The River Boutonne in France

The main river close to our house here in France is the mighty River Charente, which gives its name to our department, the Charente Maritime.  This is a very wide river that meanders slowly through our area.  Most of the local french fishermen seem to be only interested in pike and perch which they fish for by spinning lures, but to be honest, I hardly ever see fishermen - hunting is far more popular than fishing here.

French fishing is totally different to the UK.  Here, most fishing rights belong to the State, unless the bank is part of the garden of a residence.  So by buying an annual permit for E95 per annum, I can fish more or less anywhere.  There are fishing clubs but they don't own the rights to their own waters, which seems odd.

I have been looking at one or two stretches of the Charente itself with a view to a hemp-pellet-boilie approach - unheard of in France.  Local fishermen don't normally fish for chub or barbel but the occasional one is caught in matches.  Remarkably, the local stretches of the Charente has had barbel to 12kg caught in it - that's 26lbs in English money!  And the chub go to 5-6kg - 11 to 13lbs.  There have been carp caught in the river to 35kg (> 75lbs) and there are also some large catfish.  So definitely worth a good go, especially as it is only 6 miles from our home.

(In fact, in the Charente where it passes though the centre of the town of Cognac near here, I have come across shoals of chub basking in the sun where the biggest fish might have been 7lbs)

Five miles from home is a tributary of the Charente called the Boutonne.  In the main, it is a medium sized river of medium flow averaging about 5 or 6 foot deep.  But it also has a few stretches where it is split via weirs into two or three streams separate from the main river.  Yesterday morning I spent a couple of hours on one of these side streams and was amazed at what I found.

Like the UK, France has had a very dry winter and the side stream is currently only about 2 foot deep and crystal clear.  As a result, loads of fish are visible and I have seen some great fish.  Firstly, the stretch contains a good head of chub with one or two fish perhaps running to 5lbs.  Secondly, there is a good head of barbel.  These are not huge fish, most seem to be about 3-4lb, but there was the odd one that might have been 6-7 lbs.  There are also some quite small barbel.  I caught a 15oz barbel once on the river Severn in the late 1970s and that is the only one I've ever caught less than 2lbs, but I would guess that some here were under 1lb - I could break my low after nearly 40 years!

Finally, I spotted a small shoal of what I think were big roach.  There was maybe a dozen fish in the shoal, with the best well over 2lbs.  It is ages since I have caught a 2lb roach!

The real thrill will be fishing a crystal clear river that is only 2 foot deep for such fish.  Until I can get more bait in the UK (the hemp-pellet-boilies that I plan to use on the Charente), my likely bait is sweetcorn.  I bought four large tins this morning and the fish seemed very happy to eat it straight away (including the roach).  So that is my current plan - put 3 or 4 tins of sweetcorn into half a dozen spots where I have seen fish over a period of a few days, and then give them a go.

And there is no river close season for barbel and chub (there is for trout, pike and perch though) but you can't fish nights - indeed the times you can fish are set every day for the year - on May 30th it is 5:48 to 22:16, which seems very precise!

A typical view of the Boutonne side stream 

Several good chub on the shallows - biggest of these was probably pushing 5 lbs

At one point, there were 15 barbel on the patch of gravel above - then they holed up under the tree roots on the far bank.  Biggest was perhaps 6 lbs - but how to catch them in such a small, shallow stream?

Two possible swims on the main bit of the Boutonne - five foot deep and slow moving and full of snags.  Ideal for barbel and chub?

Can't wait to give it a go soon.

Re-reading Tony Miles and Course Angling Today

I am still amazed how sad I feel about the death of Tony Miles just before last Christmas.  I first met Tony on the banks of the river Leam, close to where I grew up in Kenilworth, back in the late 1970s and we met perhaps a dozen times over the years at various fishing spots.  Way back in the 1980s I assisted him in writing three articles that he did for Practical Course Fishing - a piece of the Hampshire Avon after chub, a trip to the upper Ouse for perch and a trip on the Thames after barbel.  My role was to fish and take photos of Tony.  It is far to say that I was out-fished on all three occasions though I did catch the biggest barbel at about 8lbs

I have been re-reading a couple of Tony's books recently.  50 Years on the Ouse is perhaps my favourite of his books

Then there was Elite Barbel, his accounts of fishing at Adam's Mill and Kickles Farm.

And finally Search for Big Chub which has a photo of me on page 116 (trotting bread flake for chub on the Hale Park Syndicate water on the Hampshire Avon back in the mid 1980s)

I have followed the Tony Miles reading with quite a number of issues of Course Angling Today.  I am also quite dismayed that this is no longer published.  The overall affect of all this fishing reading has been to get me enthusiastic about going fishing again soon.

So I will be researching the local fishing here in France and will have a couple of evenings on the river Thames when I am back at the end of June

I can't believe that a magazine about general course fishing (i.e non-carp) can't survive in the UK market

Walking the River Thames

I was back for a few days in the UK and we called into our Oxfordshire village to see a few friends.  While my wife attending an exercise with her friends (!), I had a couple of hours down at the River Thames at Duxford, the first time for over two years that I have seen this stretch.

