Your most memorable session...

[robtherake]

I remember one day on the Etherow when a mate and I shared a peg, standing in the shallows water at the head of a pool and trotting down. We were feeding maggots at our feet and holding the floats back where the bottom dropped away and catching quality roach every trot. They were hooking themselves against the tight line. The largest I had measured from the crook of my elbow to the tips of my fingers.

 

That's a helluva fish, Steve, even if - like me - your arms ain't too long!

[Steve Walker]

That's a helluva fish, Steve, even if - like me - your arms ain't too long!

 

A lean fish of about 15 inches - this scale would put it at or over the magic 2lb mark, the only roach I've had anywhere near that and I had neither scales nor camera.

[Chris Plumb]

This topic comes up quite regularly - my most memorable session is STILL 7th Feb 2003 - here's a little piece I wrote of that day which I first posted up here 3 or 4 years ago.....

 

You know its going to be your day when the first fish of the morning is a 2lb roach!!! And as I slipped the net under the Rutilus of many an anglers dreams I thought to myself - ‘well I can go home now - it won’t get any better than this!’ Will it? To tell the truth the redfin was an ounce under the magic mark - but the fact it was here at all was a minor miracle. I was fishing an estate on the Middle Kennet near Hungerford - ostensibly for the numerous grayling the water holds - but hoping for the occasional monster dace the water throws up from time to time. In 5 years prior to this day (& 6 years since) I’d never had a decent roach from the venue.

 

However, this was a day when everything about the conditions was spot on. If you could order a perfect winters day for fishing your request to Mother Nature may look something like this. Mild, with a heavy overcast cloud cover giving low light levels all day. No wind, rain or overnight frost and a maximum temperature of 12ºC. This to be the first mild day following a prolonged cold snap. The river to be full after a wet winter but sufficiently fined down after the last rains as to only have a tinge of colour - and definitely NO road salt in the water. 7th February 2003 was just such a day in West Berkshire.

 

Like many fisheries in this part of the world the venue is a series of mini weir-pools and carriers criss-crossing the flood plain. In the spring and summer it is the preserve of the dry fly angler with its well manicured banks and stocked rainbows. In the winter, grayling are the target - and mayflies give way to a loafer float and a ‘blow fly emerger’!! I had still to catch a 2lb Kennet grayling* - I'd got within 2oz of it - and this was the venue that provided it. In the winter there is no better fish to guarantee you sport than the Lady of the Stream - and on the Kennet there are few better waters than this one for consistently providing good catches of them.

 

Whilst it was grayling that first brought me to this lovely water its been the promise of something much rarer that has kept me coming back. These days my appetite for 2lb grayling is well satisfied by a couple of annual trips to the River Itchen. It is this venue’s propensity to occasionally throw a curve ball at you in the shape of a 1lb+ dace which now sets my pulse racing when I anticipate a day’s angling there.

 

As already mentioned this is a fishery of pools, glides and carriers, some so narrow you could jump across them from a standing start. There’s never much depth of water either, some swims may only be 18inches deep and 3 foot constitutes a hole! In the winter floods, one stream in particular attracts my attention. It empties into the main river Kennet and 100m upstream of that confluence splits in two - with both branches quickly terminating upstream in small plunge pools. Naturally they are gravel bottomed, lined with common reed and just occasionally and especially late in the winter they hold dace. In dry years the carriers hardly contain enough water to cover their backs and the streams are barren but when the Kennet is high and pushing through the dace see these narrow watercourses as sanctuary. I don’t know for sure but I suspect these waters may even be the dace’s spawning redds in such years. You certainly catch dace in spawning condition during the last month of the season - the females fat and pigeon chested, the males as rough as sandpaper.

 

And on this soft and benign February morning - it looked like a roach or two had joined them!!

