Chris Fishing Diary 2002
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Chiswell Beach Sat 22nd Mar 2002 After a considerable break from fishing of any kind, I guess you can tell I’m not the most hardy of fishermen ( that all comes down to an incident a few years back when determined to fish on 2nd of January one year I had gone river fishing at Throop where the boulder wier was actually iced over and almost froze to death!), I took a decision to have a weekend of Sea Fishing. What better place to start than at Chiswell in a strong wind ? Well it certainly blew the cob webs away but alas the first fish of 2002 was not caught. I hope this is not a bad omen for the year.... Swanage Pier Sun 23rd Mar 2002 Swanage Pier for the afternoon, nice enough day, though it’s a pity the lower fishing platform is not allowed due to safety reasons. Plague by crab bites on the rag and sandell I was using and despite a pleasant day out it ended up another blank. Personally I have never seen a fish caught from her, though I have been informed by the local divers that there are some about and another fisherman told me he’d caught a couple at the top end of the pier. If you’ve caught something here I’d really like to know and what with, as this along with Weymouth Pier never seem to yield any fish in my presence! Visited the main pit at Poulner lakes for a hopeful spot of carp fishing in the afternoon. Having been unable to fish at my personal lucky lake ( Lake Farm), I say this as I have yet to fail there or Turf Croft lakes due to visitor numbers. This really is best fished at dusk, dawn and night and what do you know for the 3rd outing of the season I return fishless without even a knock all day. Returned to the main lake with Pete again, this time instead of worms we decided to go for a mix of worm and pellet. Same result as yesterday. Grrr... Lake Farm. As I remarked earlier in my journal is my lucky lake, and today there was a spot free at the far end, surely today would see me and Pete’s blank spell end. Setting out with trout pellets carefully hair rigged up ( 3 pellets on a size 8 hook) by the pellet master Pete, we cast our bait into the crowded carp water. Pete soon land a reasonable fish of 3lbs, but I miss my first few, being over eager and anxious to get that first fish of the year. A further two are landed by Pete and I’m getting nervous now that the time is ticking on. Finally at 4.30pm I finally manage the first fishy of the year a 2lb carp. Phew! We round the day off with another fish each before we return homeward in triumph. Bought a new carp rod and bail today, with a baitrunner action to use on the bleeper alarm I’ve had for a while but never really used. Time to try it out and after reading the Angling Mail picked up at the local Post Office, we decide to try a new venue. It was a toss up between Sway Lakes or Lyons Gate near Cerne Abbas in Dorset. After phoning the fisherys up and finding that Sway’s only got one swim left me and Pete head westward to Lyons Gate, who had informed us there was plenty of space. The lakes are set in a holiday caravan park and there’s a few to choose from containing carp, tench, bream and even sturgen. Perhaps the campers occasionally tuck into caviar I thought as we set up on the further carp lake, which is the biggest of the lakes there, as the Top Lake was full up with fishermen. This far carp lake only had one other fisherman on it so, me and Pete had the lake virtually to ourselves. We decide on the right hand corner as it’s the one where the winds blowing towards and looks quite sheltered with the trees to the back of it. This proved to be a good move as despite it being shallower, the spot provided plenty of bites on good carp from 3-5 lbs in size on hair rigged pellet, Pete landing 6 and I fished in 7!. Best thing was there was a group of anglers fishing opposite us who only seemed to pull in small roach, I would guess this being down to the bread flake bait they were using. Alway feels good landing the bigger fish I think! We learnt later in the week this was because there is an underground flow into the lake from here bringing in a source of food for the fish After such a good day there was only one thing for it. Back to the same place! Could are luck at the lake on Pete’s Pellets continue its run of
success. Well the answer was a resounding yes. Fishing a spot near
the middle of the same lake as yesterday near the island in the the centre of
the lake ( there is two islands on this lake) proved just as good with the 2nd
