On Tuesday I took Steve Gray from All Things Piscatorial to the Warren Beat on the Wasing Estate as a guest since he wanted to give the river Kennet a try. We met at Max’s cafe on the A4 and after a hearty breakfast we were on the river before 8 a.m.
The first swim I showed him was fast flowing and quite shallow but Steve had expressed a wish to trot a float whilst wading and I knew this swim would produce fish. His first fish was this tiny barbel, a real rarity, I think I have seen more ten pounders than fish this size.
We trotted for about an hour and both caught roach and dace and Steve caught another tiny barbel. I set up a light trotting rig as soon as the bigger dace began to show, three pound main line and a one and a three quarter pound hook length. I was smashed first trot down by what I assume was a big chub (well you’ve got to try) and changed up to a slightly heavier hook length. After we each caught more fish, mostly dace, the swim went dead and the bites stopped. I assumed that the bigger fish, perhaps even barbel had moved in and reached for the heavy trotting rod again.
One of my better decisions as this fish would have been a real handful in such a fast current on the light tackle I had been using. We then decided to move to another swim and loaded the rods still made up into my car for the journey.
In the next swim it was a fish every trot down until I over fed my swim in the hope of attracting some bigger fish. Steve, who was just downstream of me kept catching roach and dace but had a lot of trouble with pike who kept taking his fish on the retrieve. He lost about six or seven but did manage a nice roach.
In desperation I tried laying on with a hair rigged 10mm Source boilie just under my rod tip and was rewarded with a chub of about three and a half pounds just before it was time to pack up.
As I was packing away my first rod Steve, who only had one rod to put away, finally landed one of his tormentors, not the biggest pike he has ever caught but he seems happy with it!
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