I have just got home from a great day’s coaching at Royal Berkshire Fishery near Windsor and even though I am dead on my feet I felt I should share our success with you.

The day started for me when I left home at 7.30 a.m. to drive to Slough to pick up one of my regular students, Aidan. The drive can be done in forty five minutes, traffic allowing. This morning it did no such thing, and it took me one hour and forty five minutes so I was knackered before I started. I picked up Aidan from his home on time, nevertheless, as I always leave plenty of time for such contingencies rather than let my students down and drove him to Royal Berkshire Fishery. There was a South West wind that was blowing onto the far bank of the main lake and we had no option but to fish into the face of it in order to be sure of catching fish but even this wind had a cold edge to it and the days fishing was far from comfortable.

Whist Aidan set up a twelve foot match rod with a waggler I chopped some worms and casters and added a little hemp and some very small pellets, I introduced this to our chosen swim with a small cup fitted to the end of an old six metre telescopic pole that I adapted for this purpose and then added half a cup of red maggots our chosen hook bait. I baited two areas of the swim, one straight in front of us, where I expected to catch lots of roach and one to our left very close in to the bank, which I intended to leave until the last hour or so.

I set up the waggler to fish just on the bottom with just two number eights below the float, a size sixteen hook with two red maggots completed the rig and Aidan’s first cast was rewarded with an instant bite which he unfortunately missed. The second cast had the same result but this time the fish was hooked and landed, a small roach which would prove to be the first of many. Encouraged by this I stepped up the feed and he got a bite every cast.

The shoal soon responded to the angling pressure and the bites slowed down but by the end of the session he had caught about twenty to just under a pound. Through out the day I continued to feed the margin swim with chopped worm and red maggot and finally in the last hour I set up a slightly more powerful rod with a four pound hook length and a size twelve hook. This rig consisted of a small waggler fished well over depth with an AAA shot fished on the bottom four inches from the hook which was baited with a small lob worm.

During the last hour we had several tentative tugs but no bites developed until I was putting the other rod away prior to packing up altogether, the float shot away and the strike was met with no resistance but he worm was still intact. I instructed Aidan to cast back to the same place and the float almost immediately slid away, he was rewarded with a spirited fight of a fine perch which weighed two pounds fourteen ounces.

Aidan with a big perch

A very fine fish and a personal best for Aidan, a very fitting end to a good day.

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