best size carp I’ve ever caught of 7.5 lbs being landed at the same time Pete
caught a 3.5lb fish, amongst a few others. Another good day, I’d put this lake on a par with Lake Farm for catchability of the fish. Excellent
Returned for final day of the bank holiday for another fish catching session, this time our younger sister came along as well. It proved not to be a curse and again a selection of worms and pellets on the bottom lake saw a number of carp landed by all three of us, with the occasional roach to boot on the worms. Back again! Same Lake, same results the largest being a 6lb Carp by Pete off the Island near the sturgeon lake. My personal best of the day was 5.5lbs. Main Northfield Lake 3rd June 2002 Decided to go to Northfield at lunchtime. This was primarily because, one it is close by, and two it was free ( as we’re members of RDAA) and three because I’ve not caught a thing here as I’ve only fished it during the day and this lake is very difficult to catch on during the day time The last reason meant that little effort was going to be needed, due to the lack of bites. So with the bait alarms set on a bank holiday Monday a good kip could be had, which would make for a relaxing afternoons fishing. The plan worked. Not a bleep on the pellets we had hair rigged up for the whole 4 hours we were there. Bliss! Main Northfield Lake 4th June 2002 Queens Golden Jubilee Extra Bank Holiday, (can we have one every year ?) Went back to Northfield, this time with the intention of trying to catch. Still using pellets but this time we bait the areas we intended to fish. We were rewarded with one bleep. No fish. No run...definetely whiley fish here. Did see someone else catch a small carp though. Main Northfield Lake 5th June 2002 Having tried by daylight we decided to attempt to beat the fish by going in the evening and fishing till 2 hours after sunset. This is the longest you can fish without a night permit which I don’t have. The weather however forced us to huddle under an umbrella as the fish still refused to bite, the only consolation was listening to radio five live football world cup special! Main Northfield Lake 6th June 2002 Tried again in the evening, better weather but still no fish! I guess this lake is not ready for me, or is it vice versa. Time to give up for the time being. If anyone has any tips on fishing it I’d love to know how to get them to bite, perhaps it’s our pellet and worm bait. 1st day of the season on Rivers, and on a Sunday. Only one thing for it, The Riverbank. This time the nearby Throop Fisheries on our club permits. Pete and I fished Chibbs Pool on the north bank of the river. I caught some roach and small chub using maggots and worms. Encouragingly two very large fish are seen jumping on the the far side. It’s unusual for me to spot big fish on a regular basis, even rarer to catch. Looks good for the new season. River Throop here we come! New season is here and the weathers sunny offering our first opportunity to fish an evening after work. On the way to visiting the pallet swim near chibbs pool we were advised on meeting Chris the new fishery manager informed us that it was already occupied, and he recommended the swim where the millpond inlet meets the main river. Fishing was good here and big carp and bream are visible in the clear water. Pete and I landed some good roach to maggot and two eels on pellet, how we can always catch these and not the large fish I never know! Fished from the 1st concrete stand on the millpond side of the main river from 7pm to 10pm, just down from the new weir. 1st blank of the new season on the river ensused and spent the evening being plagued by mossies. The river here is at present too weedy and fast in my opinion to be called a good swim. Other swims nearby were busy and looked to be fishing well. Fished the swim near the bend south of barbel corner from 8pm to 10pm. The weather still quite sunny but with some cloud. Caught a reasonable sized roach on maggots and as a result of constant minor bites, switched to worms. Pete continued on his pellets and landed two eels. I managed to out do him in size, but not in number with a eel of about 2lb in weight. The bream which were showing unfortunately continued in their refusal to hook themselves. How unsporting! Fished the tributary to the millpond from 2pm to 7pm. Using maggots, worms
and pellets & castors. Their was lots of activity showing along the
banks with carp and bream showing themselves occasionally above the water.
