Tuesday, November 12th I managed a few hours at Darracott following a spell without fishing. Chris, my brother-in-law, had come to dog sit for us so we braved the hostile conditions to fish the local reservoir. After starting with a float and catching a small roach on worm, I found an old swing tip in my bag. As the wind was swirly, float fishing proved problematic, I changed to leger tactics with using the tip. Although the sport continued to be slow in the cold conditions, I managed to catch a roach of about 1.25lb and a couple of bream about the 2lb mark.
I was looking forward to getting back on the river bank. The rain had been lashing down for a couple of days and so when I arrived at Lacock on the Bristol Avon on the Tuesday afternoon, I immediately drove to see the river conditions. It had been in the fields that night, but had just receded into the banks. I only had a couple of hours to spare and so decided to try anyway. Not being familiar with the stretch, I fished the eddies but wasn't sure if I was fishing where the bank would normally be, or in the main river. I ended up fishless, but enjoyed the period of meditation accompanied by a flock of long-tailed tits and a kingfisher (who also struggled to find anything). I had to finish at about 4pm to get cleaned up prior to the Bonamassa concert which was outstanding. We've seen Eric Clapton before, and this young guy is right up there with the best of them.
I was away at 7a.m. on the Thursday morning to pick Reg Talbot up to fish the Kennet. We arrived at 8.30 to find this river also full and slightly coloured although it was very fishable, and nothing like a spate river. Gary, the local expert gave us the tour and suggested a few swims, and tactics to use. We were really looking forward to the dry day that the weather forecast had predicted. (But from the moment that they told us the day would be dry, it started drizzling and didn't stop all day.) I started with a float set-up fishing a worm in a back eddy, the one you can see in the thumb nail picture. I started off with a nice chub, but then the water went quiet. Reg tried for barbel in another carrier, but without success.
We moved on to the main river. Reg tried feeder fishing catching a nice brownie, whilst I drifted along lobbing a legered lump of spam in likely places and caught a couple of chub.
We then switched to float tactics catching small silver fish. Reg is much better at this fine fishing, joking that he had changed up to a size 16, whereas I had scaled down to an 8!! Reg then lost a good rainbow and caught a nice perch before Gary suggested we try a last carrier. He said that if the rest of the river was fishing below the norm, then this one place often fished better. He had it spot on! I went straight to worm, catching a roach first cast and then three perch with the best just over 2lb. Reg with his lighter tactics caught a silver fish every run through. We commented that had we started there we would have got bored catching fish. It was a superb end to a great days fishing in beautiful surroundings, thanks very much Gary