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A grand day out


Rusty

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River Kennet, Newbury, Sunday 19th February 2012

 

If you haven’t yet read Chris Plumb’s account of his fantastic day I suggest you do before you read this somewhat more humble tale.

 

A couple of mere mortals presented with an entire lower beat of an iconic fishery with nobody else there, blimey this was a bit daunting. I‘ve been on a few of these days out now and whilst I have some [limited] knowledge of the upper beat I’ve never fished downstream. I was in two minds about it to be honest, if I’m fishing somewhere new I like to see all of the venue and if it’s a big place (this is) I usually spend more time walking than fishing. But you have to get the ‘first time’ out of the way so our plan was to head downstream for a morning’s trotting and then to the backup swim for the afternoon/evening session.

 

So, with some guidance from the Riverkeeper, which included a request to avoid the carriers and stick to the main river, we toddled off and tried to get our bearings. The beat was interspersed with a large number of pools created by shallow steps in the river bed, every pool looked inviting and every next pool looked even more inviting. That was the problem, I was like a child surrounded by half opened Christmas presents and never really fished any one spot properly. We were, however, making headway in terms of recce’ing the venue so we carried on until we got to the lower limit. On our way we passed a now almost unrecognisable APFA swim. ‘Poacher’ Yates emerged from the trees here;

 

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And Bob James unleashed a catapult full of maggots from here’ish;

 

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We then retraced our steps upstream via another series of inviting looking pools all of which probably held fish but none of which were fished with any conviction (by me anyway), there was still a lot more to see. Arrival at a fishing hut prompted the need for a lunch break so the catering kit was broken out and the kettle boiled in some of the most comfortable facilities we’ve ever experienced;

 

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The hut (right of picture) overlooked this pool;

 

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Lunch over and Steve decided to try for pike on a reed lined section near the hut. I wandered off to the jungly upper limit of the beat not frequented by the fly fishermen. This was the warmest time of the day and highlighted the shortcomings of my one piece suit. It’s a bit all or nothing, if the weather turns warm I can’t really take it off and carry it about…so I sweated…a lot. That little jaunt took me another hour and I’d had enough of walking by the time I got back to the hut. The mission had been accomplished though, now that I’ve seen all of the main river (though not the carriers) I’ll be in a much better position to fish the lower beat next time.

 

So back into the cars and off we went to the afternoon’s location. Here I was keen to fish into darkness as last time out I’d had to call it a day just when the fish were starting to feed again, this time I had isotopes fitted to the quivertip so I’d be able to see what was going on. I’d be fishing bread/mash for chub and Steve set up downstream with a deadbait out for pike and lobs for perch.

 

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Steve was into fish first, chub not pike or perch. Quite surprising this and it didn’t fit with my previous daytime experience at this swim;

 

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A short while after he caught another chub on the lobs;

 

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This pattern continued for most of the afternoon, regular fish for Steve whilst only twenty yards further upstream nothing was bothering my bait. We concluded that they were probably being tempted out from under the railway bridge and once they discovered Steve’s bait they felt no need to travel any further. They didn’t know what they were missing, my lovingly hand crafted mash was much nicer than his smelly old lobworms…..hang on a minute they were my lobworms!

 

It was a slow day at the office, I called Chris to see how he was doing and that just made things worse. In my left ear I had Chris telling me about monster chub & dace and in my right ear I had Steve shouting “another one”. Meanwhile my quivertip sat motionless…..I took some photos to keep myself busy;

 

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We’re not sure how many chub Steve caught but it was constant action with the largest being an impressive fish of 4lb 10oz (pic on his camera). Darkness then fell and all bites stopped, just at the time when my isotopes were earning their keep the fish either disappeared or stopped feeding. We carried on until about 6:30pm at which point thoughts of the long walk back and the frozen landing nets prompted an end to the day.

 

My meagre tally of two trout and one minnow was pretty poor but I visited a large part of the venue that I hadn’t previously seen, all useful information for next time. Whatever you catch it’s just not possible to fish this venue without enjoying the occasion hugely.

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Great day out Chris superb place ,You had a Chub from my bit mate you are going senile early lol .

I had a water Rail tread on my landing net by my feet before it realised i was sat there ,magic they are ubber shy birds.

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