 

I’d arrived before the break of dawn in order to get 2 cracks at these dace streams - the first and last hour of daylight being usually the most productive. As usual my eagerness at wanting to get started found me at the water well in advance of daylight and I was in the first swim at the top of the carrier some time before it was light enough to see my float. The plan was to fish the carrier down to the confluence with the main river then return to the top of the other arm and do the same. Tackle was a float rod and centrepin, small loafer float, a size 18 hook to 2.75lb bottom. I always travel light on such trips - so a bait smock full of maggots and pockets stuffed with bits of tackle means the only thing I carry from swim to swim is a rod and net.

 

I spent the time waiting for dawn looking at my watch - agonising at how slowly it appeared to run - knowing in 10 hours time it would be the complete opposite! I also trickled in a few maggots every couple of minutes until it was just light enough to prick one onto the hook and flick out my tackle into the head of the glide. At first nothing happened and I quickly got into a rhythm of casting, feeding and trotting. Sprinkling in half a dozen maggots every other trot through. I was just about to move down to the next swim when the float slid to the side and I needed no more than a check with my thumb on the reel to set the hook home. The fight was a curious one - too stately for a trout, not the bloody-minded doggedness of a big grayling, and too big for a dace, surely. I was just thinking chub (although I’ve never caught one of those here either) when those bright red fins broke the surface.

 

Big roach are so rare that the time from definitely knowing you’ve hooked one to having it safely in the folds of your landing net is always fraught. This was no different and being shocked at the first sight of it (and it of me no doubt) I subconsciously started to play it more cautiously allowing it a couple of quests for freedom into the reeds before it was thankfully coaxed out and into the waiting net. It looked all of 2lb - though only ever having caught one above that weight before I can hardly say my eye was in and I had to reluctantly agree to my scales recording of 1lb 15oz!

 

Next trot through produced a splashy rainbow trout of around 1½lb - and this was my cue to move downstream to the next glide. Here the carrier widened just a touch, the flow was slower and the depth a few crucial inches deeper on the far bank. With my Polaroid’s on and with the light levels increasing I could just make out some dark shapes drifting in and out of the reeds in the margins. These dark shapes were dace. BIG DACE.

 

The recollection of the next hour or so is now hard wired into my memory. My dairy entry for the day records that I caught exactly a dozen dace. All of them were over ½lb. Eight of them were 13oz or bigger and the biggest 3 went 1lb2oz, 1lb1½oz, and 1lb exactly. Three, 1lb dace in an hour’s fishing - unbelievable!!! The biggest of course was (and still is) a personal best - a fat pigeon-chested female that was 29cm in length. The second biggest was leaner yet 2cm longer - dace over a foot long - WOW!

 

At times the angling was almost of Mr Castwell proportions. Trot after trot the float dipped at the same place, a flick of the wrist set the hook and a huge dace was guided away from the main shoal to be netted, recorded and slipped back. In order to stay off the skyline the whole thing was done on my knees and I was almost glad when the bites eventually dried up - my back was killing me, my joints had seized and my leg muscles were in pain from lactic acid build up. How we suffer for our sport!

 

By now it was mid-morning and I gave the remaining swims down to the main river a cursory look before heading off to some of the faster stretches on the estate in search of grayling. Whilst the rest of the day was spent catching these lovely fish I had a sense that all I was doing was killing time waiting for dusk - and a chance to return to THAT swim! I dropped by it every hour or so to throw in a handful of maggots though every time I returned I couldn’t see any more darks shapes.

 

By 4pm having thoroughly enjoyed myself with the grayling - and having caught around 3 dozen to a 1½lb - I was easing my self back into position at the top of the glide. I didn’t start fishing immediately - contented my self with trickling in some maggots and peering into the clear water to try and make out if anything was showing an interest. Nothing - no shapes drifting in and out of the cover to sip in the free offerings not even a flashy trout slashing at some of my casters that were floating off downstream.

 

I started fishing - and was soon nothing more than an automaton as I cast and recast without the slightest indication on my float. I kept thinking I should try further downstream - after all I hadn’t really given those swims a proper go in the morning - but something held me to the spot. A sense that this swim wasn’t finished with me yet. Sure enough on something like my 28th ‘last cast’ the float gave a dragging type of bite - as if caught on the bottom. It took my consciousness half a second to realise that the float had passed that way a dozen times without incident and that this must be a fish!

