Yesterday I went to the river Kennet for the second time this season, it is nearly an hour’s drive and so I don’t go as often as I should. I fished the beat just upstream of the Row Barge pub on the Wasing Estate, the weather forcast promised heavy showers and I wanted to be near the car. My favourite swim on this beat involves standing in the water and trotting a float along the edge of the far bank bushes and although I have caught lots of roach and dace from this swim I have never had a barbel from it. I set up a light match rod with my light weight J.W. Youngs Purist in order to try for the roach and dace. During my last clear out of the bait freezer I found a tub of frozen ready cooked tares (some of my pupils are younger than these tares) and I decided to start with them as hook bait. I fed some hemp with a few tares mixed in and continued to loose feed whilst I set up the heavy float rod, which also doubles a a bait dropper rod. With the bait dropper I put some of the hemp and tares mixture on the bottom about half way down the swim and added some casters for good measure.
On the light rig I put on a wire stemmed avon float as light as I could control in the current with a 2 gram olivette about 18 inches from the size 16 Drennan carbon Chub hook, nine inches above the hook I placed a no. 6 shot as a “tell tale”. I plumbed the depth roughly and then had three or four trots through without bait to find the various depths in the rest of the swim. I had difficulty in finding a tare firm enough for a hook bait and I can’t remember if I cooked this batch to long or perhaps the freezing process had softened them, but this was to plague me for the rest of the morning. On the first trot down the float buried and I swung in a small gudgeon, a good sign that my bait was near the bottom and the next three or four trots were spoilt by small fish breaking up the hook bait on the drop .
I replaced the no. 6 tell tale with a no. 4 shot a little closer to the hook and I stared catching roach and dace, four of these roach were over a pound and were young fish with plenty of growth potential. Let me explain what I mean by that last statement.
Some roach when they reach about a pound have started to become thick set in the body and already have that stocky appearence of big roach, giving them a different body shape from their smaller bretheren. These Kennet fish were just a larger version of their of their two and three ounce cousins I was catching from the same swim and had the look of freshly minted coins, they have a lot of growing ahead of them. After a couple of hours I was running short of hookable tares and switched to casters. Lots and lots of tiny chub, small roach and dace followed but often the casters were being shelled before they got a foot below the surface. I rested the swim for an hour after putting in some hemp, casters and assorted pellets with the bait dropper and started trotting a banded pellet on the heavy rod. This produced a further one pound roach but they are not much fun on an 8 pound hook length so I don’t count them.
As evening came I put in a lot more hemp and pellet with the bait dropper and set up for barbel. Whilst this part of the Kennet is not as heavilly fished as the Reading And District stretches, the barbel are still wary of big baits even this early in the season, especially if they bump into a tightly stretched line nearby. To avoid this I use a three foot lead core leader with a one ounce coffin weight to pin down the top end, the rod is set up in the rests parallel to the bank and pointing at the bait, with one of my trusty centrepins as a bite alarm. This pins as much line to the bottom as possible to keep it out of the way.
At this point the Kennet is only thirty feet wide and I am fishing very close to the bushes on the far bank, there is a possibility of a large double figured barbel here and I wouldn’t want such a fish to get into the roots and may be become tethered there. I use twelve pound reel line and a ten pound hook length coupled with a very powerful but through action rod.
The bait was a hair rigged halibut pellet with some bloodworm pellet paste moulded round it to give an improved flavour leakage. I also put a PVA mesh tube, about the size of a tangerene, full of assorted pellets on the hook for added attraction. The first real bite, after lots of little tugs and jerks, resulted in the biggest chub I have ever seen shedding the hook just at the net. Yes I know we anglers are notorious for our “one that got away” stories but I am sure that this fish was nearer seven pounds than six and a half, I just stood there in amazement as it shook free of the hook and swum away. Bolt (or self hooking rigs) never work well on chub especially big ones. I shall be targeting this fish in the winter.
Just before dark I hooked my first barbel of the season, it was about six pounds( I only weigh exceptional fish as I like to get them back in the water ASAP). Two more fish followed the best being about eight pounds and I went home a happy man. I always forget after not catching barbel for a while just how hard they fight and why I like catching them so much.
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