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Entry posted by Rusty
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River Kennet, Thatcham/Newbury, Sunday 7th November 2010
The more I fish this river, the more I learn about it and the more confident I can be about where the fish are hiding. All sounds jolly logical doesn’t it but today I went back to a where I’d caught a barbel last weekend knowing that conditions would be completely different this time…so much for the learning then. I had another venue in mind just in case but was keen to try the Colthrop stretch again purely because it’s so secluded, you can really get away from it all (on a Sunday at least, when the nearby gravel extraction isn’t operating).
It was much colder than last week, the overnight rain had lifted levels by an inch and dumped a load of cold water & a little colour into the river. It still looked really good but conditions had changed for the colder overnight so I wondered if that might stop the barbel feeding for a few days. I carried on though and caught a couple of brownies within the first two hours so all was not lost. I then rested the swim for a bit and went walkabout upstream. I was off the NAA limit but saw no signs and wasn’t fishing so I was quite happy to wander as far as guilt would allow me. From the obvious swims I’m sure another club fishes the upstream stretch and they are indeed very lucky, it’s an attractive part of the river and I could’ve walked for miles.
Back to my swim and the brownies were really in residence now. I caught another four in the next hour and decided at that point that the barbel weren’t going to show. The back-up venue beckoned so I headed west. I’ve caught barbel here before but after my earlier experiences I didn’t expect to today, hopefully the chub would oblige though. They did but it took a while to build up the swim, there wasn’t a sign of the chub for a good couple of hours but during that time dace, roach and grayling kept me occupied. The grayling are starting to show regularly at this venue and I understand that hasn’t been the case in recent years, today’s fish was approaching a pound so wasn’t a tiddler by any means, long may it continue.
When they did arrive this chub of 3lb 7oz was the first and he was quite fortunate. He was trailing a length of mono attached to a size 14 spade end hook so I did my good deed for the day and then popped him back.
Next a 3lb 12oz example fell for the double red maggots. Lobs have proved irresistible here recently but I didn’t get any bites on them today.
A small chublet greeted me next and with that I finished the session having had a pretty good day despite not catching a barbel.
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