A View from the Water's Edge

[nursejudy]

[Chris Plumb]

Thanks for the kind words - Judy?

 

 

Chris

[Chris Plumb]

Two trips evening trips to the Kennet this week - both had remarkably similar outcomes...

 

A brace for Paul

9/7/03

1800 - 2300

It’s always nice to catch on your first trip to a new venue and Paul and I were both lucky enough to do just that! We were fishing together for the first time since the opening week and we’d decided to have a try out on a stretch of river that the club are leasing for the first time. Access to the venue was locked during the close season so as we trudged toward the bank in sweltering heat we wondered what we’d find. Are hopes weren’t high. Reports that we’d gleaned weren’t very favourable - in fact quite the opposite - folks were struggling - big time! Yet when we saw the river for the 1st time our spirits soared. This looked VERY tasty - a deep pool on a bend preceded by a fast shallow. Paul and I nearly fought over who would fish it first!

 

Paul threw in some bait and we moved off down the fishery - he’d (we’d!!) be back!! The rest of the fishery was similar in character. Fast shallows, punctuated with deep pools. It looked fantastic. We set up stall with our match rods and centre-pins. Paul in a weir-pool. Me in a deep pool 50m below. With all the pessimistic reports we wanted to catch something. Sure enough we were quickly on to some fish. I had a dace and a chub which may just have reached a pound. Paul fared much better with a couple of dozen,- a real mixed bag of gudgeon, dace, roach, chub, perch - even a rudd - his first from the Kennet!

 

At 2000 Paul was on the move back to the baited pitch - I decided to stay put - I fancied my chances in the deep run in front of me. Within 10 minutes my mobile rang - I quite expected Paul to be announcing a fish first cast but alas it was to announce that another angler had dropped into ‘his’ swim. He was off downstream to another bend! 10 minutes later the phone rang again, yes this was a fish, 5½lb barbel first cast. An hour later and he had another a superb fighting fit fish of 8lb 4oz.

 

Meanwhile I was struggling. I was getting bites - plenty of them - from Crayfish! When Paul had proposed this trip he wanted to fish on till 2230. I persuaded him to extended this by ½ hour as I often get fish just as it gets completely dark. Sure enough at 2245 the rod bounced off the rests as a 4lb fish tore off with the bait. And I still had time to miss a couple of bites before packing up time!

 

 

Deja Vu

11/7/03

1900 - 0100

About the best that could be said for this trip is that I didn’t blank (just). The heat wave is continuing and the most remarkable thing about this trip was the number of fish topping and splashing - it went on ALL night. I suspect there may be low levels of dissolved oxygen in the river. We could certainly do with a bit of rain at the moment - whatever was causing it they weren’t interested in feeding. I had one bite all night - which mercifully I didn’t miss and which, in a complete copy to Wednesday came at 2245 and resulted in a 4lb barbel! I should have packed up there and then! Instead I persisted for another 3 hours with only bats crashing into the line to set the heart a-flutter!

 

 

Chris

[Paulg]

Really nice write-ups Chris.....can I make one suggestion? Post them as separates otherwise people on slow connections will have to scroll all the way throught the stuff they have already read?

 

And you forgot to mention that it was my first Barbel trip for two years....still smiling

 

Paul

[tim d]

great storys chris you got me wanting toget out there

[Chris Plumb]

A couple of trips to report on before I 'sign off' for a fortnight - off to Menorca tomorrow (without me rods )

 

A Plague of Bats!

 

17th July

1530 - 2330

 

I expect most of us have ‘Must-fish-that-someday-swims’, pigeon-holed away in our minds under ‘Looks Promising’ or ‘Has Potential’. This was a trip to fish such a swim. It lies 100m upstream from my favourite trotting swim on the whole Kennet and there-in lies the reason that I’ve never got round to fishing it! But this was also a session to use up a couple of pints of maggots that have been residing in the fridge for a while - before we go off to the Med. for our hols. So the first few hours were spent enjoyably catching dace galore, with some roach and 4 chub in the 2½ - 3½lb bracket - oh and a nice plump perch a little under 1½lb. At 1800 I broke off to bait the ‘Has Potential’ swim. Here the river exits a weir pool, narrows and funnels all the water into a fast, deep channel running along the outside of a gentle bend on the near bank. If such a swim had been illustrated in Mr Crabtree it would have had BARBEL writ large! Two pints of hemp and half a tin of meat are introduced with a bait dropper. The other half tin of bacon grill is flavoured with garam masala and would act as hook bait.

A couple of hours later and the centre-pin and Harrison have been packed away and I’m hunched expectantly over the quiver tip. I don’t have to wait long. A sharp ‘donk’ is met with a brisk strike and a small barbel of less than 2lb is brought to the net. A good start - lets hope his bigger brothers are down there! What happens next is quite unbelievable. There’s a small evening rise, and quite a few moths around and all of a sudden the air is thick with bats, swooping this way and that - gorging on the insect feast. The odd false bite from bats is to be expected but there were quite literally dozens - crashing into the line every few seconds making bite indication impossible. One even snatched a moth inches from my face. I was near enough to hear the ‘crunch’ as it snapped it up - I nearly wet myself!! The whole scene would have done justice to a Dracula movie.

After an hour or so the flying feeding frenzy abated and I was able to concentrate on the fishing again. I was getting a number of slow pulls and rustles which I couldn’t hit. I soon found out why. I put on a much smaller piece of meat and had a fish instantly, another small barbel - barely a pound - followed next cast by his twin. This was my last of the night - the fish obviously hadn’t been able to get the big lump of meat into their mouths - still it makes a change from crayfish!