So armed with some bread crust, I wandered down the stretch all the way to Shifford.  So many happy memories of fishing here.  Indeed, I am now thinking that when I come back to the UK in late June for the next trip of a few days, I will try and have at least two evenings fishing.  I haven't been fishing for over two years now - amazing

Just below the weir

A chub taking floating crust in the "long glide"

Never fishing this raft - surely it is full of chub and possibly barbel and perch?

Last day fishing in the UK for a long while - a red letter day!

In two week's time, my wife and I are leaving Oxfordshire for at least the next two years.  In among the general chaos of the move, I had always intended to have at least one last trip to the Thames at Duxford - my "home stretch" if water.  Even at 10:30 this morning it was not clear that I would make it, but a quick trip out for some loaves of bread, and I was down at the river just after 12:00.

No rain for the last week so the river is fining down nicely.  Overcast day - looked perfect for some chub.

First stop is the swim at the end of the "long glide", usually an excellent prospect under the bushes on the near back.  Second cast I have a nice fish of just under 4lbs.  I baited up this swim again as it was the one I intended to fish as it got dark, and then set off downstream, baiting up three more swims down to past Shifford Lock.  The bottom section still looks awful to me without the trees in the river - I still can't believe they have been cut down.

No fish in the first swim, then two in the second - another 3lber and a 1lber.  Then down to swim three, a swim that used to have a tree in the water but now only has a few branches that survived the cull.  First cast is a little too close to the nearside bank and not far enough downstream.  Ten minutes later the bait is positioned perfectly and a bite is not long coming.

This is clearly a very good fish as it hugs the bottom and only slowly agrees to come upstream.  And what a fish - instantly clear that it is a big 5 at least.  Could it be more?  For the first time since I caught my 15lb barbel, I am actually shaking as I sorted out the weighing.  And there it is - 6-07, a new personal best chub and my second 6lber.

As usual, I am unprepared for good photography, so I do what I can with the self timer and hope for the best.  Actually the pictures are not that bad

What a glorious event for my last trip for ages.  Actually for me the worst part about moving has been the fact that I won't be able to fish the local stretch on the Thames.

Later on, back at swim one, I lost what felt like another good fish and then landed a final chub of the day.  I thought this might just sneak over 5lbs but it was just under 4-15 1/2 in fact!

Other highlights - a hare, a heron fishing close to me, several kites, a cormorant (boo), and a kingfisher.

My next fishing trip might be in France in September - the local river Boutonne, home to 10lb chub and 20lb barbel apparently.

Watch this space?

First fishing trip for 18 months!

I can't believe that I haven't been fishing for 18 months.  The principal reason is that I have been spending a lot of time in France working on a house renovation and when I am in the UK, it has been difficult to spare the time.  And this situation is unlikely to change soon - indeed it is likely that it will continue for at least the next two years as we have just bought another renovation project.

But on a whim, while sorting out the garage and coming across all the fishing tackle in a corner, I have at least gone once and with a bit of luck I can manage a couple of trips in early March.

My venue was the Thames at Duxford.  First impression as I got there was that the river was a lot higher than I had expected.  But it should be on the way down, so that always give some hope of a chub or two.  First spot was a series of trees in the water on the near bank - too shallow to hold fish in the summer but often productive when there is more water as the main flow is further across the river and the inside line is very steady.  Second cast swings the bait round and under the trees and produces a chub straight away - not the biggest, but around 3lbs and the first fish for such a long time.

But walking downstream, there is a terrible shock awaiting.  Someone - presumably the Environmental Agency - has been down the stretch and removed a dozen or so of the trees that lined the stretch and provided great, near-bank swims.  Five or six of the best swims have been totally destroyed including the swim where I caught my 15-04 barbel in 2012.

Nonetheless, I do catch a number of fish from various spots.  One surprising things is that most of them are relatively small.  Three years ago, most if the chub I caught were over 5lbs from this stretch, with the occasional 4lber. But today's fish are all much smaller, 2 to 3 lbs mostly, with a 1 lber thrown in.  Have the big fish died out and this is the gradual appearance of the next generation?  Impossible to say after just one trip of course.

So by 3:30, I have caught six fish and am beginning to get a bit cold.  So back to swim number one where I baited up with a couple of handfulls of mashed bread when I left the spot at lunchtime.  I figured I would settle in just this spot for the last hour or so, and then call it a day.  Bait was a decent sized piece of bread crust.

Around 20 minutes after casting in, I got a good bite and connected with a much better fish, which charged off in the main river flow and for a brief moment I even thought it might be a barbel.  But after some steady pressure I gradually get the better of it and have a decent fish of 4-14, a fish in great condition, so maybe the big fish haven't disappeared.

I did break my landing net lifting it in though - metal fatigue it would seem.

As I write this I am back in France, where it is colder than the UK and the local rivers have even more water in them.  If I can go again this season it will be in March - maybe two or three afternoons might be do-able.