 

The next 2 or 3 minutes happened in slow motion. The strike connected with something which at first just stubbornly held station in the current. Again my 1st reaction was ‘chub’ - I couldn’t dare to hope it would be another roach - because this was certainly bigger than my ‘prologue fish’. After about 30 seconds the stand off ended and the fish blinked first, turned and shot off downstream to the next pool. I was quickly to my feet following, ‘salmon angler’ style. Here the water was shallower and I could clearly see it WAS another roach - and a bloody big one to boot! Alas, the fish also got a good look at me and kept up its quest for the sea. Its at times like this you really appreciate the way the banks on these trout fisheries are tended - no obstructions - and it was simply a matter of getting below the fish and helping it into the net with the current.

 

I didn’t need the scales to tell me I’d landed my second personal best of the day. This roach was a bit of an ‘old soldier’ - a little lank and out of condition yet still managed to pull the needle on my scales around to 2lb 11oz. I reckon in its prime it could have touched the mythical 3lb mark.

 

And that was my last cast of the day - after all HOW could it have finished any better?

 

 

C.

 

*Caught a 2.01 & 1.15 from here in Feb 09...

[robtherake]

Hell, Chris, what a day! And so well written I was holding my breath. Just sensational.

[Ken L]

A good read Chris - and great fish.

[robtherake]

A lean fish of about 15 inches - this scale would put it at or over the magic 2lb mark, the only roach I've had anywhere near that and I had neither scales nor camera.

 

The variation in shape from water to water can be quite marked, I've noticed.

 

Less than a mile away from the water I had my lucky catch, there's a shallow pond where a fish of the same length would weigh a pound less.

[Guest redfin2]

And that Chris describes a perfect day in Angling terms, a beautiful Angling weather day in the midst of Winter, on a beautiful River, with some magnificent fish.

[Rusty]

I don’t think I’ve yet had my most memorable moment as far as fish are concerned, hopefully that is still to come.

 

There’s no doubt that the highlight of my angling life so far is my first visit to The Weedrack. On the day other more clued up anglers disappeared off to more productive stretches on the estate but I just wanted to see this place. The long walk fuelled the anticipation and when I arrived it was a quite surreal experience, everything was still there and I was on my own just soaking up the history. I might have had a couple of trots through but I didn’t really think about fishing the swim, being there was enough.

 

Anglers arriving at Redmire for the first time will understand how I felt.

[Tigger]

I don’t think I’ve yet had my most memorable moment as far as fish are concerned, hopefully that is still to come.

 

There’s no doubt that the highlight of my angling life so far is my first visit to The Weedrack. On the day other more clued up anglers disappeared off to more productive stretches on the estate but I just wanted to see this place. The long walk fuelled the anticipation and when I arrived it was a quite surreal experience, everything was still there and I was on my own just soaking up the history. I might have had a couple of trots through but I didn’t really think about fishing the swim, being there was enough.

 

Anglers arriving at Redmire for the first time will understand how I felt.

 

 

Sounds great Chris....I'd love to have been there myself, although I think I would have had a trott or two

I notice Chris Plumb visited (and has a pic of the swim on his blog) the swim where Mr James catapulted maggots at Yatsey for poaching.

Must be great to visit these places (especially if like me your a fan of passion)...ya jammy buggers

[Chris Plumb]

Sounds great Chris....I'd love to have been there myself, although I think I would have had a trott or two

I notice Chris Plumb visited (and has a pic of the swim on his blog) the swim where Mr James catapulted maggots at Yatsey for poaching.

Must be great to visit these places (especially if like me your a fan of passion)...ya jammy buggers

 

Tis on the same Estate as the Weedrack swim - nearly all of the Midwinter Madness episode was filmed on this one venue (all be it they control several miles of bank). The early sequences (weirpool and kelly kettle sweetcorn chub) are now on club water...

 

C.