October 17th Dorset Stour Throop

First I need to share a joke from the late Tommy Cooper.

“I was in bed with my new girlfriend last night, and she said I‘d got the biggest willy she’d ever laid her hands on”

I said “You’re pulling my leg.”

Well the alarm went off at 6.30am and from a cosy warm sleeping bag I found the cold stark air of a frost as I stepped from the car. The stars were glistening from that dry cold air. Today fishing was going to be difficult and I feared the worst.

I had arranged to meet the two Andy’s in the Throop mill car park. We met at about 7.45am and it was very good to see them again. I had previously bumped into them on Throop about 5 weeks ago. They wanted to know a little more about the river and swims plus what methods, techniques I used. We started by walking the river and looking at swims along most of beat 2.

To differentiate between the two of them. Andrew likes to coarse fish and has some good fish to his credit and Andy is an accomplished fly fisherman but dabbles in coarse fishing so that the two can fish together. He prefers to float fish where-as Andrew prefers to ledger. So the day would be interesting. As we walked the fishery is was quite apparent that the frost was quite hard. At 9.30am the field was still white where the trees shadow lingered. I was thinking oh dear this is going to be difficult. I have not blanked yet with a client. The first few swims I had in mind were taken as we had taken our time looking and talking about swims and when and where to fish in them. Andrew was chomping at the bit to get the line in the water.

Decisions were made for Andrew to fish a shallow glide where there were some chub, so we baited with hemp and all 3 of us had a go at this. We left Andrew fishing and waiting. Andy and myself went further upstream to a part of the river that could be float fished. On route we found a good swim vacant and we could see some chub swimming around. So we immediately got Andrew up. We swiftly baited with hemp and boilies and waited for the swim to rest. We could see the odd chub passing through so we knew they would get their heads down, but probably not until later in the evening.

Andy was trotting with a float and caught some dace, a roach and minnows on banded pellet. But it was difficult fishing with a downstream wind. He was doing well though controlling the float after a bit of coaching. Andrew in the mean time had tackled up and was almost bursting at the seams to get going. Well Andy and I were fishing away with the float when Andrew called at 2.30pm and was into a chub. It came in reasonably easily. On the scales it’s weight was 4lbs 10oz. We all had a guess at the weight and I’m not saying who was the closer. I took some photo’s of two happy guy’s.

The float fishing wasn’t much good and Andy said that he fancied a go at pike fishing. So we tackled up the gear. Somehow I assumed Andy had fished for pike before. So quickly sorting that out we decided sink and draw would be the best option. We walked up the bank away from Andrew and I was showing him how to cast and draw the fish back when on the first couple of casts a pike grabbed the bait. I quickly handed Andy the rod only for the pike to let go. There was still enough weed in the river to cause difficulties in sink and draw, Andy soon became very proficient in the process. He will definitely catch a few pike with this method and skill level.

Meanwhile we put more hemp in Andrews swim and later he got one more bite from a chub of just over 4lbs. The evening drifted on without any more signs of bites materialising. Andy sat behind the rod for a while, whilst Andrew dabbled for pike in the deepening gloom, we heard two shouts where a pike had grabbed the bait but got off. The frost was starting to settle on the unhooking mat as we packed up at 7pm. Not much had been caught on Throop that day due to that first frost so to get 2 chub was good going.

I think the Andy’s had a good day and they certainly learnt a fair amount too! I enjoyed their company and had a good laugh and a great day out.

Thanks Andy for some great photo’s it’s your turn next to catch those big fish.