Around 5pm I landed the first decent fish of the season to multiple worm ( a 4lb
tench ) Throop 23rd June 2002 Sunday afternoon proved to be a very busy day in terms of angler numbers on Throop. Went to the far bank on the corner up from barbel corner from the school bridge entrance. Fished maggots and castor on my quiver tip rod, with worms times 4 on my carp rod. Pete again was using his trusty eel catching pelets. I took some small roach to caster, changing to pellets later but they bought no further bites. The same with the worms. Just round the corner on the opposite bank another angler was bagging up on bream. Fishing was terminated early as a herd of cows wanted to use their waterhole which was our swim. Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz....Not A Thing all day! Loads of feeding bubbles as we fished the millpool all day. We tried about every bait we had, worms, castors, maggot, meat balls with ground bait, hemp and loose feed. Other anglers nearby had the same zero sucess while we were there. What suprised us was how busy the river was with anglers, all the swims were taken from the New Weir to Barbel Corner. This on a Monday daytime! Doesn’t anybody work ? Pete and I were joined by our sister Sarah, we decided on visiting the millpond triburtary stream getting there early to have a chance of the swim. It was much quieter in terms of angler numbers than yesterday. Promisingly we spotted 3 large fish in the swim as we set up the rods. 4 baited with worms and one of Pete’s with Pellet. Some feeding bubbles could be seen and we loosely baited the area with maggots and loose fed pellets, adding a bit of groundbait around the swims. I had my first bite around 11am on double worm, but it unfortunately failed to stick ( Already this is better than yesterday!) Unfortunately as the day wore on the bites became less frequent. At about 6.30pm I caught and lost a bream. That looked to be it till at 7.30pm Pete ended the drought with a 4oz Perch. Hallelujah! Lower Several / Avon Castle 26th June 2002 Peter, Sarah and I went to fish the River Avon for a change starting at 9am on a gloriously hot and sunny day. Fishing at the Avon Castle end of the beat in crystal clear water, which seemed to have less weed than when I last fished it in 2001. Some mid sized chub could be seen lazing in the sun as they swam out over the clear water. The day was turning into one long sunbathing session when at about 2pm I decided to take a worm and fish about 100 yards from our spot. In about 10 mins I had a fish, a 1lb chub. Sarah thought this was a better spot and came and tried as well, but for one further bite no further action ensued in the next hour, except that I managed to get sunburnt. We went back and switched to maggot at the original spot and suddenly we were into a succession of fish (chub & dace) - although not large (all around the 6oz - 1lb mark) it was not something we complained about considering the past few sessions. In total we landed 9 chub and Sarah got a small salmon parr. Pete and I set off at about 10am, heading out to check the fishability of some of the RDAA’s further away rivers, heading first of all to Stourpaine fishery in Dorset. This turn out to be very low and not worth fishing below the weir, and the higher water above was inaccessible as far as we could tell. On we went to the adjoining Havelins stretch but the track ended in a locked gate and seemed even worse in road condition to the track we had driven up. Abandoning this idea we decided to go a bit further to try the Hanford fishery - but the path down was swamp like mud. As it goes on for a while before you meet the river we decided to try our luck elsewhere. This time we decided to go to Fordingbridge park - but this it turned out was a bad idea as it was full. No available swims. Finally we went to Shallows Farm just North of Fordingbridge where we eventually managed to wet our lines and fish at 3.30pm carrying on without any fish success till 8pm. Having not visited it for a whole 2 days we went back to Throop fisherys, fishing on the bend by barbel corner. I fished with worms and sweetcorn, the worms to the far bank and the sweetcorn close in. Pete fished the swim down from me, using pellets and worm. About 1pm a massive carp jumped just off my baited corn rod, and I would estimate it to be easily over 20lb in weight. After this my rod never moved from that spot, but it was not to catch. At around 2pm I caught the first fish a 1/2lb Perch on the worms. Pete not to be outdone, caught a nice bream of 3 1/2lb about 20 mins later. Shortly after