Blanking after barbel

July 4th

For the last week or so I have been able to have a walk down by a local river first thing in the morning.  I have been baiting up half a dozen swims with hemp and boilies in the hope of attracting some barbel.  As usual, there is a strong expectation that fishing for barbel will prove very tough, but I am prepared to give it a few trips.  So finally I can actually have a morning fishing. 

I had intended to fish quite close to the car park (as I was loaded down with kit) but on the spur of the moment, decided to slog it down to the two swims I'd baited about a mile or so downstream - one of those moments when instinct takes over.  So at just before 5:00 I was in place, and ready to fish till late morning at least.

The swim I eventually chose was one where I've had a few decent enough chub in the past.  I had baited it three of the last four mornings with yesterday putting in about a gallon of hemp and 50 or 60 boilies.  If there were any barbel about, surely they would find this morning's bait irresistible

So unusually for me, it was a "bait and wait" approach today.  Another load of hemp went in when I arrived plus 30 boilies.  Then two rods cast out, fishing perhaps 5 yards apart.  And a comfortable chair to sit in - also unusual for me and the main reason which today's kit was so heavy.  Both reels were set up as bait runners, so I could read a book or try and take photos of the two hares that seemed happy to approach quite near to me in the meadow behind

By 9:30 I had managed to read nearly half of Jack Kerouac's The Dharma Bums, but was wholly undisturbed by fish.  I'd also failed to get a good picture of the hares, which ran off faster than I could photo them.  A group of young swans did come by, getting very close to my bait

Then around 9:30, the farmer appeared with a team of people to mow and collect the rest of the grass from the meadow.  Five tractors and a combine harvester were involved.  One cut the grass, another arranged it into strips, the combine collected the strips of grass and chopped them up, firing them into a trailer behind another tractor.  Up and down they went for the next couple of hours.  Not too noisy, but certainly breaking the peace and quiet.

Packed up around 11:30 and met fishing-friend Mark on the way back, who was fishing one of the pre-baited swims near the car park.  He has had a few chub in the last couple of weeks but no barbel either.  He thinks perhaps we need a bit of rain to bring the barbel on - he could well be right.

I can't fish now for a couple of weeks and may switch to evening fishing from mid-July onwards.  That at least might help my hayfever, which was set off by the mowing this morning and lasted most of the rest of the day.

Opening day

For various reasons, my opening day session had to be curtailed - but as we'll see, that might not have been a bad thing.

I was at the river by just after 5:00 and set up in the long glide that I've often fished on opening day.  The water level was about 3 ft lower than this time last year!  Bait was sweetcorn over hemp, tactic floatfishing.  Just as I was getting ready to start, another angler appeared who had obviously planned on fishing this same spot.  Finding me there, he decided to fish just 20 metres upstream - an odd decision given the miles of fishing to choose from.  Maybe he was hoping I would move on quickly.  He moved on about an hour later.

It was nice to be back at the river after close to a year without fishing - amazing that it could be that long.  It was a lovely morning to be out.  Loads of birds around, including my first sighting of a kingfisher this season.  But what there wasn't was any sign of fish in residence.  A steady search of the swim produced no bites whatsoever.

And then after about 2 hours, the elastic on my catapult broke and I was unable to set feed to the swim.  So that more or less ended the first session.

However as I was walking back to the car, I got chatting to another angler who was also packing up.  He said he worked for the Environmental Agency and had been involved in an electro-fishing exercise on a stretch of river a couple of miles away.  On the negative, this revealed a total fish population that was much lower than expected - probably why the chub are so large there at the moment.  But on the positive, there were apparently a good number of small barbel present (less than 1lb) and these weren't stocked fish.  And there were some other results that were of interest and which might result in me altering my season plans.  Without an earlier than planned finish, I wouldn't have seen this guy.

It rained most of the rest of the day.  Hopefully it won't rain so much that the rivers rise significantly.  My next opportunity to fish might be early morning next Friday, but then there are less chances until mid-to-late July when I might be able to fish an evening or two.

I have ordered two large sacks of hemp as the rats in our garage seem to have eaten their way through about 20kg over the winter (having chewed a small hole in the plastic container the hemp was in).  And I need a new catapult.

Plans for 2013-14

Last season was just about the worst fishing seasons I have ever had.

In June, the rivers were very high and I couldn't seem to locate the chub at all.  One five pounder was all I managed in the early season.

Then in July I contracted some form of "viral arthritis" in my right knee and for a period of three months was not able to walk freely.  This curtailed all fishing activity - indeed, for a time I wondered if I would ever walk properly again.  But it did clear up completely and ultimately, I recovered fully from it.

By the time I was walking well again, it was October and the rivers were in flood again.  But then I spent quite a bit of the winter in France and missed out on the few weeks that were ok towards the very end of the season.

The only plus from last year was that I did learn how to make videos and I was actually quite pleased with what I produced from such meagre raw footage.

So it is June 2013 and I am considering my goals for this season.

For various work reasons, I won't be able to fish much until mid-July, but then I should get a reasonable run into the autumn.  My initial goals will be chub on the Thames (as usual), with some attempts after barbel as well.  After catching my 15lber in March 2012, I haven't had a single barbel fishing trip. 

