A change of plan produced a little bonus
Entry posted by Rusty
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River Kennet, Newbury, Friday 23rd September 2011
An opportunistic session following POETS day. The pint of maggots in my fridge was beginning to overstay its welcome so I thought it best to donate them to the Kennet on a lovely sunny afternoon. This routine is quite well established now, once I’ve arrived home from work I can be back on the road again within ten minutes, important at this time of year when the evenings are getting shorter. Chub were the target and under normal circumstances I would have been confident of success but so far this season they appear to have re-located from their usual haunt at this venue. I haven’t fished it for a while so it was time to find out if they’d come back.
I’d like to report that after a good couple of hours trotting I had reached a conclusion, but I can’t. For the first half hour only gudgeon and dace took the double red maggot, more time was required to build up the swim but unfortunately I didn’t get the chance. A snag meant that I had to wade down and recover the end tackle close to the taking area and I’m sure this would’ve spooked the chub if they were there in the first place. So that was that, with the swim ruined and the plan in tatters I moved upstream. The next swim up was a section of about forty yards between two fallen trees. It was quite shallow at about three foot with not much in the way of weed growth but it was gravely and the depth seemed fairly uniform. I’d always ignored this swim before thinking it was too fast for chub and a bit featureless for barbel but there was a chance something might be lurking near the tail end tree, wading was easy so in I went.
If a sub one pound barbel can lurk then I suppose this one was. I thought it was a trout at first as it thrashed around but once it started to hug the bottom and do its level best to bully me its cover was blown. A much sleeker, leaner looking fish than those fat old 8lb’ers that Chris Plumb catches, I’d take his mine any day.
So, another swim identified, if the characteristics suited a tiddler there’s no reason why bigger fish shouldn’t find it appealing too. Mental notes were made to re-visit with the automatic baiting device and give it a proper go, rolling meat might work as well.
No fishing today but on Sunday Steve and I are trying a bit of static bait barbelling, I’ve bought hemp, 16mm pellets, pellet ground bait, pellet this, pellet that, pellet the other and will be dusting off the Avon rod for this temporary move over to the dark side. It was inevitable I suppose, I’m really pleased with my barbel trotting results this season but have to concede that the method does seem to produce the smaller specimens. Besides I want to see a rod wrap around.
A couple of older pics from another venue which I found on the camera, it’ll be nice to look back on these in the depths of winter.
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