Penultimate Day - sneaked a few hours in!

Catfish Virgin (Still!) · #1 03-13-2009, 08:52 PM

Friday 13th March - Last day but one of the coarse river season.

So, a day off work and down to the Dorset Stour. Trouble was, the river levels had been up and down like a yoyo and it still held a lot of colour. Not ideal but maybe those big Barbel would oblige?

I headed for what I hoped would be a quieter area but even getting down there for 7am was a bit late as there were plenty of people about!

Couldn't get anywhere near where I really wanted to and ended up fishing for about 5 hours on the feeder in an area I wasn't really confident in. That resulted in "itchy feet" and frustration and me packing up at about 2:30pm.

But, having stopped off and chatting to my mate Roger (who was catching some decent Dace), I decided to tackle up again in a likely looking trotting swim below the main road bridge. Good decision!

Within 10 minutes I was into a good fish on the float which turned out to be a superb Roach of 1lb 10ozs (doesn't look that big in the photo but it was a stunner of a Roach):

I then had a succession of quality Dace and was really enjoying trotting with the centrepin. About an hour after starting, I hit a decent fish which i thought was another Roach. But when I drew it up level with me, it decided to fight back somewhat harder and I realised it was probably a reasonable Chub. That "reasonable Chub" then rolled across the surface and revealed itself to be a "stonker".

I eventually slipped the net under it and on the scales it registered 6lbs 12oz!

Not a bad result considering I was supposed on my way home by then! No more Roach or Chub appeared but I did have quite a few more good Dace before I decided to pack up and drive home.

An excellent result after such a dour start.