So one specific target - a 6lb chub from the Thames

Second target - 3 barbel from the Thames

Third target - a big river pike (greater than 15lbs)

I should be able to manage a very short trip on opening day morning - so after nearly a year without posting anything, I am off and running again.

Finally I can plan my next fishing trip?

After about 2 months, my knee has finally healed enough for me to begin thinking about going fishing again.  Maybe next Tuesday afternoon and evening.

I have missed nearly two months of the season now and it is time to catch some fish.  I have had a terrible season so far, just one decent fish.  From now on, things can only get better surely.

So maybe a trip to the Thames near my home for the first one of the autumn.  Not sure what to fish for yet - chub or barbel?  At the moment I would just like to get on the bank, let alone actually catch anything.

On an entirely different matter, I have just come back from France.  No private fishing clubs in France.  You just pay E70 a year and can fish more or less anywhere you fancy.  The River Charente and the Boutonne near where we were staying looked very inviting in places.  Apparently the chub can grow to over 4kg and the barbel, though rare, can reach 10kg.

Maybe I should consider a fishing trip to France.  A 10kg (22lb+) barbel would certainly cheer me up

First post for ages - my knee is on the mend!

Slowly the knee is improving.  For one week walking was near impossible, for the next two weeks I had to hobble around using a walking pole for support and the joint would frequently give way.  Now I am just about able to walk again without the use of a pole.  And while on holiday in France, I was able to swim ok and walk at least a couple of miles in one go

We are going back to France next week for a few days and then I am hopeful that I will be back to fishing soon after.  But even then that means I will have missed nearly two months of the season, including all of the best river conditions after the June-July floods.

New fishing video - My Fishing Life 12

I had some footage left over from the last trip I did before I hurt my knee.  This was a short session of about 2 hours fishing the top peg of a local stretch of the River Thames nearest the point where I parked the car.  In the past this has produced some decent fish.  I have had several five pound chub from this spot with a biggest of 5-10, and I am pretty sure that there has been at least one six pounder.

But for me today, ledgering sweetcorn just produced a handful of small fish.  Four chub and two roach of about 4-6oz each.  It is good to know that there are immaculate small fish in the stretch, even if I am not catching bigger fish.

The virus that has caused my knee problem seems to have passed a few days ago and my knee is now getting better quite quickly.  I have been able to walk two miles on it without needing a pole for support, and I expect it to be back to normal while we are away in France for the next two weeks.  Then I shall be back fishing to relaunch my season. 

Hopefully September will see me back catching bigger fish.

Youtube link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x4FK6vjBELQ&feature=plcp

Getting better?

It has been nearly three weeks since I last went fishing and I can at least report that my knee is improving day-by-day.  I can now walk unaided by a pole and have managed walks of up to a mile so far.  But walking on a muddy path by a river is probably not possible at the moment.

We go on holiday on Wednesday this week and there is a slight chance that I might go fishing on either Tuesday evening, or Wednesday morning.  But it will have to be somewhere I can drive to quite close to where I will be fishing, with no tricky paths.  I am thinking perhaps Northmoor weir.

If not then, my next fishing trip will be the weekend of August 25th - a gap of six weeks between trips.  That half a close season!

A major scare . . .

Last Thursday, I woke up with a pain in my right knee.  By Thursday evening, this had grown progressively worst, so that I was unable to walk without some sort of support.  On Friday I was reduced to hobbling about using a walking pole for support.  Driving was just about impossible as, in the first instance, I am having great difficulty getting in and out of the car (10 minutes to get out of the car and into the house on one occasion) and in the second instance, I have trouble pressing the brake pedal!

Saturday and Sunday were spent with the leg immobilised and a bag of sweetcorn on the knee.  Yet I had suffered no obvious trauma to cause the problem in the first place.  Also the knee wasn't swollen at all, though very sore when I put pressure on it. 

At one point I actually began to wonder if I had done some serious long-term damage to it, one implication being that my preferred style of fishing - roving on rivers - might no longer be possible.  This is quite a shock at my age - 49. 

Then a little brightness.  One of my wife's clients is a former doctor (now a psychologist).  I took advantage of her being round to ask her about the knee and she rather surprised me by concluding after a few questions that I probably had "viral arthritis".  Some viruses can apparently cause imflamation of joints which produces the symptoms of arthritis. Its not real arthritis, just something that looks exactly like it. 

Now I think about it, I have had a bit of a bug in the last week, the main symptom of which is a dry cough.  In theory, as I fight the virus, the knee will get better with no lasting damage at all.  In fact, there is a good chance that I will just wake up one morning and it will be better.

So from thinking that I might be facing weeks of physiotherapy and the possibility of not walking properly again, and so no more fishing, I may only have a few more days of trouble. 

But I have no plans to fish this week - ironic as conditions are now the best they have been all season.  Maybe I can go on Sunday or Monday next week.  Then, later next week, Wife and I depart to France for our main holiday. 

So really I might not fish again until the last week of August, four weeks away.

It has to be said, this season is really not going to plan at all!

