12/12/24

MILK & MARINE TESTING

This was the pinnacle of how the fish reacted to the bait on a stretch that was new to me. I’d already had good success on other bits of the Thames during the initial testing of M&M. As always with the Thames, locating the large fish is 50% of the battle, the other half is being there at the right time and preparing the swims carefully. With any low stock venue, this doesn’t mean piling in kgs of any bait, never mind a high value food bait such as M&M.

My first time on the venue was in mid November and chatting to a few others fishing the venue didn’t fill me full of confidence. It appeared there had been little success in the previous 2-3 months, with the capture of the odd sporadic barbel in the 7-9lb range being the case. The stretch is of considerable length with only one known really big fish present, a couple of nice back up fish and thankfully not many Bream!

Location was always going to be the key in my mind, so I spent a whole day not fishing, but using a castable echo sounder and leading rod to search out the type of bottom I look for in the winter months. After locating three areas of interest, I lightly baited each of the three swims with areas of interest to me, all of which received a light baiting of around 200g (Yes thats grams) of boilies.

HEAVY RAIN

I fished short afternoon sessions for the next two days, in conditions where the levels were rising after heavy rainfall, the temperatures were good and the river was carrying a bit of colour. Only one of the three swims produced any bites, but that resulted in my first barbel from the stretch of just over 8lbs and a second fish being an upper 9. I took this as a great result as 1) I hadn’t ever fished there before and 2) the barbel were on the bait straight away.

The weather turned to really heavy rain for days after and burst its banks to the point that access was not possible to fish the area and for two weeks it stayed that way. I did manage to fish a single session one afternoon with the river just back within it banks, which resulted in a very pleasing 12.10 barbel from an un-baited spot, just fishing a paste wrapped boilie and PVA stringer on that occasion.

The forecast was looking good and I decided to bait just the single spot I had caught the 8 & 9lb fish from, using one of my favourite baiting tactics. This involves baiting tightly with a bait dropper, 500g of boilies into the swim for 2 consecutive days without fishing, then returning on day three to actually fish. If any fish are around in the area I find that they will eat what is available and hang around for more as 500grams isn’t going to fill them up.

THE BIG GIRL

Tactics on the day meant I arrived later in the afternoon than I wanted, but that didn’t matter as I find that bites are forthcoming pretty quickly if you have prepared the swim well and not disturbed the fish.

Fishing as normal, with just a singe rod, a simple paste wrapped boilie on the hook, accompanied by a small PVA bag of 10 crushed boilies was cast out. A solid bite was felt on the rod tip after no more than 25 minutes and I immediately knew it was a lump of a barbel on the other end. The initial run was really powerful , taking 20m of line, but as usual with large barbel once that fist run has been contained, the following 3-4 heavy lunges that followed were predictable and pretty stress free as I had taken time in advance to check the swim for potential snags etc.

I landed the fish and saw it was huge, but didn’t know at that point if it was “the big girl’ With the fish still resting in the net, I reached down into the water and felt the Anal fin, as I knew the biggest fish on the stretch had a distinctive ‘crinkle’ on the main ray of that fin. Sure enough, there it was, so I knew before even calling for assistance to weight her, that it was indeed that fish.

At 18lb 2oz she was a new PB for me and a great result on the new bait from the demanding river Thames.