Some More Autumn Grayling? More Like A Spring Day!

[Catfish Virgin (Still!)]

Twiddler and I met up today to try for some grayling on the Lower Itchen Fishery (near Southampton). This stretch of the river is usually reserved for trout and salmon but opens it's gates to coarse fishing, particularly grayling, after October.

We had fished the venue back in February and although a few good fish were caught, it was heavily in flood. Determined to try it under decent conditions, I managed to reserve a couple of tickets and today was the day.

Very early on Claudia thought she'd "walk the plank":



But soon landed a very nice grayling of about 1lb:



I managed to get in on the act with a slightly bigger one:



We soon realised that although we could see quite a lot of grayling on the shallows, they were only really feeding in the deeper holes and depressions. Both of us could get plenty of bites on trotted maggot but kept "bouncing off" what felt like decent fish. This was very frustrating as it was clear they were in a feeding mood.

Another problem was the resident trout! Each "hole" seem to contain a few and although grayling from ounces to 1lb+ did show up, we both hooked several brown trout which quickly wrecked the tranquility!



Moving on and resting each area seemed to work. I had half a dozen brownies as well as four of the sea going version - the seatrout:



Later in the afternoon, my current run of good luck continued when I hooked a much bigger fish, which at first I thought was a chub, but turned out to be a huge grayling! After several nervous minutes I finally got it into the net and yelled (politely!) at Claudia to come and see! The scales came out and registered 3lb 5oz. It was certainly the biggest grayling I'd ever clapped my eyes on.
:



We both continued to hook, lose and occassionally land more grayling but as the afternoon was drawing to a close, I found myself attached to this little monster:



At 5lb 5oz it gave me a merry dance and a fine finish to the day.



I ended up with 28 grayling, 6 brownies and 4 seatrout (but who's counting ).

Claudia had a few (she wasn't counting ) and graciously conceded the forum grayling record to me!!

Another great day in superb company on a great little river.

[Fishing Forum Admin]

28 grayling, 6 brownies and 4 seatrout

Sounds a fab trip , great read and pictures

[fishypaul]

superb days fishing,well done both of you

[Wilza]

WOW! thats a lot of fish, Great fishing...

[Norfolkboy]

Some lovely fish there Neil, well done!

[perch_king]

well done all very nice fish there

[Vagabond]

Some nice fish there - well done

[Twiddler]

A great day fishing again and the fish were definitely playing, despite the clear sunny day and the low water level.

A great thanks to Neil for organizing the day for us and for letting me have another try to fish with his centrepin, which i manage to mess up in Claudia style as I was playing a fish and had a snap off

Next time bring one with a line guard Neil

It definitely takes skills and practice fishing with a centrepin......anyone got a cheap one for sale? pref with a lineguard

[Catfish Virgin (Still!)]

Originally Posted by Twiddler

another try to fish with his centrepin, which i manage to mess up in Claudia style as I was playing a fish and had a snap off

You did good Claudia

It was a decent trout that wanted to go downstream at a rate of knots that did for you.

[Twiddler]

Can someone confirm for me whether this is a sea trout please?
And I do apologies in advance for not having a unhooking matt underneath the fish, as in the hurry I forgot to pack it (methink I'm getting senile).....and I didn't want to walk all the way over to the grass bit as I wanted to return the fish back to the water a.s.a.p....it was a long stake to walk.