Another one!
Entry posted by Rusty
9620 views
River Kennet, Newbury, Saturday 30th June 2012
This session was supposed to be a quick couple of hours relaxing in the afternoon sun so I could get back home to cook dinner, watch a movie and then enjoy the trauma of Andy Murray scraping through his tennis match (in typical Brit fashion). Two pints of maggots would be plenty, I’d even have some left for Sunday if the weather was going to hold up.
Same modus operandi as last Sunday, light end tackle for dace and if a barbel came along then all well and good, I started in the same swim trotting and feeding a fast narrow section. It wasn’t long before the dace arrived, not in great numbers but regularly enough to keep me interested, a few chublets made guest appearances along with a very welcome grayling. Most fish were coming from quite a distance away the reason being that my maggots weren’t getting down quickly enough in the fast flow, I was in fact getting the bites from the downstream CSAS club section. It was ok but not really the laid back fishing I wanted so after a short while I moved to the upstream fishery limit where I could plonk myself on the bank and soak up the rays.
This swim is more suited to the static bait approach, it’s slower, deeper and the riverbed is silt so not a good spot to wade. It’s very trottable from the bank but I haven’t previously had much success here, usually just minnows and the odd chublet. It is, however, away from the road noise and today it was real sun trap, in short a nice place to be so the fish potential took second priority;
The view upstream was even more inviting but on this occasion it was out of bounds;
So that was me happy, the feeding commenced, I sat down dangling my legs over the bank edge and sent the float down for the first exploratory trot. I then stood up with some urgency as something most un-dace like tore off with my hook in its mouth, it felt like a barbel and we played the usual tug’o’war for a couple of minutes before it decided to just sit there dead weight and do nothing. The slower flow in this swim helped a lot and allowed me to gently bring the culprit up to the net (which didn’t get swept away this time), the result was a very nice fish weighing 4lb 14oz;
On any other day that would’ve been the session highlight by a long way but a different kind of angling experience during the afternoon balanced things nicely. The dace were present in huge numbers and some were real clonkers, far more hours (and maggots) than I intended were spent on the bank catching this wonderfully spirited species. I rarely count the fish I catch, I tried today but lost count at about 30, I’d estimate that by the time I ran out of bait and packed up at 7:00pm I must’ve caught over 60 dace.
My evening plans were in tatters, the movie would have to wait, fish and chips would be dinner and there was no bait left for a Sunday session. Andy Murray didn’t let me down though, still playing at 11:00pm and by that time the result wasn’t in doubt.
Think I’ll take the motorbike out for a run today 
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