Rain!

It has been raining all morning here in London. By about 15:00 it had stopped, and the sun came out. Itching to get out of the house, we went for a walk along the river and were surprised just how much water was flowing and how high it must have been a few hours earlier. Our usually tame trickle of a river was in full flow. At the confluence of the two rivers, the water was hammering down the shallow weirs with speed not seen all summer, at least not by us.

At the confluence of the River Ravensbourne and the Pool River, The water is flowing over the weirs with force.

From this point, the river flows down through Catford and Ladywell on its way to Lewisham and onward to Deptford Creek and into the River Thames, as the River Ravensbourne. Following our little river upstream to our favourite places, the river was very much higher than usual and carrying a lot of colour.

The camera has frozen the action, and the river looks almost flat calm - it wasn't!

Our little spot where we first caught a few fish last summer was almost unrecognisable as all the bank-side features were submerged and the water was flowing with some speed. In the picture above, you can see, on the opposite bank, where the vegetation has been flattened by water that must have been at least a couple of feet higher, a few hours earlier today.

Again the camera has taken the speed out of the shot, but as you can see, it looked a lot different today!

We continued upstream to the next weir, where we have caught a couple of decently sized chub this summer. Here the water was again barrelling over the weir, turning our usually calm spot into a raging torrent.

By this time we were a couple of miles away from home, and it was time to be getting back. It is Sunday today, and tonight roast pork is on the menu for this evening! There was not much point in trying to fish the river when it is this state as the rain will have changed the water temperature and upset the calm of the river, as we have discovered in the past. I will wait until it calms down a bit before I have another dangle in the river. In the meantime, I will investigate the commercials. I was planning on going to Beaver tomorrow, but with all the rain we have had today I think the fishing there will be harder than I would like, for a day pleasure fishing. It looks as though the weather will be a bit better later in the week, so I may well give it a go on Thursday - we will see.

Ralph.

Well, I tried...

After being stuck in doors for the last couple of weeks due to not feeling too good, I decided that I would at least have a go on our local river. Sue and I had found a good sheltered spot where we had seen lots of chublet and perch patrolling, a few week ago.

As the area is very overgrown in places and surrounded with trees, the visit was in some doubt, due to the prospect of high winds causing trees to be in danger of falling or at the very least, dropping the odd branch. As it turned out, at first, the wind was not as bad as it had been forecast. We had some work to do this morning, so an afternoon session seemed to be the most convenient. It nearly didn't happen at all, as just as we were about to leave the heavens opened. I am not that bothered about rain, but it would have made it less pleasurable, especially for Sue, who is just a spectator (and maggot thrower!) in all this. Luckily the downpour only lasted a few minutes and the sun came out again.

Fishing the river is all about going light, super light. This particular spot is really close to us, less than a mile walk from our front door, through the streets of South East London. I don't like attracting attention by carrying obvious fishing gear around, so we have developed a compact and stealthy kit for such excursions. This comprises of a shoulder bag that contains everything we need including the rod, reel and even a rolled up unhooking mat. The only additional item is a small landing net, borrowed from our light lure fishing tackle.

Going light. Even the rod goes in the bag

Ready to go

When we got to the river, it was fairly obvious that the fishing was not going to be good. The wind had brought a few small branches down into the river and these were drifting down stream and collecting in various locations along the bank.

A Fuzzy rat!

The rats were in evidence, inspecting all these free offerings. I managed to get a shot, albeit a bit fuzzy, of one of the little beggars scurrying around as bold as you like.

Rats are not uncommon along the river, but today there were plenty of them to see. We continued on to our chosen location and had a walk along the bank, as far as is possible without getting involved in a jungle clearance scheme, and chose a swim that looked the best of what was a very poor bunch.

I had pre-rigged my little telescopic rod with a small float and a size 16 hook, baited with a single white maggot. Sue had been baiting upstream from the chosen start of my attempted trot down the river. I had plumbed the depth in a few places and it ranged from almost zero to 15-18 inches at best. There was a narrow channel about a foot from the far bank that was the deepest point, almost everywhere else the water was only about 6 inches deep.

The river was littered with small twigs and leaves. I was not feeling very confident about this. To add insult to injury, we had not seen a single fish or even any evidence of them. Although I knew in my heart I was on a hiding to nothing, I made a few casts. If I wasn't getting snagged on floating debris, my nine-inch deep rig was getting hung up on the bottom.

Not much point really, but I had to give it a go!

After half an hour or so, we decided that standing under a lot of trees that were swaying around in the now increasing wind, catching leaves was not as much fun as it would seem. Time to call it a day and maybe come back when the conditions are a bit more favourable. Still, we gave it a go and I did get on the bank for the first time in a couple of weeks.

Ralph.

Deep river, short rod...

Tim's personal best skimmer bream out of the river to date - made his day!

