The downs & ups of angling
Entry posted by Rusty
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River Kennet, Friday 24th & Saturday 25th June 2011
A couple of sessions to report on, the first a Friday afternoon dash to a good chub swim after spending the day working from home. Newbury is not a good place to be during the rush hour, I’d chosen the back lane route and smiled to myself as I passed over the A34 and noted the huge traffic jam which was being reported on the radio. I felt less smug as I found my own little snarl up on the outskirts of town but it didn’t matter because the chub would still be there. Erm….actually, no they weren’t. I waded and trotted most swims at this venue but I couldn’t find them. I found loads of dace, gudgeon, roach and the odd trout but no sign of the chub (or perch for that matter) despite offering lobs and maggots. I’ve caught small barbel from here but they too were somewhere else.
So an uneventful session and not much to say other than thanks to CP for providing the rod rest.
On to Saturday and the prospect of a bit of barbelling further downstream. A neglected venue but all the better for it in my opinion although I was anticipating some undergrowth clearance activities. No pics of this swim yet, it’s an out of the way peaceful location which I reckon has good barbel potential (I’ve caught and lost from here before) but it is a bit ‘all or nothing’. Chub aren’t too common this far down and my previous experience has been that the swim needs a good time to build up before the barbel appear but eventually they do. Not what I’d call a good general coarse fishing swim.
Ok so having said all of that within 10 minutes of starting trotting the first fish caught (excluding brownies) was a chub! A 3lb 4oz chub and the first I’ve caught from this venue, very pleasing but not a barbel;
I think it was a solitary fish because after that the long haul started and I had no bites for two hours despite constant feeding and trotting. At any other swim I would’ve moved on but it was the same pattern as previous trips so I suspected something could still happen….and it did. With the float 25 yards away in the shallow tail of the trot it dipped and battle commenced.
I knew it wasn’t a chub, the struggle was slow and powerful with the occasional big thump but not as frequently as chub tend to. It felt like a good fish, once I’d gained a couple of yards I lost the element of surprise and the fish just held station kiting from side to side. I gained more line when I could but he wouldn’t be bullied, after what seemed like an age I’d got it halfway back and then he decided to head for some cabbage type weed on the far bank. I was well and truly snagged but the fish was still attached, I could feel it struggling to get free. I didn’t relish the thought of wading after it, where I was standing the water wasn’t too deep but just in front of me the river bed dropped away sharply into a great big hole of indeterminate depth. The slack line trick came to my rescue, the current took line down behind the fish and he swam out thinking he was free. I thought the gods were smiling upon me but it seems they were setting me up for a kick in the teeth later.
The barbel was tiring and I was able to gently coax it towards me, it broke surface and I got a good look at its dorsal fin and back, certainly the largest barbel ever to attach itself to my hook, I’d estimate 6lbs or so. Three things happened in quick succession, I reached for the net, the fish made a last gasp attempt to get to some innocuous looking reeds and the hook pulled. I’m not one to get too upset about lost fish but the scream cleared the birds from the trees and would’ve been heard all over Berkshire.
Maybe the fish had weakened the hook hold in the snag and my over eagerness to land it contributed to the loss but whatever, it had gone and that was that.
I tried to convince myself that more barbel were there and trotted on for another half hour but didn’t really believe that I’d have another chance. The sun came out and my neoprene chesties turned into an oven so I packed up and walked back to the car. Removing the chesties was such a relief that I decided to have a dabble in the weir pool and canal lock cut, the latter was ‘guesting’ I believe but the club members were so rude to me last tine I [mistakenly] dropped a bait in the canal one-upmanship took over.
As if I hadn’t had enough of surprise chub another one snaffled the lob no sooner had it hit the water……in a lock cut for heaven’s sake! The landing net procedure attracted a young lad and his dad so the choice was to give the lad the camera or the fish, he got the fish.
We lowered the chub back into the water to a chorus of “goodbye Mr Fishy”, sentiments I had expressed two hours earlier but in a very different way.
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