Blackberries and fish

The nice thing about fishing a local river is that it is not time-limited. By that I mean I don't feel that I have to spend many hours there to justify the expense. Today, was a last minute decision to grab a couple of hours on the local river. On reflection it was probably not the best time to go as it was mid afternoon.

We had been worried that there might not be any fish in the river after getting a call from a fellow angler last Sunday, who lives at the other end of the river (it is less than 3 miles long), saying he had seen a milky cloud making its way downstream. He was concerned that it might have been something nasty. Sue and I immediately set off to have a look at our end. The river was full of sediment and we could not see through it. I guess the heavy rain had caused the river to colour up. Although we could not see any fish, there was no sign of dead fish so we assumed whatever it was had not been detrimental.

We set up in our secluded spot by the willow with the fallen limb. Sue was feeding the swim with the usual peppercorn sized pellets of bread rolled in her fingers to make them sink. A few fish appeared and started feeding. Last week's fear of another chemical spill was now put to rest. Meanwhile I was fiddling about tying the rig to the flick-tip of my whip. This short 3m flick-tip whip is the prefect weapon for this small river, fishing from a very tight spot. Last time we were here I was just freelining and using a buoyant bead on the line just to give a small amount of indication - it seemed to work. This time I decided to use a small, short pole float with half the cocking weight directly under the float and the rest strung out shirt-button style down to a loop where the hooklength was attached.

I am now thinking the size 16 hook was probably too big but it was too late now, I had only bought a couple of identical rigs with me. Anyway, I cast in a couple of times with what I thought to me to be a good guess at the depth, only to watch my bait glide down the river at what looked to be mid depth. Time to do it properly and plumb the depth. Well, what a surprise, it turned out to be getting on for 2½ ft deep! It only looks to be about a foot deep. Again, another new experience for me. I have only fished in here once before and the only other time I have fished in gin-clear water was at Canterbury the other week. both times I had been mainly freelining, so no need to plumb. It looks a lot shallower than it actually is.

Slippery little dace

I managed to catch a couple of small dace, not the largest haul of the year. Then the fishing just dried up. I am not sure if we over fed the swim or frightened the fish off by returning the fish back in the swim. It may well have been just the time of the day. Whatever it was, we did not see another fish, even after we had packed up and went blackberry picking on the way home... Not bad for a couple of hours by a river in the depths of South East London!

I am very new to this river fishing lark, but it is good fun. Sue calls it "real fishing" and I think she might be right.

Ralph.

Urban fishing 2

Sue and John look happy - a decent sized chub from the weir pool in Canterbury!

Okay, here's the plan, get up early and drive to Canterbury, fish the river for a couple or three hours and then go and visit my elderly Mum. That all sounds fine, so I call my Mum, who is 90 years of age, and tell her my plans. "Oh... all right then..." comes the rather stilted reply". With that, I ask if there is something wrong, to which she replies to my surprise "Can I come too, I would really like to see the fish?"  "Er.. Yes of course you can" I reply, trying not to sound gob-smacked!

This was fine but we had intended to be there early, and I did not expect my Mum would be up for a 05:00 start. I made arrangements that we would collect her at 08:00, go and fish for a couple of hours and then have a spot of lunch. 06:30 this morning the phone rang. My Mum was not feeling so good, nothing serious but she had decided not to come after all. Between all this mucking about my mate John, who lives locally to my Mum, had told me the river was unfishable where we had planned to fish due to excessive weed growth. He also said he would be fishing the weir pool at The Miller's Arms from mid morning. Time was now getting on, we decided to go and meet John at the weir pool.

We made sure my Mum was not in desperate need of us and arranged to meet John at the weir pool. I have no idea where the time went but it was pushing mid day by the time we eventually got to Canterbury. By this time Sue had made the sensible suggestion of not fishing now, but to go and meet John for a chat and come back later after we had visited my Mum.

