Farleigh Hungerford

Greenheart · #1 08-22-2010, 06:05 AM

Had a days fishing on the River Frome at Farleigh Hungerford with Banana Steve yesterday. Got to the river about 9am, to find it was almost like a canal with hardly any flow. We were the only anglers there, so had our pick of all the best pegs. We both selected pegs at the lower end of the Airsprung club water near the swimming club. I chose a chubby looking swim with lots of far bank cover & steve opted for a swim called the Bream Hole.

A couple of views of my peg...

I was after a few more species for the species hunt & was hoping for Pike, Dace & Eels. I catapulted a few cubes of luncheon meat, some maggots & a few mini pellets to the far bank bushes & cast out a ledger baited with meat to see if I could tempt one of the resident chub. Steve, using siilar tactics further upstream, had a chub first cast. I tried this tactic for about an hour & kept a steady trickle of loose feed going in. After a while I noticed some good size fish taking the maggots that I was loose feeding, so I rigged up a waggler float set about 2' deep & cast it tight to the far bank. First cast, & I was into a nice dace....

This set the pattern for the next few hours with some very good dace. I kept a small dace back as pike bait & set up a light pikefloat outfit, which I positioned just off the nearside lilly pads. Steve was doing well & called to me that he had had a few chub, a Bream of about 5lb & a very good roach. After a while, I had a run on the pike rod, but I missed it on the strike. I repositioned the pike bait & then continued to try for chub & eels on the ledger rod with maggot for bait. Soon I had another run on the pike bait which resulted in this fine stripey....

Not my target species, but a good fish non the less.
I had several more runs on the pike rod & even had the bait bitten in half, but was unable to connect with any of them. We fished on until 4pm, then called it a day. I was dissapointed not to get a chub (Unusual on this water) or pike, but we still had a good day. Steve took a few more photos that i'm sure he will post later.