Until next Winter

Entry posted by Rusty March 12, 2012

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River Kennet, Newbury, Sunday 11th March 2012

Well this was it, our last chance to fish this estate water for some months. On previous visits we’d spent a lot of time roaming about exploring and (it has to be said) not doing an awful lot of fishing, this time we decided to pitch up in one spot and chill out for the day. Steve’s barrow proved invaluable as we loaded up enough gear to cover most options, the chairs, cooking facilities and food were all piled on before we then made our short way to a swim where we’d be setting up base camp. I knew it was a reliable chub swim and Steve had lost a decent pike there a couple of weeks ago so there was some logic behind our choice.

Steve launched a deadbait into the water almost as soon as we’d arrived, I hadn’t had a chance to wet a line or even get the kettle on before his float bobbed under. The frozen sardine was definitely dead so we knew it couldn’t be that and it was unlikely that a perch would’ve taken a bait that size so as he lifted into the bite and felt resistance we both hoped that it was the lost pike of two weeks ago. It wasn’t but it was a very good start to the day, there was some confusion over the weighing procedure so we’ll call it a ‘double’;

With a very distinctive growth on its lower jaw;

After all that excitement we got back to the more mundane task of setting up, cooking breakfast and brewing tea. I don’t think we’ll be in the running for the ‘Worlds Tidiest Anglers’ award this year but it was home for the day;

And the view downstream was stunning. The building on the left is the shooting lodge and is built on the site of the wooden cottage used by Messrs James & Yates in APFA, the cottage burnt down many years ago;

The morning passed pretty quickly, it was a lovely sunny day and sitting back waiting for alarms to sound or quivertips to quiver was the perfect way to spend it. A bit more action would’ve been nice but the odd trout made an appearance just to keep us alert. We found that fishing mid river with bread was asking for trouble, casting to far bank vegetation dramatically reduced the possibility of trout bites.

Late morning I broke out the trotting gear and went for a wander. Another advantage of having a base camp was that I could leave most of my gear there and just take the essentials…..bait, net, rod, camera and a small bag of bits was all I needed. First stop was this bridge. I’ve caught a solitary chub from under this bridge before and I wondered if it was his place of residence;

I think it may be because after a couple of trots though I caught him again and, as previously, that was the only bite from this swim. He hadn’t put on much weight though, still about 2½ lb. I continued meandering upstream stopping by this delightful pool for twenty minutes of roach catching, small roach catching but still very entertaining;

The view upstream from there;

Once bites dried up I carried on eventually arriving at my destination, another small pool known to contain dace. Apparently it also contains roach and chublets because I spent the best part of an hour playing “guess the next fish”. Trout bites were minimised by keeping the float to the sides of the pool but I couldn’t avoid them completely and a couple of brownies in consecutive casts eventually called time on this great mini session. I made my way back to base via some very picturesque stretches of the Kennet;

It was lunchtime, Heston Blumenthal’s cheeseburgers were on the menu and they were bloody good too. They’re not worth the full asking price but if you see them marked down in Waitrose grab them, they’re the best burgers I’ve ever tasted. A cup of tea later we settled down for the afternoon session, the chub had come out to play but were being very selective about just which bit of my hookbait they would take. Once they’d nibbled away the flaky bit of bread they ignored the harder pinched bit around the hook shank. It was infuriating, a fresh cast would produce instant finicky bites and then nothing, I’d then reel in to find a hard lump of bread still on the hook.

Hooking the bread in a different way helped but I still only landed three chub during the afternoon, a pretty poor hookup rate. Steve managed another smaller pike on the sardine during that time but the afternoon was more notable for two quite bizarre occurrences. Firstly an elderly couple on a quad bike trundled along the bank past our swim, we exchanged greetings and they motored off upstream. We assumed that they were prospective game syndicate members viewing the fishery, it seemed a plausible explanation.

Then we were ‘disturbed’ by two kayaks passing through our swim. The paddlers politely slowed right down but made no attempt to engage us in conversation, we couldn’t think of a reason why they should be there. A phone call to the Riverkeeper confirmed that they shouldn’t be there, he did manage to catch up with them and offer guidance on Kennet kayaking.

Our afternoon at this venue just seemed to whiz by, I kept checking my watch willing there to be two hours of light left but gradually the sun got lower in the sky and we had to accept that the day was drawing to a close. And what a day it’d had been, pure enjoyment.