It is a long way down - full extent of a 3m landing net handle

I knew it was a long drop to the water, so landing net pole in hand so I could check that it is long enough, we made our way to the weir pool. Sure enough, John was there fishing from his favoured spot. He was after chub, free-lining a huge lump of meat on a size 2 hook. He had already had one earlier in the session and was not really expecting to catch another. As we stood there discussing tactics the line tightened on his finger and he was into another. A short fight led to me landing it for him. This time it was a good size, getting on for 4lb. We took photographs and released it back into the pool.

John with his 4lb (ish!) chub

After spending just about an hour with John, we set of to visit my Mum, complete with pack lunch for three. When got there she was feeling better but did not want to go out. I did the 'obligatory' jobs she had lined up for me and spent a pleasurable few hours with her before heading back to Canterbury, via the local fish and chip shop.

Arriving back at the car park just before 19:00, I was amazed to see parking was not free until 21:00, obviously cashing in on the early evening theatre and pub/restaurant business. Three quid for two hours parking was parted with and we went back to the weir pool. Nobody was fishing it so we had our pick of swims. I opted to fish in the same place that John had fished earlier.

My struggle with what tackle to take continues. To be fair, I had not fished this venue before and other than being told to take strong gear to have a go for the larger chub, I was just guessing. The largest hook I could muster was a size 10 and my rod choice was wrong too. I took a three-piece, 12ft, cheap match rod that was as stiff as a broomstick and I could not feel a thing on the line. I took this rod because it fits in the boot area of the car, meaning I could leave the car unattended with the fishing gear being on show. I know, wrong reason for rod choice but I thought I was being smart. I have not used this rod since the very early days of my fishing and now compared to my other rods this thing really is not up to much at all.  I also did not have any meat with me, but a detour to Sainsbury's, on the way to my Mum's, cured that.

Rod issues aside I spent the first hour trying to get the meat in the same place as John had fished earlier. First with a smaller piece of meat, more appropriate to a size 10 hook. This did not have the weight to make the distance with an underarm lob. A full cast was out of the question as the spot was protected from such attack by the tree Gods. I then tried a good sized piece of meat pulling the inadequately sized hook through the piece of meat with a baiting needle. This did the job and the meat stayed on - even after a brush with the overhanging trees, but still without the sign of a fish.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the pool, another chap had arrived and was float fishing for perch, getting a fish on most chucks. Every time he got a fish he would let us know by calling or gesturing across the pool. It don't half make your jaws ache smiling with clenched teeth. By now it was obvious that the chub were not going to bite so I re-rigged with a float and smaller hook. The idea was to have a go at the silvers that were in abundance. They may have been there in numbers but they were not that keen. I did manage to catch my first dace, nothing huge but a first for me. Sue has been feeding the swims, watching the fish come in and trying to identify them, although she has no passion to fish she is happy to just watch. Today she had a first; she actually picked up and fed some maggots!

My first dace

Having never fished in a river or any flowing water before, I have now done it twice in two days and I love it. I can see what so many people like about river fishing over the commercials. It is a totally different experience but for me I think I can live with both. One thing the past couple of days has taught me is that I need some more tackle. What is fine for pulling silvers and small carp out of commercials is not so useful in the small rivers. Rods and centre-pin reels apart, I could do with a few different floats and a small net (for landing the chublets of yesterday) would make far less commotion. I can't wait for our next session, because it is free and local, at last I have found somewhere I can fish for just a few hours on a more regular basis.

Go to yesterday's urban fishing >>>

Ralph.
                   

Urban fishing

Our chosen swim - and yes this is in the middle of a very built-up area

You can't get much more urban than South East London. Even here there are several small rivers with fish in them. Back in 2009 one of these rivers was stocked with fish as part of a restocking plan by the Environment Agency. Sadly, not long after, an illegal dumping of a poisonous substance wiped out all the fish, and probably a lot more life, in the river.

