A change of scene (not by much though)
Entry posted by Rusty
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River Kennet, Friday 2nd December 2011
It’s been three weeks since I’ve been fishing, the last time that happened was when I couldn’t drive back in the summer…..I was beginning to get a hankering again.
Steve and I met up at Happy Tony’s Angling Emporium as he was unlocking the shop. Bait bought we thought about where to go, the options were numerous, any NAA stretch of the Kennet was within easy reach as was the Lambourn but eventually we decided upon exchanging our tickets for a session on a CSAS section just below Hambridge Road. I’ve fished it before and it’s a nice venue but Steve hadn’t been there so off we went. An early morning view from the car park;
If there’s one criticism I have of this stretch it’s the number of fallen trees. It’s nice to have features to fish to but there are a lot of them and it seems as if they’re just being ignored. The lower reaches can be divided into distinct sub-sections between trees blocking the river, they disrupt the flow and silt builds up behind them. Apparently though the EA will be undertaking clearance activities during the next two weeks so it’ll be interesting to go back once it’s settled a bit, maybe this one will be gone;
Our first swim was Arbocop’s Mr Crabtree glide, I’ve caught chub and small barbel from here before so was keen for Steve to have first trot;
In the event he was faffing around doing something in his bag and so, at his insistence, I lowered my loafer in …..and promptly caught a chub;
That wasn’t how things were supposed to work out at all so I headed off upstream confident that it wasn’t the only chub there and left Steve to try his luck;
Towards the upper limit of this venue the river’s usually very shallow and the lack of rain we’ve had this year hasn’t helped the situation. It was a case of looking for any deeper section between the gravelly areas (some of which were exposed) and there weren’t many. One stood out as having potential though, fording the river enabled me to trot the right line directly under this tree;
This was a great little swim and I spent about an hour here catching dace and/or chublets (I can’t tell them apart) before the brown trout moved in. Three brownies in a row signalled the time to move and so I went back down to Mt Crabtree’s glide hoping that Steve had emptied it of chub. He hadn’t but was making an impression on the minnows…doesn’t look pleased does he?
The next swim for Steve was this far bank trot past a couple of bankside bushes. Wading out in the shallows allowed the float to be sent down to the deeper water which followed. The tactics worked with dace and, pleasingly, grayling making their first appearance of the day;
I was exploring further down and happened across this spot which clearly demonstrated the advantages of wading. From the bank it was just about fishable but landing anything decent could have been difficult with the trees on the right;
But from the river it was a different story, plenty of space to play a fish and access to an interesting trotting line behind the vegetation;
Paddling was well worth it, second trot produced this chub which pushed the scales to 3lb 14oz. It was well over 4lb in the landing net, I’ve no idea how it shed the weight so quickly;
Steve called it a day at that point intending to move to the Lambourn after grayling. A call from a customer and the prospect of sorting out the Portabote for his trip tomorrow put a stop to that though. I carried on for a while and had a couple of grayling from the same swim (after being bitten off by a jack pike) before I too packed up.
Another great day was had. On Monday we’re trying a more static approach quivertipping further downstream, an ideal opportunity to press the mobile catering system into service.
A couple of arty pics to sign off;
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