Well, what a daft day yesterday was. The plan was to visit my brother and repair the jetty that had become rotten where the ladders had been. We decided to remove the ladders a few weeks ago as nobody was using them and, from our point of view, they were in the way. I had recovered what was left of the end support timbers and replaced/refurbished them here in the workshop. Refitting them was much easier than I had expected, as these things usually throw up the odd unexpected problem, but for once, the job went exactly as planned. Now for some fishing.

Even Tim's roach was not that small

It was at this point it all started to go wrong, at least for me. Tim has his rods hanging on the wall, made up and ready to go. All he has to do is pick them up and walk the few yards to the jetty, and he is fishing. Me, on the other hand, more intent on filling the van with the gear to repair the jetty, had just thrown a couple or three rods, along with a good selection of tackle in the van and left all my floats behind. Oh dear! (or words to that effect) That's a shame, I will have to borrow one of Tim's. This was a real pain as I had intended to have another go with the Polaris, slider floats. Undeterred I decided to have a go at straight ledgering, using a hair-rigged pellet.

After an hour or so, this was not showing any signs of success. I retrieved the lead and hook-bait after a bit of a tug. It was buried in the silt. I need to seriously rethink this approach. Maybe some kind of buoyant bait and a longer hook length... More pondering for next time.

That's a nice looking perch

Meanwhile, the other bloke has hooked a pretty decent perch. To say he was feeling a bit smug was an understatement. "Wow! That is a nice looking fish" I said. Have you noticed how hard it is to speak, smile and look happy for someone while clenching one's teeth?

I had given up on the ledgering and thought it might be fun to try out my new little telescopic rod, I had brought down to show the other bloke. It didn't take me long to realise that a rod that is only five feet long is not very useful when fishing a twelve feet deep swim. After agreeing that it was not a good idea, 'Little Brother' had another good sized perch on the hook and was now becoming just a tad irritating.

Okay, you have made your point...

Time to do some proper fishing, no more messing about, I rigged a float rod and proceeded to plumb the depth - twelve feet deep, give or take a bit. It was at this stage I started to have problems. It is still impossible to cast a long length of line from the jetty at the moment. Even though a lot of the overhanging trees have been trimmed, there are still some branches left. This will be rectified by the end of the month as tree surgeons have been booked to pollard the remaining trees that are in danger of collapsing into the river.

I realised that my four years of fishing experience had not included any deep (relatively) water fishing. I had either been fishing shallow commercial lakes or small rivers. The river here was going to take a bit of experimentation and a considerable learning curve.

Tim was happily fishing away, and although it was not easy, he was catching fish and managing to land them. Me, on the other hand, I was having a nightmare day. I was using Tim's floats, none of which I was happy with, and no matter what I did, I could not avoid getting in a mess. Moreover, I was having trouble getting the line out of the water. I did catch one tiny perch, but it was caught on the drop, almost by accident. Furthermore, its size would have been a poor candidate for inclusion in a can of sardines!

Now, call me a bit thick, but last night I woke up and realised what had gone wrong. The rod was too short. For some reason, passing on this information at 03:00 AM, to the missus, did not go down too well...

It just had not occurred to me, I know, obvious, but I have never been in this position before, and I was thinking of all the other reasons I was having trouble. I had packed a 'Carp Waggler' rod as I was planning to use heavier gear and a slider float, but as I said above, I had left all the floats sitting in there tubes, displayed nicely on the work surface in the fishing room - Grrr! This rod is only ten feet long. With a depth of twelve feet, even if the fixed float is against the tip ring, the bait is still a couple of feet below the butt even when the rod is held vertical, risking getting the tip caught in the trees.

Standing up helped but I was still getting in a mess. Frustrating it was, but also got me thinking and planning how I was going to sort this out. For a start, I will be using a slider float next time I use this rod. I must look into how to use an 'ordinary' float and stop knots to make the fishing easier. I do enjoy a challenge. Next time...

The day was different, not much in the way of fish on the bank for me, but Tim had a good day, landing some nice looking perch and a PB skimmer bream. He also discovered how slimy bream can be and why you need to wash your landing net out. As he said, "My net looks like it is full of wallpaper paste!"

We finished the session with a hook-tying session ready for next time. Tim had not tied any of his own before, so I had made him a length gauge from an off-cut of walnut and some modified panel pins, looked a bit posh, but it does the job. After that, it was a quick change and off to town for a meal to celebrate his birthday! All in all, although my fishing did not exactly go to plan, I had a perfect day discovering my shortcomings and opening up another opportunity to experiment with my technique.

Ralph.  

Four years today!

This day, four years ago, (maybe not this early!) I scribed my first post of this blog. I had not even held a rod at that point, let alone handled a live fish. I was 58 years old and was looking for something to do jointly with my brother, who is the best part of ten years younger than me. At the time, we lived fifty miles apart and only saw each other at family get-togethers, weddings and funerals.

