait but with maggots and lobs secured thoughts of which venue ensued. It didn’t take long to decide and with that a leisurely start of 9:00am saw me arriving full of confidence, I had three pints of maggots and the entire day to trickle them in the river.
Target species where chub and perch, the latter being quite partial to maggots at this venue. Actual species caught all morning and most of the afternoon were not chub or perch, they were gudgeon, bleak, roach, minnows, trout and dace. Had the sun not come out and made it a very nice day to be fishing I probably would’ve headed off somewhere else but I decided to stay and keep on feeding, testing the little & often mantra to the limit (I’d been feeding for five hours!).
My patience was rewarded with a beautiful barbel weighing just 2lb 7oz. This species amazes me, I think I’ve caught six all around the 2-3lb mark but every one has had me convinced it was much bigger. The Harrison rod deals with these quite easily, it’s a good scrap but the odds are always in my favour. If I hooked one getting towards double figures I wonder how it cope, it’ll be interesting to find out. I changed my landing technique with this fish, once it was beaten I guided it upstream and let it drift into the net with the flow, much easier from the water.
A lull followed, quite a long lull actually, even the bleak seemed to stop feeding but I carried on trotting and trickling maggots taking the occasional small perch and gudgeon as the afternoon wore on. Then the bites started to change, I was holding the float back mostly so could feel the plucks of the dace and roach but they started to get a bit heavier, not rod wrenching but more of a tug. One of these tugs developed into a series of sharp grabs and lifting into the bite resulted in resistance that [say] a 3lb roach would exert. It was, however, a chub, I didn’t think it was huge but it had got to snags, if I retrieved the line went solid, if I let line out the chub would swim away and the fight would be on again…..a stalemate. I had no choice but to wade down, it was deeper than I would’ve wanted but I just hoped that a change of line angle would free the snag. I don’t know if it worked or not but just as I was getting into deep water the fish came out with a twang. Once in open water the game was up particularly as I’d perfected my netting. The cause of the trouble was a 2lb 15oz chub in fantastic condition, it didn’t look like he’d been hooked before.
I carried on for a while losing another chub but time was getting on and I had to call it a day. Shame really, the constant baiting had eventually worked and I was sure that there were more fish to be had, an evening’s chubbing was definitely on the cards but not for me.
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