The Fishing Coach

Still no rain! So I decided to go to the Timsbury stretch of the river Test, another trout, fly-only stretch that opens in the Autumn for coarse fishing.

I went with a good friend Chris Clark who is familiar with the fishery but we found the river low and clear. Big roach were the target but we knew they were unlikely to show until dusk in those conditions. We moved about all day fishing mostly with bread flake or maggot. I caught a few trout, some grayling and a few small roach. Lots of carp were moving but were very easily spooked. As the sun started to go down I was fishing small pieces of bread flake on a link ledger with two and a half pound line, during the day I had put some hemp and liquidised bread into a likely looking roach swim intending to leave it to last light. I moved into this swim for the last cast of the day and the quiver tip pulled slowly round. The strike was met with a solid resistance that moved slowly down stream, the fish turned easily under pressure and I started to think it was a bream. Then it realised it was hooked and took thirty yards of line against the slipping clutch, thank God for a front drag Shimano. Being a chalk stream trout fishery the banks are manicured and all the fallen branches and other snags are removed by the fishery staff, so I was in no danger of losing the fish unless I did something silly.

The assistant bailiff arrived, picked up my landing net and asked if I would like him to net the fish for me. I told him I would rather net it myself and that the fish was nowhere near ready yet. Either he did not hear me or thought he knew best but he continued to hold the net in the water for the next ten minutes. I was too busy playing the fish to worry but when the fish swirled in front of me, he lunged at it. I again told him to leave the net but he must have been deaf as the next second he had the fish in the net and was in danger of breaking my landing net pole by trying to lift a very big fish straight out of the water. I then shouted at him to stop, dropped the rod and took the net from him. I gently lifted the fish from the water by the net frame and saw the outline of a fin perfect mirror carp. It weighed thirteen pounds four ounces. Not bad on two and a half pound Maxima.

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Where’s the bl**dy rain? The experts on global warning warned us to expect warm, wet winters - ideal winter barbel fishing weather. The Thames has been producing some big barbel around Hampton Court but only at night and then only to carp tackle with halibut pellets. Not the type of fishing I like so I have been driving back and forwards to Southampton to fish the Itchen for Grayling but the big ones have failed to show yet. I don’t think I have had more than one two pounder on the float all season. There’s a lot to this sport we don’t understand but I suppose that’s what keeps it interesting.

One day I decided to try for the big chub which are difficult to locate so I set up a feeder rod with an open ended feeder to fish with liquidised bread or minced beef. Bread flake and rump steak were the hook baits on five and a half pound hook length. The flake proved irresistible to every trout in the river and I even caught a brown trout that would have weighed four pounds if I had weighed it. (Closed season, put ‘em straight back, let ‘em grow for the fluff chuckers.)

I went onto a deep bend that has produced big chub in the past and tried mince in the feeder and a piece of rump steak about the size of the top of my thumb, on a size six hook.

The first bite produced the biggest grayling of the season at two pounds thirteen ounces and the second bite from the same place resulted in something I could do nothing with. This fish just kept to the deep water and resisted my efforts to gain line, I applied as much pressure as the tackle would allow and began to gain a little line. Suddenly in the shallows at my feet was the biggest eel* I have ever seen, I would estimate it as being over five pounds but by how much I wouldn’t like to guess. As I stood there wondering how I was going to get this into my landing net the eel solved my dilemma by bolting into the dead, broken down reeds at my feet and parting the hook length. I was left with a mixture of disappointment and relief as I was ill equipped to do battle with such a creature on the bank.

* just kidding

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