Me and the other bloke, ten years ago at a family do. We have both slimmed down a bit since then, and Tim still gets that excited every time he catches a fish. Now, I can't remember what we were doing that day... I should have written it down

As kids, the age difference was a problem, what eighteen year old has that much in common with an eight-year-old sibling. As we got older, and the age gap became less critical, but the physical distance became greater, and we were back to 'visits' or the odd emergency call-out - "...the wheel bearing nut won't come off", "...my power has gone off!" or even "Can you help me change the inner back wheel on the 7½ tonner?"

Fishing was seen as a way of getting together 'outside' the formal family setting. As you will have noticed, if you have been following the blog from the beginning, that dream did not go exactly as I had imagined. I ended up having the time and the interest to pursue the hobby in full while the other bloke was having a nightmare of a time trying to get his work-life balance on track. Although it is all sorted out now, he went through a couple of years of hell, where fishing was just not a priority.

Thankfully all that has changed now, and he has sorted his life out. He and his wife now live a fair bit closer to us, and he now has a river at the bottom of the garden. There have been several recent posts about Tim and his stretch river. In fact today, I am off to his place, along with Sue to do a spot of fishing, and a spot of jetty repair - another 'call-out', nothing changes!

I have no idea where that four years have gone, but what I do know is that every trip has been recorded in this blog, as well as any other fishing related stuff, like recipes, repairs, new tackle and techniques. I am so pleased I started this blog as I read parts of it from time to time and I realise just how much I would have forgotten if I had not recorded it here.

I am off to fill the van and head off to Tim's place. I will let you know how I get on!

Ralph.

September already and another chub!

Today is the first day of meteorological autumn. Where did summer go, and what a summer we have had, scorching temperatures and next to no rain. Great for us but not so good for the fish in some areas. Today is also the other bloke's birthday, and we are going to celebrate it on Monday with a session on the river at the bottom of his garden. In preparation for another session on The Medway, we (me and 'er-in-doors) decided to go an have a look at what was in one of our local rivers here in deepest South East London.

For the past week or so, we have been watching and feeding the fish as they patrol the far bank. There were shoals of chublet and a few perch in evidence. Today, as we walked upstream towards the weir, where we caught that chub a week or so back, we were feeding and looking for fish. Plenty of fry and a few sardine-sized fish but nothing worth throwing a baited hook at.

This was Sue a few days ago feeding the fish in our favourite spot

We eventually found all the fish gathered together in the pool just below the shallow weir, a mile or so upstream. The fish came to us, as we were standing there throwing in a few maggots. Although the water is crystal clear. The fish seemed entirely at ease with our presence.

The fish were coming in really close and did not seem to be put off by us

We sat down on the concrete that is here to prevent the banks getting washed away in flood conditions as the weir also restricts the width of the river, speeding its flow. In normal conditions as it is now, that slight restriction just helps to increase the flow slightly and preventing any excess build up of debris.

Using my telescopic rod rigged with a small float, 4lb line and a short 3lb hook length sporting a size 16 hook, impaling one very agitated white maggot, I cast over to the far bank that is lined with pilings. Plop! just a foot or so short of the bank. I hardly had time to congratulate myself on, what for me was a perfect cast, when the reel started screaming, and I had a fish on.

I think this one is even bigger than the one we caught a few weeks ago

I had hooked another decent sized chub. Not overly happy about being tethered to a human on the bank, the fish was testing my cheap rod and reel to its limit. I gently played the fish for a while to tire it and eventually had it in the net. It was indeed one of the bigger fish. In fact, I think it was even bigger than the last one we caught here a couple of weeks ago!

A lady walking her colossal dog was interested to know if we were planning on eating it (the fish that is!) I explained that we were just pleasure fishing and in any case, it is not allowed to take course fish for the pot. Meanwhile, her dog, a St. Bernard, had taken a liking to Sue and her maggots! Luckily both the dog and the owner were pleasant, and she apologised for her dog, who was just a big mass of fur. Dogs often crash through the swim, but the fish seem oblivious to it and just move away, before returning to their former location.

I caught a couple of smaller fish. Both were about this size and put up a good fight on the cheap gear

We fished for an hour or so and caught another couple of smaller chub. Each time we put a fish back, the swim went quiet for about five minutes while the fish all scattered and had a chat about these funny maggots with hooks in them. Soon all was forgotten, and the fish were back, feeding on our free offerings.

The interesting thing for me was the time. This was not early morning or late evening. We had initially intended to go out for a walk. Sue had suggested that we go and feed the fish and I said, at the last minute, that I would take a rod and see if we could catch anything, not expecting to get the line wet. It was lunchtime when we had arrived at the river, a time I would have expected the fish to be less likely to play.

We had debated taking a bite to eat with us, but as it was so late, we thought we would probably not have much luck and be home in plenty of time to eat. As it turned out, we could have stayed there all afternoon. The fish were feeding, and the weather was perfect, not too hot and just sunny enough to be pleasant. It never fails to amaze me just how much fun we can have on our own doorstep here in a very urban setting.

Ralph.