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Frome Trip


Rusty

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River Frome, Friday 10th February 2012

 

At the risk of repeating the content of Chris Plumb’s blog here’s an account of our day out from my persepective.

 

The venue was to be a stretch of the Dorset Frome on the DDAS book, according to their website a total of 1600 yards in length. Apparently the river colours up very quickly after rain so whilst we had agreed on the 10th for the trip it was very much dependant on the weather during the preceding week. The weather gods were undecided; they held off the rain but threw snow into the equation so the issue became one of getting there at all. After a few “shall we, shan’t we?” e-mails we decided to go, if I couldn’t get to Chris’s it would only be the £7 guest ticket going to waste…plus a lot of disappointment of course.

 

I awoke at 4:00am on Friday to be greeted by very sub-zero temperatures and a two inch carpet of snow…bugger, it looked like my recent 4x4 tuition might come in handy, but I’d be driving a 2WD Fiesta. Oh well, I had to give it a try so an hour later I gingerly set off aiming for the nearest main road which, joy of joys, had been gritted. Apart from one ‘incident’ where I found myself overtaking a lorry on the A34 in a slushy outside lane the journey to Thatcham was ok, light traffic was beginning to disperse the snow. The fishing trip nearly ended though as I turned into Chris’s lane, I should’ve realised that this quiet side street would still be covered in virgin snow but I wasn’t thinking. As I turned left the car just slid across the road towards the opposite kerb, it stopped just before impact thank goodness but it gave me a real fright.

 

I’d made it and there was no reason why we wouldn’t now get to the river so off we went in search of a Little Chef nearer the venue. Just after seven breakfast was served and not long after that it was gone, we were going fishing and still had some way to go. It was 8:15am before we arrived at a river which looked in perfect condition;

 

Chris gave me some pointers as to where to fish as we firstly tackled the middle section. It’s not an easy venue but I was expecting to see some sort of activity in the ideal conditions, the snow had only just fallen and hadn’t had time to melt into the river so shouldn’t have affected the water.

 

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After a couple of biteless hours we moved to the winding top section where we ‘leapfrogged’ each other downstream until we got to the lower limit. We covered the whole section and whilst Chris had a couple of tiddlers and bumped a fish we didn’t locate any of the larger grayling, I didn’t get a bite at all;

 

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I was still hopeful of finding them somewhere and probably didn’t realise how dire the situation was until Chris decided to pitch up with the quivertip and feeder. Blimey this was certainly an event worth recording;

 

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I still had the lower section to try so I left Chris to hang his head in shame and went off exploring. This section was the longest and the most featureless, there was little in the way of cover and although the breeze was fairly modest the constant stream of cold air got to my fingers very quickly. I think I’ll call it The Wilderness;

 

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I wandered down to the lower limit half heartedly trotting on the way, I just wanted to see it all should there be another trip and once I’d done that I headed back to the car and put the kettle on. We donned our thinking caps and concluded that the only logical thing to do was to re-visit the swims where Chris at least had caught something, so back to the upper section we went for the last three hours. After a while the sun made a brief appearance, this was a welcome change and it coincided with the first ‘proper’ fish of the day, a beautiful 2 pounder;

 

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At last we’d found what we came for. It would be nice to report that the rest of the day was spent emptying the river but it wasn’t quite like that. Not long after Chris’s fish my float dipped where it had previously sailed through and I too was playing a stubborn grayling. It weighed in at 2lb 1oz so that was bragging rights with me then;

 

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The kudos associated with holding bragging rights wasn’t to last very long (I didn’t think it would), a few minutes later I was again legging it downstream with the net to land the largest and the last grayling of the day. It was obviously heavier than the first two and I wondered if Chris’s quest for a ‘3’ had ended but it came up four ounces short, still a magnificent fish though;

 

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It was the feistiest grayling I’d ever seen, these were the first four attempts at photographing it;

 

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It was all over in half an hour, a day that had been a real grueller ended with three fantastic fish. Bites then dried up but we were happy and Chris went back to try the middle section hoping for a last hoorah. I stayed put for a while but it wasn’t long before I was thinking about the long return journey so I packed up shortly after.

 

Thankfully the traffic was light on the way back and after dropping Chris off I arrived home at about 8:30pm. I was knackered, it’d been a 250 mile round trip and a 16 hour day but a very enjoyable day spent in great company, thank you for the invitation Chris.

4 Comments


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Well done mate seems like chris has invented the sport of Grayling jugling :lol: ,You resisted your normal chant of 2lb 1oz ...2lb 1 oz so as not to end up with egg on the face then..............................

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Great pics Chris. Thanks for being chauffeur and for the afternoon tea - was a godsend and resulted in me attacking the afternoon session with new enthusiam (and warmer hands). :D

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No PB's there John, mine's 2-02 (from the River Eden) and Chris's is 2-15. One of the reason's for the trip was to catch a '3'. The conditions suggested that we might be in with a chance but it just didn't work out that way, the three good fish all within half an hour, the rest of the day we struggled.

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