A short morning session

A couple of hours free before work starts and just time to see if conditions have improved much at the river. 

Yes, the level is down a few inches, but would chub be on the feed?  I fished two spots, both quite close to the car.  Float fishing sweetcorn in the first swim produced no bites at all.  Ledgering sweetcorn in the second produced half a dozen small fish - 4 chub and 2 roach - but nothing bigger than perhaps 8oz. 

I have actually not caught many small fish over the last 12 months so in some ways it is good that there are some around (at least for the long term).  But still no decent sized fish appearing. 

The forecast is for more rain this weekend, and my new plan is to fish into the dark a couple of evenings next week. 

The season so far . . .

Well the current river fishing season is now just over five weeks old and I have had one of the poorest starts to a season that I have ever had.  It had been even worse than five or six years ago when there were also really bad floods at the start of the season.  But that year I was usually able to catch one or two chub each trip - now I am not even getting that.

All sorts of reasons have gone through my mind, from the idea that maybe the fish hadn't spawned and were all holed up on some gravel shallows somewhere, to the idea that maybe my filming of trips is somehow to blame - perhaps I disturb the fish setting up the tripod, perhaps I fish in a more anxious, less-patient way as I am being filmed . . . .

One possible issue is that I am mainly fishing for chub.  Barbel would be a better principal target perhaps, but numbers are so low on the Upper Thames that deliberately fishing for them is almost bound to lead to long sequences of blanks anyway.

So what is my current plan?  Well I went for a walk at the river on Saturday morning and remarkably, the river is higher again.  It had possibly peaked a little bit higher still (though the evidence for this was rather patchy).  But as I write this, we have had 3 days without rain and no rain is forecast for the next few days.  So tomorrow I will pop to the river first thing and assess the level yet again.  If it is down again (as I'm pretty sure it will be), I will have a trip on Tuesday afternoon / evening.  This will be a multi-swim bait and fish in rotation plan, with sweetcorn or boilies as the bait.  Then I might go early on Wednesday or Thursday morning for a couple of hours float fishing.

If the river is no lower, this plan will be moved back to Thursday evening. 

One other point - I do think that I ought to fish a bit longer than I have been each trip.  I have been tending to go for just a couple of hours.  This should go up to sessions of four or five hours I think.

And venues?  For the moment I will stick to the local stretches of the River Thames - at least I dodn't have to travel far to get to these spots.  But when conditions do improve I am thinking of having a few trips to the Thames at Northmoor weir.  Or maybe the Pickfords stretch.

Two short evening sessions

Tuesday

Based on the rain we have had here, I was expecting the river to be down a bit on last week and prospects for chub to be better, so I was somewhat shocked to find it actually up a few inches.  Moreover, the path by the river is now a very liquid mud and is really treacherous to walk along. Nonetheless, I was keen on going fishing and so settled in one of the swims nearest the car for an evening's float fishing after chub.

After about 30 minutes I landed a small roach of about 3oz, so at least I wasn't going to blank!  But a further hour and a half produced no more bites and the mystery of the whereabouts of the chub remains.  Only one decent fish all season in the current poor conditions.

Wednesday

A last minute change of domestic plans opened up the possibility of a short, two hour, evening session.  As the river was higher yesterday, I thought the best chance might actually be to fish for barbel - never a great chance of success on the upper Thames, but given the conditions, possibly my only chance of a good fish.  I had baited a swim last night with hemp, corn and boilies and so planned to fish "bait and wait" in this one swim tonight. 

So I was at the swim by about 7:30.  It was actually a much nicer evening than last night with a decent sunset over the far bank.  It is possible that I had one bite during the evening, but there was also quite a lot of weed coming down and it might have been that. 

Packed up just before dark as the walk back to the car is really difficult in the mud.

The weather forecast now suggests more rain till Friday and then a change in weather towards hot and sunny.  So maybe next week will see improving conditions.  My next planned trip is Tuesday and I will fish much longer sessions once conditions start to improve.

Youtube link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yZmslnlHtBI&feature=plcp

Newest video - "Rain"

It was only when I was watching the video footage from last night that I realised how odd it looks in many respects.  For much of the time I am touch ledgering, but also watching the quivertip.  And so I was not always fully aware of the extent to which I was being rained on.  Actually some of the rain is extremely hard!

I wonder if my youtube videos will still exist in cyberspace in, say, 200 years time.  By then, climate change, pollution or something might have wiped out fish stocks and angling might be a sport of the distant past.  A cyber-historian might come across a dusty old server in a back room somewhere and when fired up, might discover my fishing videos.  And so he will discover what our wonderful sport had to offer - sitting in nettles for hours at a time as the rain pelts down, watching a stationary rod tip and not catching any fish.

