Good Day/Bad Day

[Maceo]

Ahhh sated! After a couple of weeks when I've been unable to get out fishing, I had a nice session on the upper Thames yesterday, straight after dropping the kids off at school in the morning through until around 6pm. They had to walk home!

Decided on a different swim from normal since cows were loose in the field where I regularly fish. Not worried about them particularly, except when they decide to go for a paddle in my swim. This new swim looked good with a hawthorn tree on the right and plenty of bankside reeds on the left.

Now the school holidays are over, the boat traffic seems to have reduced a lot. Only saw about half a dozen all day. Plenty of leaves floating down the river which I reckon must have made my float blend in quite nicely, also gives a handy visual guide when you've snagged on the bottom - if the leaves are overtaking your float then something's wrong!

I'd borrowed a swing tip rod to try legering for the first time. Set it all up without problems with a maggot feeder and cast out a couple of times. The swing tip went crazy pretty quickly, but nothing on when I struck. I didn't like the enormous SPLOOSH! of the feeder when I cast it in and I didn't like the fact that it seems pretty much impossible to avoid peppering the river bank with escapee maggots between filling up the feeder and casting it out.

On the third cast, I chucked it so far it caught up in a tree on the opposite bank and then I broke the line trying to free it and watched it nosedive into the river with no line attached. Since I only had the one feeder with me, that was the end of that! I don't think I'll be in a rush to go back to that method to be honest. I miss the excitement of the float bobbing, dipping and diving.

Switched over to my favourite float rod and was pretty soon catching some quite reasonable roach and dace. However, while I was unhooking one, I managed to get the line between two of the rod rings caught in the hawthorn tree. It was too far out to reach the branch and break it off, so I tried tugging and pulling it. Bad decision. SNAP. Damn middle section of the rod splintered right along one side. Absolutely gutted!

The rod I'd been using for the legering was the only other one I had with me and fortunately the swing tip unscrewed. It was only 9 1/2 feet long though and felt tiny. Still, it was that or going home (about 10 miles away) for another rod. So I set up this little leger rod with a waggler rig and carried on fishing as best I could.

It was very important to have no loose line at all lying on top of the water, as I soon found out after trying to strike with this little toothpick and only succeeding in lifting 8 inches of loose line off the water and not even moving the float - far less the hook! Despite my best efforts I still missed plenty of bites like that. Over-compensating and striking too hard (with nothing on the end) meant I also lost one float and hook etc in the depths of the reeds.

Fortunately the fish were feeling hungry and I caught plenty of very nice roach, including 6 around the pound mark. Also there were lots of dace and one or two small chub. I used regular silver fish groundbait mixed with crumb, plus handfuls of hemp and then sweetcorn on a size 16 hook.

Nobody else was fishing there, yet again. It never ceases to amaze me that I enjoy this great fishing in splendid isolation. No doubt the expensive and over-regulated "goldfish ponds" down the road at Linear fisheries were jam packed. Even the bailiff didn't show up - he probably died of loneliness. Still, it's only £3 for a day ticket even when he does turn up.

It turned out to be probably the best day I've had down there so far. Caught around 40 fish in total and the net weighed 19lb 5oz at the end. Biggest roach was 1lb 4oz, which is also a new pb by 2oz! I'm sure there's even bigger in there though.

Probably missed a few bites at the end watching two hot air balloons fly directly overhead at about 50 feet high.

A very nice day and a brilliant session, marred only by snapping my favourite rod. Still, I've just ordered one of those Maver Abyss 13ft match rods from Mullarkey's for £20 - seems like a real bargain.....

[chris.oldgit]

apart from the damage sounds like you had a great day well done

[BoldBear]

Nice to see that the upper Thames still produces some good fishing.

Great report, sorry to hear about the break in your favourite float rod.