returning it to the water we notice a pike of about 6lbs resting just below his swim, and then as we looked at it it moved out of the way as an even bigger ( about twice the size ) pike came swimming by. Perhaps we should try a lure next time down this way... Fished the lower stour part of beat 3 of the Throop Fishery after work from 7.30 till the end of the day using Meaty Bites. As the sun set the meat was taken by something on a fairly regular basis, but none stuck. A couple of large fish we seen occasionally jumping in our swims - seems worth another try in the evening soon. First trip to several of the new season on a warm and bright ( for a change this year) Saturday afternoon. Arriving at the top end of the fishery which this year no longer allows day tickets on the top stretch, we came across a new obstacle of entrance a massive gate, which is locked by the club key. Fortunately we had one on us and we were able to get inside without problem. - something several hopeful anglers were unable to do during the day - so if your going here remember your key and if your not a member of RDAA don’t bother going - you won’t get onto the fishery easily. Pete and I fished the nearby railway bridge swim which seems to have a lot less weed cover than last year and also the river is noticably higher. It turned out to be a great spot for specimen gudgeon! I caught five on maggots - and they were big for the type of fish. Fish also caught before we left at 8pm included a greyling and salmon parr plus a small chub. Thoroughly enjoyable day! Returned to the same swim on the Sunday afternoon - this time Pete bagged up on the gudgeon, though he finished with a nice 7oz dace just to make a change to the catch. I caught a 1lb Greyling, which was nice as these really are pretty fish. Fished further round beyond the bath swim after work from 8 - 10.30pm using worms. One heavy bite - but no fish on this occassion. Fishery was busier this evening than on either Sat or Sunday in terms of angler numbers Went for the first time ever to fish Bounds Farm - a members only (RCAA) stretch of the Stour in the evening from 7pm to 10pm. Fished with rods (2 each) using worm, pellet and meaty bites. I struck early with a 11lb+ eel i boasted. Around 8.30 Pete equalised with a similar sized eel. Noted lots of bubbles from feeding fish in front of our swim and also a large fish wallowing on the surface occasionally. No luck on that front but I finished the session with another eel. (Perhaps the same one?) Returned to the same Bounds Farm swim on a sunny saturday afternoon. Rods were baited origanlly with worm (Pete) and maggots (Pete and me) and Pellet flavored luncheon meat on a size 2 hook (me). Bubbles were evident again at start of session - as well as a small shoal of chub/dace right in front of swim. A large or possible more than 1, fish can be seen moving up and down the river in front of swim. Its fin visible above the surface much of the time. NO FISH. A hot and humid day which started with a six-a-side tournement. Feeling tired after the mornings footie, I decided that a relaxing session by the river would be a good idea. Pete agreed and suggested we went to Bounds farm where he was going to try to catch a large carp we’d seen earlier. We stocked up on Fresh worms, strawberry Luncheon meat and maggots and headed there, despite my other suggestions of Parley and Throop beat 3. (I wasn’t so keen as I knew Pete had a good swim for the carp, but the nearby one was weedy. Pete rigged up on worm and I started out on the strawberry uncheon meat on a size 6 hook, thinking that this might lure the carp with its aroma. We started about 3.30pm and after an hour of no success I decided to scout anouther swim about 50 yards up river. Thisis a bit clearer of weed. Seeing so promising signs of fish I moved to this. The first cast near the edge produced two large swirrls as two large fish darted for the bank. I noticed a fish feeding on the far bank and decided to change tracxk and cast out there and settled down for a bit of a kip. I was woken a while later by the sound of the bait-running reel whirling. Grabing the rod, I pull the in, it felt fairly heavy but I was unsure if this was weed or a fish. I then felt a tell- tale pull on the line and knew it was the latter. I shouted for Pete to bring the net, which he did after reeling in his line. I managed to bring the fish to the near bank, it still not showing on the surface, when it darted to the near bank, heading for an overhanging tree. I managed to avert this, and it showed for the first time. A large barble! I then