In these postmodern times, my latest fishing video is, perhaps, the perfect embodiment of the sport.  Or perhaps not.  Or, as Gilles Deleuze** put it, in a passage I selected at random from Cinema 2,

The sheets of past exist, they are strata from where we draw our recollection images.  But either they are in any case unusable, because death is a permanent present, the most contracted region; or they can no longer be recalled because they are breaking up or becoming twisted, scattered in a non-stratified substance (p.111)

** French Professor of Philosophy and a key figure in poststructualism.  Cinema 2 draws on the work of Henri Bergson to offer an analysis of the representation of time in film and the cinematic treatment of memory, thought and speech.  Most of it is bollocks of course.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Css8XBwIj4&feature=plcp

No success with the newest "cunning plan"

My latest "cunning plan" to catch some chub consisted of me baiting up four swims at about 5:00pm and then fishing each in turn through the evening and into the dark.  Bait for each would be two pints of hemp, a tin of sweetcorn and two dozen of the smelliest boilies I still have.  Then I would not rebait later, simply hope to land on some feeding fish who would recognise the bait straight away, even if they had already eaten everything I had put in earlier.

There had been no rain since Saturday when the British Grand Prix just up the road had been so badly affected, and there had even been some sunshine early this afternoon.  So loaded down with the usual stuff I made the 3/4 mile walk down to Shifford lock.  I had been there less than 10 minutes when it started to pour down, which it then kept up for the next two hours.  I switched my planned four swims to include a couple that were a little sheltered by trees, but I was pretty wet even before I had made my first cast.

And the only possible action I had in the next five hours was in swim two, where I did get a series of very fast taps on the tip when using sweetcorn.  I expect these were small fish, but I failed to connect with anything each time I struck.  Not a touch on the boilie and no decent pulls on the corn. 

But at least it did stop raining about 7:00 and it was actually quite a pleasant evening.  Some bats were hunting mayflies along the river.  The odd fox was barking.  Several kingfishers flew by, or the same one three times.  It certainly is a lovely spot in which to not catch fish and a change from last week when my main problem was dehydration.  I wrapped up about 10:30 and endured the long walk back to the car through the thick mud that now covers most of the path.  But I have to say, I did rather enjoy being out in the dark again.  Come late August / September, I shall fish quite a few evenings into the dark.

My next trip will probably be Thursday evening again - I may try the same tactic as tonight.  Or I may abandon the river and go trout fishing at Bushyleaze instead!  The weather forecast is already really bad for the end of this week, but is suggesting slightly better weather for next week.

I am thinking of publishing a video from today's footage that just consists of me sitting in the rain watching a stationary rod tip.

Video from last week's trip posted

I was away over the weekend and have only just had time to cobble something together out of the video footage from last Thursday.  There are the three boats that pass through my swim in the space of a minute.  There is a heron that takes off from close to where I was fishing and which I hadn't spotted before then.  There are the two bombers that flew over, presumably from Brize Norton over to the west.  But sadly no fish.  Three others were fishing that evening.  Mark apparently blanked but is seeking barbel so that is a good excuse.  And two others were fishing in the first main glide and had caught a few roach and perch up to about 8oz.  Where are the chub?

I have been sorting out bait for this week and am planning, should the rain hold off a little, to go for an evening on Tuesday.  I have a new "cunning plan" to find some chub!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HytjhBkTv0U&feature=plcp

The excellent "Fishing for memories" blog / videos

There are dozens of fishing blogs out there of course, and some, like mine, are linked to companion video channels on Youtube.  The one of these I like best is Mark Erdwin's Fishing for Memories (http://fishing-for-memories.blogspot.co.uk/)  I have been studying this blog-video channel in some detail, looking at what he does differently to me, looking for ideas I can use, and so on. 

One of the first big differences is frequency of posting.  Mark's blog goes back to 2007 and has 103 postings so far, 17 a year on average.  I have posted 75 entries in 2012 alone.  He has posted 37 videos in that time, while I have posted 8 in just the last few months.  This could be that this is the frequency that he fishes, but I actually suspect it is because he is happy to post only when he has a good catch or some interesting film.  That's fair enough, and there is no doubt that it leads to an exceptionally high quality blog and video channel - he is an excellent angler with some amazing catches - I am of course mostly interested in his amazing chub catches.

My philosophy is slightly different but shares the view that my blog and video channel are there to preserve memories.  So I have taken the view that I should post regardless of success and try, over the entire sequence of entries and videos, to show what "my fishing life" actually consists of day-to-day, week-to-week, and so on.  So my current poor start to the season is shown, "warts and all". 

So when I'm 90, I will be able to watch myself in my late 40s blanking in a variety of venues while pursuing huge chub and barbel!

I have downloaded all of Mark's videos and am slowly working my way through them - really excellent stuff I have to say.

A frustrating afternoon-evening

More rain and the local rivers are actual up again - still, the urge to go fishing is overwhelming.  I did actual plan to go trout fishing for an evening at Bushyleaze but the local forecast was that it was going to rain hard again around 6:00pm which would wipe out about half my fishing time - not a good idea when the evening ticket costs nearly £20.

So it is back to the River Thames, this time the main river below Shifford Lock.  I figured I would have an afternoon float fishing for chub in a couple of my favourite swims down there, not with a high chance of catching anything, but more for the enjoyment of being out. 