[chazyboi]

great read with all the highs and lows of fishing lol

[northern eye]

Brilliant!!...'the bailiff probably died of lonelyness'...made me chuckle this morning that did. Sounds like a perfect days fishing, apart from the rod incident - The Maver rods probably a good replacement though. Feedering is a great way to fish once you get the hang of it, I would use a quiver tip rather than a swing tip and cast underarm to prevent launching to the far bank. If your using maggot feeder and they are escaping, tape over some of the holes with insulating tape and they will release slower.

[chris.oldgit]

Or as an alternative to northerns suggestion, feeders come with in variations, ei: fast, medium, and slow feeders, holes being smaller on each, for feed rate, some of the very slow feeders, have only a few small holes, when you reel in,some still have maggots inside.

trial and error will will find the correct sized one for the venues you fish.

[LittleFish]

Originally Posted by chris.oldgit

Or as an alternative to northerns suggestion, feeders come with in variations, ei: fast, medium, and slow feeders, holes being smaller on each, for feed rate, some of the very slow feeders, have only a few small holes, when you reel in,some still have maggots inside.

trial and error will will find the correct sized one for the venues you fish.

Chris does it make a difference if the holes have any hair round them?

[chris.oldgit]

yep it makes it easier for the maggot to drop out, especially if its greased.

[Maceo]

I think I might try the feeder again in the colder months, when hopefully the bleak will have disappeared. There are so many bleak in there that maggots just don't work, either on the hook or the feeder. I'm certain the indications I was getting were bleak - mainly because the tip was shaking so wildly and there was nothing both times I struck.

Even when I'm fishing with corn, I've learned to pretty much ignore the wild bite on the drop, just after I've cast in, because it's sure to be bleak attacking the float or the shot. The bites are different from the other fish - wild and very quick. When I chuck a bit of bread in, the water absolutely thrashes with them! You can even see two or three of them chasing the bait through the water as you reel in.

They don't seem to like corn though, or maybe it's too big for them, so that's what I use on the hook almost exclusively (tares are the only other bait I've found that seems to be bleak resistant, although also resistant to other fish too so far unfortunately).

Has anyone got experience of fishing somewhere like this with lots of bleak? Is it true that they disappear in the winter months? If so, that's going to allow me to vary the tactics a bit.

There's various mutterings about barbel being in there and there must also be bigger chub than the ones I've been catching so far. There's some overhanging trees on the overgrown far bank (including the one I cast my last feeder into of course!) which I'd like to fish under and legering is about the only way I can think to do that.

Good advice about taping up some of the holes on the feeder by the way. I'll definitely look for a small holed version and perhaps even try taping up some. At one point after I'd filled the feeder up and swung it back to cast the hook caught up round the feeder body and while I fumbled fixing that the maggots were gleefully escaping in all directions. I didn't have a

I'll also cast underarm in future as suggested. I've also calibrated my power levels a bit more accurately! All those years of casting light floats and a couple of No.4s meant that I mentally equated getting it anywhere near the other bank with giving it as much welly as humanly possible.....

[chris.oldgit]

From your discription you have just given in your last post, it is possible that they are chublets initially, but when settled, and the tip dancing on the rest, appears to be signs of barbel, try fishing with a good bed of hemp, at ieast a pint when you arrive, set up tackle, then try a very large feeder, with the bottom holes taped halfway up the feeder, there is one feeder a beige/pinky colour almost flat 2"x1/2"x 3"long, which would work well in this situation, fill 1/2 the feeder with maggot then top up with casters, fish 2/3 casters on a size 14 hook, over the hemp, dont put any more hemp in at this stage, fish for 1/2 hr, before firing out more hemp/casters, keeps the fish feeding on the bottom.
try to select a peg slightly downstream of where you feed, cast underarm upstream to the hemp, set into rod rest, wind down until you have a bend in the quiver tip, and wait, when the tip straightens (drops back) lift into the fish, dont strike,should a barbel take, normally the tip is wrenched around.

hope this helps