Predator Surprise
Entry posted by Rusty
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River Kennet, Newbury, Saturday 1st September 2012
What a strange day out this was, keen to get back into my normal fishing routine I decided to plan ahead and save Saturday for a session wading & trotting. The mild and overcast morning was perfect perch weather so as I tucked into a Sainsbury’s big breakfast I mulled over the options and decided to try for chub and/or barbel. The K&A canal would’ve been the best bet for perch but I didn’t really fancy competing with boats, cyclists and dog walkers so off to the river it was. And my word did the river look in good condition;
The chosen venue has produced good chub for me before but not so many over the past year, they seem to have gone elsewhere. I hadn’t fished this particular swim for a long time so there was a chance they’d come back but when I arrived the swim had changed. The feature which creates it had shed a branch, it was dangling in the river limiting how far I’d be able to trot a float, it was still worth a go though. Sadly the chub hadn’t returned but this was more than compensated for by the presence of dace, roach, gudgeon, grayling and perch…a real mixed bag all in the same swim. The best of the perch was this wonderful 2lb 8oz example, I thought it was a reasonable chub at first and then got all excited when I caught a glimpse of the fish in the clear water, it looked huge;
That was a cracking start to the day and I fished that swim for a couple of hours until bites dried up, still no chub or barbel though. Access to swims downstream had been improved by recent strimming so a short walk had me trotting a swim which has produced a barbel for me this season. Not this time though and after an hour or so of fruitless twirling I headed upstream for what was to be the most interesting period of the afternoon.
The intention was to round off the trip catching dace and although some did oblige the swim was quieter than I expected. The reason became apparent when a pike first bit me off whilst I was retrieving a dace and then made a grab for the loafer whilst I was retrieving double red maggot. I was to get my revenge though when said pike bit off more than he could chew, I’d hooked a dace (a good one ironically) and was gently winding in when there was a flash and the struggle took on very different proportions. Any number of events could have ended the fight, the pike could’ve let go, the 4lb hooklength could’ve parted or the size 16 hook could’ve lost its hold but none of these things happened. As the fish surfaced I could clearly see the hook/maggots nicely set in its top jaw right on its nose, this was good news for two reasons. Firstly it meant that if I was careful it couldn’t bite through the line and I had a chance of landing it, secondly if I did land it I wouldn’t have to be too brave with the forceps. It was bad news for the dace however, he was long gone I suspect being digested during the fight.
Luck was on my side today, everything held and a 6lb 14oz pike was scooped up in the net. Although the catch was a total fluke there was a certain amount of satisfaction in unhooking the fish, taking the photo and then watching it swim away;
Yet again the Harrison rod had impressed me, it was happy enough to catch small fish without bumping them off and yet when called upon to deal with something bigger it had the backbone. All of this using ‘no stretch’ braid, just brilliant.
After that the swim was a bit bereft of dace, obviously a very sensible species. I carried on for a while and had another creature from the deep slash at my float but didn’t hang about to find out if it was another pike or the same one, I’d been lucky once and didn’t want to push it.
So six species caught in 200 yards of water, had my target fish co-operated it would’ve been eight, add a troot for nine. There can’t be too many rivers offering such variety on the same day.
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