What I hadn't reckon on was that the afternoon would be so hot.  I was expecting some rain and was dressed accordingly, but it was actually quite a nice afternoon with only a few scattered clouds.  By the time I reached Shifford Lock I was really overheated and made the mistake of drinking most of the liquid I had brought with me. 

What I had also forgotten about was the possibility of extensive boat traffic on this stretch, something that didn't occur back in February-March when I was fishing this area a lot.  I had just baited up two swims when two barges came through.  I am sure the fish are used to boat traffic overall but that it does spook them for a while and especially early season.  So I left the two swims and settled in a swim at the downstream end of Duxford Loop.  No boats here and also no fish in the hour of sweltering sunshine that I fished here.

Back to below Shifford Lock and less than five minutes in the first swim when one barge and four pleasure cruisers came through the swims more or less one after the other.  So much so that they had to queue at Shifford Lock to get through.  One or two boats might be ok, five might be too much.

So a change of plan.  I would switch to ledgering and a "bait and wait" approach in one of my favourite chub swims on Duxford Loop.  The sun kept shining and no rain appeared.  I became more and more thirsty and was reduced to pouring water from the river over my head.  Around 7:30 I was surprised to see Mark from Witney, who I had seen lots at the end of last season.  I didn't recognise him at the start as he didn't have his thermal hat on and I've never seen him with hair!  I complained about the poor start to the season I'd had and he complained about the excessive vegetation growth by the river compared to March - some of the swims we fished last season are too overgrown to get to now.  He was kind enough to let me have a few mouthfuls of his rather-nice lime drink.  I would have happily drunk it all.

I stayed until just after 9:00.  It was actually a really nice evening and clearly I should have gone to Bushyleaze.  I will start fishing into the dark soon I expect. 

So no chub again and no fishing till the middle of next week as I am off to the Lake District for a few days with Daughter - the weather forecast is for up to 10cms of rain to fall this weekend!

Still I did take a rather nice photo of a spider

Long range weather forecasts

In the hope that the rain might be coming to an end soon, I was looking at the local 10-day weather forecast and basically there is a 70% chance of rain every day for the next week and a half.  It rained quite a lot here yesterday and it is doing so again today.  This is all rather disheartening.  It might be ok if barbel were a serious local target, but chub fishing is just constantly hit by the river rising and colouring up, just as you expect it to be getting better.

As I left on Saturday, I left a marker at the top of the stretch and popping back today, the river is up an inch or two.  It reminds me so much of the start of the season in 2007 where the rivers remained in flood till August.  Earlier in the year, when I was planning my season, I had been expecting good catches of chub from the local stretches, maybe some fun fishing on clear rivers for chub with floating crust or natural baits.  Certainly not this. 

If there is a break in the rain tomorrow afternoon, I might go and have a few hours in a single swim, rather than moving about lots.  But that's only to be able to get out by the river, not due to a view I will catch much.

I have just been reading the new Angling Times and Angler's Mail for the start of the new river season and they have no chub captures of any note at all.  Maybe my 5-05 was actually pretty good!  If I had said I caught it on the Windrush, I might have got my picture in the fishing papers again!

Or maybe I sould have a trip after trout again - maybe Bushyleaze?

Addendum - Tuesday

No large chub reported in this week's Angler's Mail.  Also, I have been catching up with my favourite fishing blog - Phil Smith's http://www.barbelblogger.blogspot.co.uk/

He has just turned his attention to barbel, fishing from early pm to around 11:00pm on three afternoons last week, managing one really nice barbel.  This does suggest that the afternoon into evening might be the best focus for longer sessions.  But that is one fish for 24 hours fishing with two rods.

I had a quick trip down to the river this lunchtime and it is up about 2 inches from the weekend.  Rain showers are occuring every couple of hours, so the earliest I am planning an evening session is perhaps Thursday.  I may go and bait some swims on Wednesday afternoon.

Another short session, another blank!

I had about two hours free first thing on Saturday morning - just enough time for a short session after chub on one of my most-local stretches.  Of course the river is still high and coloured but it is a little lower than recently.  Today's plan is to ledger a strong-smelling boilly in a couple of swims, the alternate bait being lobworms. 

My first swim is the one closest to where people park cars.  As such it is often fished but I have had a rather mixed record there.  Years ago, it was a good barbel swim, especially fishing upstream on the gravel beds below the willow.  But I'm not sure many barbel have been there recently.  Last season I had two five pound chub from this spot from four or five attempts and Mark, I guy I often see fishing this stretch in winter, had a 5-12 chub and a 3-03 perch.  So it can fish well.  This morning I only gave it 40 minutes or so and had no suggestions of a bite at all.

Just after I settled in the second swim, where I planned to spend the remaining 90 minutes of my trip, there was a long rain shower - so hard that I actually stopped filming as I was worried about the camera.  I may have had one bite in this spot - on one occasion there was a definite small twitch and the bait was gone.  But as always, this could have been crayfish.

I spent the last 20 minutes bumping a lobworm bait along the far bank with no success. 

