Fishing Dave
Steuart's garden
In the last couple of years we have been lucky enough to meet Dave Steuart, one
of the more famous anglers of the 1960's who hade regular columns in the
angling periodicals. We also managed to record him with Bob Church in Recollections V scheduled for 2016. Dave
kindly offered the chance to fish his stretch of the River Test running through
his garden.
Lee and I arrived late getting stuck behind a lorry
moving tree trunks to a saw mill. It turned
out to be a lorry from Bideford moving tree that had been felled from a
woodland about 300yards from where we live!!
When we arrived, Dave walked us along the river showing us the likely
places to fish. Le was quickly off the
mark into a shoal of grayling. This wasn’t surprising as the warm spell had
ended the night before with the temperature plummeting to Sub zero. My first choice of swim proved fishless, so I
moved to a different one and was immediately into the grayling too followed
shortly afterwards by brown trout of 6lbs 10 oz which messed up the swim.
After chatting to Lee to pass a few minuets, we sat on a
bench with our lunch and dropped the bait (trotted bread flake) into the edge
at our feed and were rudely interrupted by a trout taking the bait. Food went flying as we brought it to the net.
After carefully returning it, we settled again only for the exercise to be
repeated.
After lunch I moved to a weir pool catching trout after
trout whilst Lee caught more grayling interspersed with a dace of 13oz., but no
roach appeared until the light started to fall at dusk when Lee caught six with
the best being 1lb 12 oz whereas my best was a smaller 1lb 4 oz. But what a great day. We thought it would be a real
struggle in the temperature but were delighted by the sport and were flabbergasted
when Dave apologised for the poor sport because of the weather (or our lack of
skill). I would love to fish it on a good day…. Maybe next year….. But a great
day and thanks very much to Dave.
We arrived on the day the temperature dropped to
sub zero but still had a great day out with Lee (my son) and I sharing 40 odd
grayling to 1.25 lbs, about 15 trout to 6lbs 10oz, Lee had a 13oz dace and we
shared roach to 1-12 with Lee bagging the best roach pictured here. What a
privilege it was to spend time with Dave again and be able to trot such a
fabulous piece of water.