The river in question is very small. In fact it is so small I am not sure it should be called a 'river' at all. It is also not very long at just under 3 miles it has to be down there with the shortest of rivers. The River Pool is a section of a lot of small rivers that join up on their way to discharge into the River Thames at Deptford Creek as the River Ravensbourne. For the past few years I have been looking at these rivers with the idea of fishing them and today I did just that.

Sue was in charge of feeding the swim - so long as it was bread

I am still not sure that I should be fishing in these rivers but the only criteria I can go by is there is nothing saying I can't. Last week, we took a walk along the river to see if there were any likely swims where we could fish without being too conspicuous.We found a perfect spot were we could fish in fairly deep (relative term) water in the shade of a tree. This morning we fished it.

The plan was to go as light as we could. Just a hand full of tackle. A 3m whip and light line. We also had bread and maggots for hook bait and feed. We arrived at the swim and started to set up. Sue had bought a very small three-legged stool from Poundland the other day. On the flat it is far too low. I am sure they are intended for kids, but as the bank slopes away it gives a little more room for your feet. Sue sat on it for the whole time we were there and said it was more comfortable than she thought it would be, can't grumble at that for a pound. Sue sat and fed the swim with small peppercorn sized pieces of bread rolled between her fingers to make them sink.

I set about rigging the whip. After the usual struggle to get the rig off the winder without getting all tangled up with the second rig wound onto the same winder (Grrr!) I managed to attach it to the flick-tip and I was ready to fish. As Sue had been feeding bread (she is not keen on handling Maggots) I punched a piece of bread and hooked that onto my size 16 hook. The rig consisted of 0.1 line straight through to the hook with a small float-bead acting as the float. a single No.8 shot was crimped to the line about six inches above the hook.

That tree was great to lean on and disguise my outline.
Do you like my hat?

I flicked the rig out along the bank to land just about where Sue had been feeding. Within seconds the bead had disappeared and the tip was taking on a bend. Blimey! First ever river cast and I am into a fish. It was no small roach either. It was a good sized chublet, I would say it was about 8 inches in length and was very frisky. It was much too heavy to swing to hand so I brought it to the bank and hand-landed it. The only trouble was we did not have the camera to hand. Although that grubby mark on my shirt proves I had been trying to cuddle it!  We had only been there five minutes and in the water for about 30 seconds. I think all the commotion of hand-lining the chublet out of the water scared off all his mates as we did not see any more. I will take a landing net next time. I had no idea I was going to catch anything bigger then a couple of inches long, otherwise I would have gone back home and got a landing net once I had realised I had left it at home, on the way here. Instead I decided it would not be necessary - how wrong can you be!

My first river roach

I know we could have moved swims but this was only going to be a quick couple of hours, if that. Besides we could see lots of other fish milling about and it was possible they would return if we were quiet enough. It was not long before we were into another fish. This time a roach, on single white maggot, nothing to write home about but it was another fish.

This little perch found one of my red maggots

I decided to change to red maggot and as soon as I did, I caught a perch. I am really pleased there are perch in here, I think they are one of my favourite fish. Having said that, now I have caught a chub, well a chublet, Mr. Stripy may have some competition for that accolade.

By lunchtime we were back at home after having a brilliant couple of hours on the bank a short walk from my front door here in one of the most built up areas of South East London. My first trip to a river and I caught fish. I can't wait until tomorrow morning, when we will be attempting to catch some fish in the Great Stour as it meanders its way through Canterbury. I will be taking a float-rod with me and I fancy just just free-lining some bread to see if the chub are about. If not I will have a go at trotting a maggot or two and see what happens. 

Having never fished a river before, it looks like I will be hitting two in two days! How I spent the first 58 years of my life not fishing is a real puzzle to me. I never had the slightest interest in it as a kid - I wish I had - or maybe not. I might have got bored with it and taken up something else. Either way I can't get enough of it now, and there is always something new to discover.

And finally...

While fishing I caught a strange looking mini-fish that turned out to be a stickleback - my personal best - It is a shame the picture was not also one of my best!

My (fuzzy) PB stickleback!

More urban fishing >>>

Ralph.