tried to net the fish but it was still full of fight making another dart for the tree. Again I managed to divert it from its course. Eventually after about a 10 minute fight it was landed. Weighing it on our scales it was 10.5 lbs. (Not bad for my first ever barble!) As I unhooked it a visitor from the Bounds Farm caravan park was walking along the bank (checking for good swims for later). He kindly volunteered to check the weight on his avon scales. He returned after I had photographed the fish, and checked the weight on his, 10 7oz exactly. He seemed as pleased with the fish as I did. We returned the fish to the river, and after it recovered it swam gracefuly to the nearby reed bed. What a fish! I continued to fish and chatted with the visitor from suffolk till 7.45pm. No further fish but I couldn’t care as that is worth a month at the bank. I wouldn’t be supprised to see our Suffolk angler on the banks later on.... Well could we make it a weekend to remember with another good fish? Set off at 1pm to fish the stretch on beat 2 at Throop, walking a fair way downstream to a good looking spot with weed, but clear stretches. I continued with the luncheon meat (Well wouldn’t you?) Pete decided on pellets (3 hair rigged to a size 8 hook as usual). About 2.15pm Pete struck after a few nudges on the the bait. WACK!! The fish was on and made a bee-line straight to the tree that was overhanging his swim, but he was able to divert it’s course, into the clearer mid-river, and we could see it was a large chub. After a short fight (about 5 minutes) the chub was netted and weighed in at just under 4 1/2 lbs. (about 4-5 to 6 oz at a guess). What a stunning weekend. We continued to fish, I added a second rod also fish pellets but no further fish were added to our bag. After our two fish success over the weekend, the pressure was on for a hat-trick. Going after work to fish the beat 3 stretch of the Throop fisheries Stour by pipe bridge. I fished with strawberry luncheon meat, and Pete started on worms.The early indications were good with several large bites, although nothing stuck. Pete switched to his favorite hair rigged pellets at about 8.30pm. The bites still came on the meat, and at about 10.20pm, I said to Pete he ought to change to worm or try the meat himself as he’d had not a single bite on the pellet. As he considered this and was actually about to change his baitrunner started to whirl away. Grabbing the rod he attempted to hold the fish, but it was having nothing of it, and shot away up river. Gradually after about 5 minutes of playing the fish, he started to gain control, signalled by a large swirl over by the opposite side of the bank., shinning the torch across confirmed it was a big fish but the type was yet to be confirmed. The fish then made a run to the weeds on the near bank, by this time it was starting to tire and Pete managed to start to reel it in. As it got closer, I could make out it was a large carp, and prepared to get it with the net. Then near disaster: Pete’s line near the top of the rod caught on an overhanging branch of a tree near the swim. Luckily he managed to flick the line off, and guide the fish finally into the net after a 15-20 minute battle. The net bulged with the bulk of the fish; IT WAS BIG!! After unhooking the carp, which was caught on the lip. We weight it in the net, 14lbs. Just after the reading was confirmed, the net gave up, the ally hoop bending out of shape. A true net-buster of a fish. (It’s the largest we’ve caught anywhere). The hattrick was achieved in stunning style. The fish was photographed and returned to the river where it swam off majesticly into the reeds. Back to Throop beat 3 by Willow Tree for another attempt. (could we make it 4 in a row? A-lass it turned out not to be the case, though I managed to get two perch (about 1/2lb) and two eels of the same.to worm. Our run was ended but we knew it couldn’y continue indefinetly, although it would be nice! Pipe Bridge was tackled again for the first time after the capture of thr net buster. I fished with luncheon meat and Pete with pellet. Again promising bits were had, and just as we were about to leave my rod caught, the line went out - was this another good fish? No, but it was a large eel of about 2lbs in weight. Better than nought! This fishing trip is reported by Sarah on the following page | |||
. We almost had a hat-trick of runs at the
same time as my other rods went only for it to free itself as I started reel
them in. 
Weather was sunny in the main with occasional light
showers. Must fish this spot again if possible soon!