The best day's fishing for ages

[Alan Stubbs]

My son is 21 this week and I have come down to Kent for the celebration. Robin introduced me to a work colleague at the hospital whose husband farms around Luddesdown and has the rights to half a mile of a tiny stream running through the fruit orchards and sheep grazing fields. It's hardly fished and we were invited down for the day.

 

From the outset, let me say that the company and scenery made the day, the fishing was sooooooo frustrating, thiough.

 

Through the polaroids, we could see huge shoals of roach and some far smaller shoals of bream. Having been told that it was a feeder stream running into the Swale at Faversham, I guessed it would have a reasonable flow. Mistake number one. Fishing with a centrepin is difficult when all the movement on the water is caused by the wind, and trotting simply wasn't an option- apart from which, the bites when they came were really delicate and a 3AA stick float simply wasn't sensitive enough.

 

However, the three of us had baited up around a dozen likely looking swims with liquidised bread or hemp then retired to the burner to cook breakfast. Keith disappeared for around 15 minutes and returned with his shotgun (it being the first day of the season) and his wife came out to take back a decent sized mallard for the price of a single shotgun cartirdge. To quote my son "Geez, Dad, she was swinging that duck like a b****y Prada handbag! I'll struggle to eat fowl again."

 

Having had 2 roach in 2 attempted trots with the 'pin, I stripped the rod down and replaced it with a fixed spool reel loaded with 4lb line. I used a 2BB loaded crystal waggler and loop-to-looped a size 18 hook with 2.2lb hook length material. My son used the same basic set-up but used a size 22 hook. Keith was essentially freelining maggot or breadpunch with a # 6 shot around 6" from a size 14 hook.

 

 

I rather let the side down as I have an old John Wilson Avon / Quiver rod which I was tempted to use, but as I never really got on with it, and I felt it was over-gunned for what we were doing, I settled for my TF Gear 13' Power Match rod. The error is that the rod doesn't seem to lend itself to fishing on such light hooklengths and small hooks, you have to be remarkably delicate to land small silver fish without bumping them off the hook. It took me a while to get used to the style of lifting into the bite - a simple upward flick worked really well once I'd worked out what was happening. Bite indication was either a drop-back or a twitch, but there were no aggressive takes. I lost count of how many fish I caught because I 'felt' there was something there rather than any visual indcation.

 

We saw a couple of carp of around 3-4lbs each rolling in the shallows on the far bank, but we couldn't entice them to come and play with us. Some of the crashing about was reminiscent of what Elton described as 'getting ready to get their fin over!'

 

We absolutely got overwhelmed by roach - we lost count after 85 fish in under an hour. Yes, under an hour. When my son started fishing under his feet, he had at leat 20 gudgeon going to around 4 ozs, as well as a couple of decent roach.

 

As the water warmed up and the hemp and bread kept going in, the fish came up in the water column and we shortened our tactics to suit. However, even though I fed sweetcorn along with the hemp, they wouldn't take sweetcorn hookbait. All the fish took either bread punch or maggot. As this stream is fished vary rarely, I was surprised.

 

I was surprised that we couldn't get any activity from the shoal of bream. I recall Budgie saying bream weren't fond of hemp. so we chopped some worm, and took some breadcrumb and fed a different swim within an underarm cast to where they were shoaled. Again we couldn't entice any action from them. I was also surprised that we couldn't catch anything other than roach and gudgeon, but frankly, we had around 40lbs of fish between us, and all 3 of us lost fish of over 1lb through our own fault. I'll just have to beg Keith's indulgence and get another go on what is certainly a lovely stretch of Kentish countryside.

[Dunk Fairley]

It's not often as easy as it looks like it should be, is it Alan? Sounds like a great day though, I'm very jealous.

[Alan Stubbs]

It's not often as easy as it looks like it should be, is it Alan? Sounds like a great day though, I'm very jealous.

 

 

Hi Dunk, I hope you're on the mend!

 

I have to say that I was getting really frustrated. I'm used to being out-smarted by fish, but when you know that there were two other species present - and probably perch and pike as well, I tried for the two I knew of using tactics recommended by writers I respect, and still can't get them to come out to play, it does get frustrating.

 

It raised several questions....

 

If there's a degree of cut on the surface due to the breeze, what sort of float would be best to use? I used an insert waggler on the basis that there would be less wind resistance. Even with the float shotted odem do that there was only around 5mm showing above the surface, there was almost no indiciation. The lift bite was the most obvious, but even that was a bit hit and miss.

 

Where were the predator fish? With that head of roach about, I would have expected to have had some interest from the perch. Even feeding maggot in, there was no sight of them.

 

Was I fishing tackle which was too heavy? I certainly thgught my rod was too strong for what I was catching.

[Neil G]

I'd like to know where the predators are as well....had a couple of really duff sessions recently.

 

I think it has something to do with the hig pressure, lots of sun/brightness and warmth of water.

 

Perch are notorious for liking low light conditions so dawn & dusk are probably your best bet with them.

[Tony U]

Alan

You could have skipped the fishing and come down to Faversahm to watch us perform at the Hop Festival

 

Sounds as though you had a great day Medwaygreen and I fish a small stream near Headcorn which sounds very similar and we generally find it fishes better in the winter when the levels are up, what Perch there are tend to show at Dawn and Dusk as pointed out by Neil.

 

Tony

Edited September 3, 2007 by Tony U

[Alan Stubbs]

Alan

You could have skipped the fishing and come down to Faversahm to watch us perform at the Hop Festival

 

Sounds as though you had a great day Medwaygreen and I fish a small stream near Headcorn which sounds very similar and we generally find it fishes better in the winter when the levels are up, what Perch there are tend to show at Dawn and Dusk as pointed out by Neil.

 

Tony

 

The nearest I got to you was Shepherd Neame's pub The Tudor ROse in Chestnut Street on Saturday evening with the kids and the owner. I mentioned the perch as there are a good deal of overhanging plantlife and the light level under there was poor. I really expected to have some interest.