A couple of fives
Entry posted by Rusty
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River Kennet, Sunday 15th January 2012
What a strange day this was, a pretty good one in terms of chub average weight but it was a day of two ends rather than of two halves.
My plan was to pitch up quiver tipping for the morning with breadmash for feed and flake on the hook, the afternoon was to be spent trotting a section I haven’t yet fished. I did wonder when I arrived at my chosen swim whether I’d be able to drag myself away later in the day but that decision could wait.
First job was to make the mash. What a joyous experience that was, extracting my hands from their heated sanctuary so they could squeeze a huge lump of cold wet bread. Not surprisingly it didn’t take long to get rid of the excess water, mulch it up a bit and then throw a few tennis ball sized lumps into the river, on warmer days I take more time over preparing the appetiser. Hands then went back into the pockets for five minutes before they were called upon to put the rod together.
Out went the flake and I snuggled into my chair fully expecting it to be a while before anything happened. I think this is a hangover from my childhood fishing days when I used to turn up with my friends and make loads of noise setting up, we’d then have to wait for ages before the fish came back, we never caught anything straight away. Today was different, no sooner had I sat down than the ‘tip started knocking. It wasn’t a full on chub bite so I waited and tried to time the strike as the ‘tip was bent. The first one I missed but the second was timed perfectly and a chub of a couple of pounds slid into the net;
Next cast the same thing happened but I connected first time. This fish was bigger at around three pounds;
What a start, three casts and two fish, at this rate I’d run out of bread by midday. The next cast resulted in yet another chub, this one felt heavier in the net so it was time to break out the scales. 5lb on the button and beautifully proportioned;
I had to sit down and take stock. Within half an hour of arriving at the swim I‘d caught three chub (one of which was a lump) and I was in danger of running out of bait. My plan was working and surely the 8GB memory card in the camera wasn’t going to be sufficient for all of the fish pics. Out went the bait again and the next bite came………..6½ hours later. Yes, for six and one half hours I sat there with a motionless quivertip. I know that chub were being caught trotting elsewhere so they were feeding, perhaps my group had become wary of my tactics and cleared off. Whatever the reason I couldn’t tempt them with lobs or a feeder full of maggots, I tried pre-baiting a swim 100 yards upstream but no luck when I fished it.
Right, I was in it for the long haul. The time when I should’ve packed up and gone trotting came and went, Harrison & Lythe were left banded against a barbed wire fence as I hunkered down for the duration. If you’re going to sit anywhere for a long time biteless there aren’t many places better than this;
It was four o’clock before the ‘tip was moved by anything other than weed floating downstream. The bites were tentative taps rather than bold knocks so I wondered if they might be small roach, I was still using a size 8 hook and big bait for the chub so I scaled down to a 16 and a smaller piece of flake. It was a change which had an immediate effect, the bites stopped altogether…bugger. Back up to big hooks/bait while I could still see well enough to tie the knots.
So it was chub or bust for the last of the daylight and for the next 30 minutes I was infuriated by taps and knocks which didn’t develop into proper bites. Finally the rod bent round and I got lucky with the strike, at 16:42 this pic of a rather strange shaped 5lb 8oz chub was taken;
This fish equalled my PB and for the first time I’d caught a brace of ‘fives’. I have to say though that the smaller of the two is a much nicer looking fish.
I carried on fishing until about half past five, by that time I could see that the quivertip was indicating bites but couldn’t really tell what it was doing, I couldn’t time a strike. The chub were definitely back and a couple of starlights would’ve seen me fishing well into darkness. It was exhilarating stuff but eventually I had to accept that I couldn’t see well enough, add to that the fact that my kit was covered in a frost and it really was time to go.
My headtorch, which had been fantastic during back garden testing, was suddenly found to be not very bright when called upon to provide illumination on the long spooky walk back to the car. In times of trouble you can always rely on help from friends and Steve provided moral support via text during the closing moments of the session, his text read “Beware the weedrack axe murderer”
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