Somewhat outwith Wessex I am afraid, but as my Mum lives over in East Sussex, I joined Seaford AC this year, which offers a priory moat, a landlocked stretch of river, two stretches of marsh drain plus three other still-waters and two river stretches for just £26.00 p.a. I guess this shows me up as a bad son, but I’ve started putting my gear on the car when I go across to visit mum. This Saturday when she dropped off for her afternoon nap, I slipped out, picked up half a pint of well mankey mixed maggots from the Peachaven Tackle Shop and headed for the club stretch of the Ouse just north of Lewes. I’ve not fished here before and after the usual faffing around sorting out access (I’m convinced the compilers of club books lack cartography skills) I was faced with a fairly featureless stretch. Farmland extends down to the banks, so there are no overhanging trees and the bends are fairly gentle so there is little in the way of slacks or eddies, especially with a strong rising tide pushing up the river. Anglers Mail featured the nearby free stretch through the town recently suggesting trotting low tides and swim feedering high tides, so I went for an open ended feeder loaded with maggots and liguidised bread with hookbait being either flake or double maggot. Having no local knowledge I just settled on the swim ‘nearest the carpark’ and concentrated on a spot about two-thirds off the way across.

The first hour or so was pretty quiet, just one or two small knocks I couldn’t hit. Still it was pleasant enough; warm to the point of being T-shirt weather despite this being the weekend the clocks go back. There was sufficient wind initially to jiggle the quiver tip, but all in all it was pleasant with Offham Hill as a backdrop and just some llamas (very traditional) and goats for company. Fish wise the second hour livened up and although I still missed numerous bites I managed four bream before dusk with the largest weighing in at just shy of three pound. Not spectacular by a lot of people’s standards, but bream are a species I tend to ignore and by my standards not bad for just over two hours fishing on an unfamiliar river. All the fish came to flake, although maggot did produce bites and were on occasion sucked, so maybe I missed out on this autumn’ s target fish of roach!

GG