Numpty Boaters and Ducks

But no fish!

Home Park again, this time for a serious attempt at establishing a PB for Chub.

Condition's weren't too bad although the river was still a bit on the high side and pushing through, it was more the time of day that wasn't ideal, given the choice I've fished from late afternoon til dark but a morning til midday'ish session was the best I could manage.

6 hours and nothing, ledgered bread crust, flake and luncheon meat all failing to generate anything more than the odd knock on the quiver tip despite being placed beneath the branches of an overhanging tree in what looked like a classic Chub swim.

Twat in a tree!

The only event of sorts was some numpty managing to drive his boat right through my swim no more than five feet from the bank before getting it stuck in the same tree my bait was sitting under and spending the next ten minutes trying to dislodge it! Not surprisingly i didn't have a touch after that so packed up and went home.

Happy days!

A week to the day later and I'm back on the Thames for another pleasure session.

The plan was to try out the Korum 4000 Feeder Reel I'd bought recently, the first I've ever owned with a baitrunner facility and at the same time practice my casting to a clip technique which was frankly non-existent.

Peg 5 on the Home Park stretch this time and following torrential overnight rain, which had thankfully stopped just after I arrived at 8am, the river was pushing through more than I'd hoped.

I set up an Avon rod with quiver tip, 30g cage feeder with 10lb main line line straight through to a 15 inch long 4lb hook length and a size 14. After a couple of practice casts it was clear that more weight was needed to hold bottom so i swopped the 30 for a 60g, the heaviest I had and set about developing my casting technique only to find that even when packed with groundbait I still couldn't hold bottom so dispensed with the line clip and settled for trying my best to hit the same spot each time.

Groundbait was a 50/50 mix of a proprietary Bream/Barbel brand the name of which escapes me and Vitalin that had been put through a blender until it was a fine'ish powder, to this I added a few sweetcorn kernels that I'd doused in paprika and left overnight. Hook bait was one fake floating sweetcorn kernel and one real one.

To my surprise I felt confident using the fake kernels, a few years back I'd have laughed at the idea but here I was using them and fully expecting them to do the business.

Between around half eight and ten o'clock every cast led to a bite and while not all of them developed enough for me to hit them it wasn't long before I'd had four or five good Roach in the 7-12oz bracket, a couple of Chublets, a single Dace and one small skimmer Bream.

The other side of ten I had a few knocks but no more so stuck it out until around half twelve and then called it a day.

As with any session a few lessons were learnt, not least that I need to get a few heavier feeders, casting to the clip is probably best practiced on a stillwater and that my new reel was all that I'd hoped it would be.

And with two pleasure sessions under my belt I'm now ready to get back to setting all those new personal bests! The question is which one do I aim for first?

A New Dawn

Following a break (for all sorts of reasons) the enthusiasm finally returned and it wasn't long before I'd found a suitable club and was back on the bank.

Old Windsor Angling Club (OWAC) are a long established small and extremely friendly club affiliated to the Thames Valley AA (TVAA), Reading & District AA (RDAA) and the Basingstoke Canal AA (BCAA). Their own water is a stretch of the Thames that runs along Home Park in Windsor in the shadow of the castle, this and both the TVAA and BCAA waters can all be fished for an annual membership fee of just £35.

River Thames - Home Park, Windsor

The first day of the 2016/17 season I opted for Home Park with the intention of spending a few relaxing hours just getting back into things and as there's nothing I enjoy more than running a stick float through a river swim that's how I kicked off. Nothing complicated, 3lb main line straight through to a size 18 with red maggot and/or caster (occasionally both) on the hook and loosefed with a few grains of hemp.

With more than 14ft of water under the rod tip and a 13ft rod I'm not sure I ever got a bait down deep enough but it was good fun nonetheless with a few decent Roach landed along with a dozen or so Dace and the odd Bleak.

Weather wise it was a pleasant 17 degrees with a light wind and thankfully no rain although when I called it a day around 8 o'clock the heavens were about to open. 

All in all a thoroughly enjoyable eight or so hours fishing.