Wednesday 7th September H.Avon and D.Stour

It gets light now at about 6.30am and I slowly get myself together for a days fishing. I was going to do a bit of walking today on a couple more stretches to see what was around. The first stretch has one swim where the chub hide under a partly submerged tree. Some hemp had the chub grubbing around and I could see fish to perhaps 6lbs. There were about 6 fish in total.

Well I had few bites from them but to be honest I think I was using the wrong tactics of source boilies and a short hooklink. Also the swim was well worn which indicated that it was well fished and these fish had wised up to rigs etc. I left them in peace and was pleased to give them breakfast.

I decided to walk a few places downstream of Ibsley bridge where I saw a really huge chub of over 10lbs, only to quickly realise it was a common carp, my heart though was in my mouth for a split second.

Soon it was lunch time and I moved back to Throop. I wanted to fish the mud swim, however first I saw Irish George and Sid the bailiff on another stretch. I parked up and went for a chat. Between them they had caught 4 barbel since the start of the season and bearing in mind they fish almost 5 days each week that’s not a good return. They had said that the banks have been empty of anglers and barbel were few and far between. they also said that the chub numbers seemed to be down as well, although a few big fish are still being caught.

I said my good bye and went to the mud swim where I waded out in chest waders and put out some hemp. This then tempted the small fish into the area quickly followed by the pike. The pike would strike time and time again scattering the smaller fish.

I could just make out some larger chub coming in and feeding on the pellet. Afternoon turned into evening and my first action was from a bream.

Well the 6lbs 3oz bream mean’s no blanks.

I continued fishing and had one more chub of about 4lbs which could have been bigger, but hey ho it’s still a fish. This though was caught on source boilie.

As darkness fell I thought I might get another but nothing happened.