 

Traditional Tench

 

23 July 0430 - 1300

 

Tradition dictates that the best time for tench is dawn. The determined tench-fisher should arrive at first light, and enjoy brisk sport until breakfast time. Well tradition cost me 4 hours kip this morning!! I arrived shortly after 0400. By 0445 my swim was raked and baited and I was peering into the gloom at my float. By 0900 I was still staring at it with only a few liners for excitement. In fact, by now I was convinced I’d blank. I’d seen tench - scurrying up and down the margins in two’s and three - obviously more interested in nookie than nosh and if they weren’t actually spawning yet they were certainly indulging in some energetic foreplay!

Another tradition is that raking you swim attracts tench. It takes a bit of courage to throw the rake out mid-session but it has saved me on more than one occasion - and was to do so again.

:cool: Out went the rake at 0900 by 0930 I had 2 tench on the bank! By lunchtime I had had another 5. Curiously, every one was a male - between 3lb and 4lb 11oz - maybe the females had ‘better’ things to do!

 

 

See you in August!

 

Chris

[Elton]

Chris,

 

Do you have these in Word, or similar?

 

I've been meaning to get in touch. As Julian will verify, though, I'm *extremely* behind in emails. The poor so-and-so volunteered to sort out a month's worth of Bob Nudd's answers for me today

 

Tight lines,

 

Elton

[Chris Plumb]

Elton - they're in Wordperfect 9. I'm leaving for Spain in a couple of hours - back on the 3rd August....

 

 

Chris

[Chris Plumb]

Mink, Mars and Meteors!

 

5/6th August 2000 - 0030

 

Back from me hols only to find that temperatures in England are 10ºF higher than where I’ve just left in the Med! So, in the absence of an air-conditioned bedroom an evening spent by the river was most attractive! And what an evening. A warm breeze to keep off the mosquitoes, shirt sleeves at midnight with the temperature still at 76ºF - quite delicious to be out under the stars.

To be honest, I didn’t really expect to catch much. However, the water thermometer registered ‘only’ 69ºF which gave me cause for some confidence and sure enough less than half an hour after casting out a couple of quick ‘donks’ are followed by a slow pull and a very lethargic 5lb barbel is quickly netted. In fact the fish was practically comatose until it was in the folds on the net and then suddenly woke up and thrashed the water to a foam.

I had to wait 2 hours for my next bite. This was preceded by a convoy of mink swimming under my rod tip. A mother and two kits, swimming nose to tail - a most unwelcome sight. I haven’t seen mink on this stretch for 4 or 5 years - there has been a campaign to remove them from the Kennet Valley and water voles have returned as a result. This family has obviously escaped the purge!!

1030pm and I’m quietly slipping into dream like state when the rod leaps off the rests. A classic barbel bite and I’m into a fish which fights in long, slow, ponderous surges. It stays deep - and has all the hallmarks of being a really good fish. I’m disappointed then, when it eventually surfaces - no double but a fish in the 7-8lb bracket (it weighed 7lb 10oz). Fish this size usually charge around like teenagers having a tantrum - in fact often giving a better scrap than doubles - maybe the heat had got to this one too.

This fish sees the start of an hour when I’m plagued with little pulls and taps. I suspect crayfish but the bait comes back un-molested. Eventually, at around 1130pmthe mystery is solved when I catch a bream of around 5lb. I suspect I’d been suffering from liners.

By now Mars has risen in the south-east - it is un-missable, like a drop of blood on the horizon. This month sees the red planet at it’s closest to earth for 50,000 years and before packing up I was privileged to witness another celestial treat. A shooting star - and a really bright one streaking over my head and reflected in the water between my isotopes. An early Perseid meteor no doubt, it underlined a really pleasurable evening.

 

Back to the Future

9th August 0500 - 1000

 

And so to a lake I hadn’t fished for 20 years. A pit I’d dismissed in my youth as too difficult after a succession of blanks, and which I’d never quite got around to re-appraising. What prompted a visit this year was tales of large crucians being caught. A species I didn’t even know was in the lake!! A fish of 3lb 12oz have been taken this earlier season - THAT certainly aroused my interest!

The current heat wave was probably not the best conditions for my first visit since 1981! But I reckoned first light would give me the best chance. My swim looked promising with lots of tenchy looking bubbles but an hour and a half of floated fished bread produced no bites. That soon changed when I switched to a small piece of meat - a brace of tench in the 2-3lb bracket the result. But I was really here to try for the Crucians so I switched again to red maggot - a bait that has produced a lot of Crucians for me on other waters.

The switch however simply produce more tench. Another brace, bigger than the first 2 was followed by a 3lb bream. By 0930 though things went very quiet. The heat was already sweltering and within the hour I was packed up and ready for home. Pleased that I hadn’t blanked and eager to return.

 

 

Chris

[Apache]

quote:

---

This was preceded by a convoy of mink swimming under my rod tip. A mother and two kits, swimming nose to tail - a most unwelcome sight. I haven’t seen mink on this stretch for 4 or 5 years - there has been a campaign to remove them from the Kennet Valley and water voles have returned as a result. This family has obviously escaped the purge!!

---

I have seen several mink on the Kennet and the Loddon Chris. I have also shot one or two trying to half-inch my kois out of my pond!

 

Good reading keep it up mate!