So no fish again.  Other than the state of the river itself, I think my current problem is that I'm not fishing for long enough.  I have been 5 times this season but have probably only fished for about 12 hours.  So this week's plan is for a longer trip of perhaps 6-7 hours, maybe Tuesday or Thursday.

But the forecast is for more rain and so the rivers will remain high and fishing will be quite hard I suspect. 

Today's video does show me fishing in the rain and so is an accurate example of what so many of us fisherman face on a regular basis.  "My fishing life" aims to reflect the true circumstances of my fishing, not just when things go well.  So for the moment, I am continuing to post videos of me not catching anything!  There is something almost Zen-like in a series of fishing videos in which no fish are caught - a direct pointing to the emptiness of reality.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qJf3m4jo_kI&feature=plcp&noredirect=1

Sitting in a bed of stinging nettles in the pouring rain at 6:30 on a Saturday morning not catching any fish.

At last, a decent sized fish!

I've missed four days when I could have gone fishing as a result of my bad eye, but things have been getting better since Wednesday and I thought it worthwhile to take a little chance and go first thing this morning for a couple of hours.  The venue was carefully chosen so I was not too far from my car if the eye flaired up again and I had to make a speedy getaway.  It was also north-facing so I wouldn't have to squint into the sun.  I also had eye wash and savlon with me should I get a slight twinge in the eye.  No more wiping with rough tissues or cotton wool pads.

So I managed to make it down at the river at 4:30 this morning.  There had been more rain during the day yesterday and overnight and some of the ditches were already pouring water into the river.  After a couple of days of what have probably been quite good conditions, and which I'd missed, it might have been that today would be another tough day with a rising river.

Today's plan was to fish just one swim, a long glide that has produced plenty of big chub in the past.  I would be float fishing sweetcorn, with hemp seed as an additional attractor.  Four or five catapults full of each went into the swim when I arrived with regular top ups every couple of casts - classic trotting tactics of course.

It took about 30 minutes to produce the first fish and what a fish.  After what has been a very poor start to my river-fishing season, my first decent sized fish is a chub of 5-05 1/2.  A really lovely conditioned fish given that it is only June and a possible high five, low six later this year I would think.

I would have expected maybe one or two more fish over the next couple of hours, but though I may have had at least one more bite, I didn't in fact manage any more.  There were two or three brief showers and then a longer period of rain and by about 8:00 I was ready to call it a day. 

And just as importantly, my eye seemed fine.  So maybe I can try a couple of more days this week (weather permitting).

Back home and a rather exciting look at the video I shot, which does contain decent footage of the chub being caught.  So after a few trips where I haven't managed much, my 2012/13 season is well and truly off and running I would say. 

The video of the trip is at:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vgllwkTuHaM&feature=plcp

Better than my usual fishing photo!  A still from the video

Acute hayfever strikes!

A bitterly disappointing day.

The plan had been to start early, bait up four swims before initially fishing two swims I'd baited yesterday but which I hadn't added any new bait today, while hopefully some fish found the bait in at least one of the four swims.

I started later than intended due to an unplanned trip to London yesterday evening.  I walked the mile or so necessary to bait the four swims and then settled in swim number one.  Gradually my left eye seemed to be getting more and more irritated.  I had some eye drops with me but they seemed to make little difference.  Over the next couple of hours the discomfort got worse and worse and it became apparent that my eye was swelling up.  The odd thing was that my right eye was wholly unaffected.  Had I got a seed or something in my left eye?  Or maybe some pollen had landed in it?  No idea really, but it was getting very unpleasant.

I had fished the first two swims with only the odd tap on the rod tip.  I then walked to the far end of the fishery to fish the first of the baited swims and had only been there about 10 minutes when I reached the conclusion that the eye was now too bad and needed to get some treatment.  By then, a boat had passed through the one baited swim I did fish in briefly.

And the other three baited swims weren't fished at all. 

Back home and a long bathe of my eye seems to get some sort of gunk out, but this could have been just the goo my eye was now producing in huge amounts.  The rest of the day was a constant series of eye-baths and periods when I just had to stay in a dark room and keep my eye closed.  It doesn't hurt anymore but it has more or less sealed shut - like a black eye really.  Yet my right eye remains fine! 

A shame as the river is getting back into good condition and I was quite confident for today.  It was a lovely morning with mist rising as I walked along the back around 5:30.  I also spotted a heron in the far distance which I was able to get some film of.

I suspect that this means that fishing will be out of the question for at least the next few days.  I have only had this type of extreme hayfever reaction once before and that was more than 10 years ago.  It will probably take a day or two at least for the swelling to go down and I should avoid going back into pollen-infested areas for a few days more.  Maybe I could try again on Sunday?

I do wonder what I have been taking daily hayfever tablets for over the past month or so.  I was supposed to have built up tolerance for pollen by now!

I have posted a slightly-shorter-than-normal video because I quite liked the misty scenes at the start, the cows and the heron.  But the video also shows me playing around with my eye far too much and the wrap up scene has the swelling quite apparent.  Not good!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ccenNA6AWY4&feature=plcp

Such is "my fishing life" at the moment - no fish and an extremely sore eye!