September 24th Throop

I arrived at the allocated time of the fishery opening 6.45am. The night had been a little cooler and there was a threat of a cold N/W wind later in the day. I decided to fish the same swim where I had caught the barbel on Wednesday. There was a really heavy dew on the ground as I made my way to the swim. I loaded the swim with  the normal 1.5 pints of hemp. Before I could put the rods together the big grey shapes were gathering. I guess there were about 6 of them. What was noticeable was that the weed was decaying and there was much less. This is not good news as it’s the weed that the barbel and chub like to hide in. I also like to hide the line in the weed too. I was to fish two rods today and cast one to an area upstream on a patch of gravel by some cabbages and the other would be on the hot spot. Well it was the upstream rod that went first at 8.05am with a nice chub of 5lbs 4oz. These are two a penny on the D. Stour but not so on the Bristol Avon, so it’s still a pleasure to land fish like this. Then at 9am the hot spot rod went off, I prefer to fish with the bait runner spool on so that the fish can take a little line rather than wrench the rod around. It turned out to be a cracking fish of 6lbs 5oz. Closer inspection showed it to be one I had caught two weeks ago at 6lbs 7oz. It is still quite empty so with it’s winter feed it should be close to 7lbs. There were still more in the swim. Steve another angler came to fish the swim. He had been on Throop for a week and lost a good barbel the day before and was feeling sorry for himself. It was his sobbing that finally done it for me. So I baited up again with hemp and invited him to fish the swim. He was ecstatic!

I went away and fished for a 7lb chub that sits close in under the bank, it has two friends of about 6lbs. The plan was to try for these for the remainder of the day. To cut a very long story short, I had them going on free boilies and lowered a free-line one in and I pricked the 7lb fish and that was that. The wind was strong from the N/W and the temperatures stayed around the 15c mark.Steve later lost a good chub in the weed, and I could hear his sobs from 100m away. I said to sit it out and his perseverance paid off with a chub of 5lbs 8oz. Well done!

Brian Wilson caught one of the best looking chub I had seen at 6lbs 8oz. What a beauty.