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Lost for words


Rusty

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River Thames, Thursday 26th January 2012

 

A short late afternoon session only possible because the training I’d undertaken earlier in the day had finished sooner than anticipated. The course content was learning how to drive a 4x4 vehicle off road and the venue was Salisbury Plain so you can imagine that it had already been a really enjoyable day.

 

The plan was to ledger breadflake into dark for chub but I could get to the river with an hour of light left and so I decided to take the trotting gear & lobs/maggots in the hope that Mr Perch would show at dusk. Despite my best efforts he didn’t show so I packed up the float gear and set up the quivertip rod just as the sellotaped starlight was becoming very easy to see. Steve had set up downstream in a place where constant finicky bites and the occasional big pull had got him wondering just what was interested in his bait. To date he hasn’t connected but having witnessed a couple of the lightening fast takes I doubt I would even have got my hands to the rod. I was further up in a place which has been painstakingly pre-baited over the last few decades so I didn’t bother with any feed, I just hooked a big piece of flake and gently lobbed it out into a large pocket of slack water. After ten minutes the ‘tip knocked a few times, after ten minutes and 15 seconds it bent sufficiently for me to strike….and I’m glad I did.

 

I was downstream of the fish but once it got out of the slack water it still powered away from me against the flow. An impressive if relatively shortlived struggle, it wasn’t long before the combination of my rod and the Thames had it beaten and I just had to guide it towards a net wielding Steve (I’d shouted down something like “I say old chap, I think I may have hooked a rather nice chub”). Once in the net the estimating commenced. Steve had first look and described it as “a lump”, a generic term meaning get the scales. I had second look and with all the folds of the net I didn’t think it was that big, the conversation went like this;

 

Me: “It’s not a six”

Steve: “No but it’s a big chub”

Me: “It might make four so let’s pop it back”

Steve: “If that only makes four then I’ll eat my hat, look at the girth and then go get the scales”

Me: “Ok it’s a fat four maybe a five, let’s put it back”

Steve: “We’ve got to weigh it, I’ll keep it in the water, get the bloody scales will you”

Me: “Ok ok”

 

Steve kept it in the river until I’d zero’d the Reuben Heatons and was ready to weigh a good ‘five’. On it went and the needle bounced around between six & seven.

 

Both: “Feckin ‘ell we’d better check that they’ve been zero’d properly”

 

We did and after re-weighing the needle finally settled on 6lb 7oz, a PB by a country mile. Neither of us could believe our eyes, had Steve not insisted that we weighed the fish it would’ve gone back without a photo as just another good chub.

 

Steve was as happy as I was, a plan had come together and it didn’t matter who’d caught it;

 

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I was and still am made up for you great fish mate and i am sure there are bigger ones in there

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