Exploring

Well, exploring more of this stretch of river, which sees a few lure fisherman, but I can't say I've ever seen more than a couple of people fishing for the chub or roach.

I wanted to go back and fish the swims near the bridge, where the ducks are fed industrial quantities of bread by visitors.

However, I started well upstream and opened my account ( new cliche alert ) with a big chub. How big ? On the scales 4...4.10...no 4.11. Same as the fish yesterday ?

A quick scale check proved it was the same fish, caught five hundred yards away. Very disappointing. Oh well.

Had a battered but plump fish in a different swim but it was slow.

 I fed the swims by the bridge with bread and as dusk approached flicked out a bait along the edge. The tip immediately rattled but these were small fish, roach I reckoned. Several bites missed and time to move.

Next swim the same, but second chuck I managed to hit the bite which proved to be a roach of no great size.

Next swim the same, it was paved with them, but no chub. Interesting, as you very rarely get roach bites at any other swims in this stretch. Ill give it a go with the float for them when there's a bit of colour in the water.

A few days later I was back with Turdy for a very short pike session. We tried a new swim which turned up a chunky jack but that was it. Enjoyable early morning chatting anyway.

I'll be back in the week.