On Sunday I drove up to the river Colne to Little Britain at the request of Hillingdon Council to provide coaching sessions on the river. This is usually a summer event but this year they wanted to hold an additional one in the winter. The format is similar to the days I do with the Environment Agency in that beginners book in and I give them a twenty minute taster session. This is much more challenging on a river than on the usual stillwater.
The weather was not kind and the river was quite low and clear but this could not be helped as the event was planned weeks ago so I did my best to try and show absolute beginners the intricacies of trotting a float, starting first with a whip then with a rod and one of those horrible closed face reels. To give these youngsters a centrepin reel would be a receipe for disaster.
Time after time various students trotted the float down the river without sucess so I set up a feeder rod and cast a maggot feeder upstream into the weir pool. Once the youngsters had tried trotting for a while I sat them next to the feeder rod whilst some one else had a go with the float.
The only fish caught by my proteges was a bream of about four pounds, which put quite a strain on the light feeder rod meant for roach and dace.
During the day one of the council staff showed me a picture of a fish he had caught from the same stretch a few days previously.
It weighed 7lbs 2oz and was caught on 2lbs 10ozs hook length - well done John!
The day ended in torrential rain driven by the high wind. How I’m looking forward to the summer…
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