A couple of years ago, Dad and I picked up our boat from it’s mooring on the Thames and brought it back home to fix on a new transom mount, and give it a new coat of paint on the interior. After we finished working on it, somehow, it ended up sitting in our garage until July this year, when we finally got around to taking it back down on the Thames.
Having not been on the river for such a long time, our first trip was all about getting back in to the swing of things, although we actually ended up having a brilliant days fishing with crank baits. We’d been really looking forward to using some of the Salmo crankbaits on the Thames, and the Bullhead, Hornet, Tiny and Lil’ Bug all worked very well, helping us boat over 60 fish that day - a mixture of Pike, Perch, and our main target, Chub.
On the next trip a week later, we explored further down the river and decided to check out an area Dad caught a 6lb 2oz Chub from a few winters ago on a twin tail, from a very high and coloured river. As we reached the area, to our surprise, we stumbled across numbers of good Chub basking on the surface, and there was one cracking fish in particular that looked over 6lb. We decided to actually leapfrog these fish as we’d spooked them slightly, and head on a bit further upstream so they could settle, then slowly drift down on to the fish, dropping the anchor where we felt it was necessary, and cast to them with small Hornets and the Tiny. The first few fish we cast to were not obliging, but then out of the blue, one slammed a 3cm Hornet, and less than 30 seconds later a 4lb+ Chub was in the net!
As we drifted down, we dropped anchor opposite a deep hole with an undercut bank, where I saw the big Chub a little while earlier. On Dad’s first cast, he had an aggressive take, which was almost too quick to hit, so he cast his 3cm Hornet back to the same spot, let it sink down under the bank, began his retrieve, and BANG! This was a big fish, and he did well to bully it away from the tree roots under the bank in what was quite a strong current. When it reached the slacker water where our boat was anchored, I scooped it in to the net and I knew it was his biggest Chub of the season so far!
Although we boated many more Chub and Perch that afternoon, Dad’s big Chub was the highlight of the day for us, and on our next trip we returned to the same area, hoping for more action. We caught a couple of smaller Chub to around 3lb 8oz, but the bigger fish were proving elusive. We did come across a huge shoal of Perch, and had some great action, landing nearly 80 of them in the space of a couple of hours! What was a nice surprise though was a pug-nosed Pike, Dad’s second from the Thames!
It was a bit disappointing that we didn’t manage to hook up with another big Chub, but these fish were smart, and if they aren’t in the mood to take, out-witting a big Chub, especially with lures, can be tricky. However, it was time to turn our attention to the opening of the lure fishing season on the midlands reservoirs. It looked like we weren’t going to be able to fish Grafham on the first day of the lure season, but thankfully a cancellation of a boat two days before meant we were able to keep up our ‘tradition’ of fishing the opening day of the lure fishing season there every year since 2006. It was a good idea we took that opportunity too!
On the first day we decided to target Pike. It felt strange casting 18cm Replicants after three months of casting tiny crank baits at Chub, but great at the same time. I always get the feeling that if a fish takes a lure of that size, there’s always the chance it could be big - and that’s exactly what happened on my sixth cast of the day, with a scraper 20lb+ Pike taking a Replicant in the Super Natural Zander colour. What a start!
The Super Natural Zander colour worked really well for me last year, and it seemed to be working well on this day too because I had another good hit shortly after landing that fish. I thought it was going to be another nice Pike, but the fish revealed itself to be a greedy Zander! It was certainly the biggest lure I’ve caught a Zander on, and obviously took a liking to one of its own kind!
The next few hours resulted in a couple more smaller Pike, until Dad and I came across a group of what looked like sizeable fish on the sidescan, and we assumed they were either Zander, Bream, or possibly big Perch. A switch to lighter tactics and 11cm Slick Shads was needed to provide an answer, and they turned out to be the latter! Perch of 3lb 4oz and 3lb resulted on the first couple of casts, but little did we know that we’d discovered some amazing Perch fishing, and this was to continue for the next couple of months.
I’d booked three days off work to fish the reservoirs that week, and the following two days were both half day/afternoon trips, as I needed to catch up with a few things. We mixed it up with fishing for Pike, Perch and Zander, and although we didn’t boat the same number of fish as we did on the first day, we did land some good sizes of all three species, and Dad rounded the three days fishing off with a last minute 20lb+ Pike, which took an 18cm Pro Shad.
It was the Perch fishing though that had been exceptional, and on our next few trips we concentrated on targeting stripeys. To cut a long story short, fishing a mixture of different tactics (shads, crank baits and chatter baits), we experienced some of the best Perch fishing we’ve both had over the following few trips, landing 57 over 40cm and 37 over 3lb, to 4lb.
The action was thick and fast, with regular double hookups, not to mention the odd nice Zander making an appearance too. This incredible sport continued until the water temperature reached about 12°C, when the fish started to move in to deeper water.
Switching between three completely different types of lures kept the bites coming. Fishing an 11cm Slick Shad on a straight retrieve, in a variety of different colours, was the most productive method for both Perch and Zander, but there were two other lures that really worked well too.
The Salmo Hornet 6 has also been brilliant, fished either on a straight retrieve or fished erratically on a stop-start retrieve.
If the action slowed up on the shads and crankbaits, we would try a chatterbait to see if that woke them up, and these also worked well, not just for Perch but Zander too.
It was a welcome distraction from the Pike, although we did manage to catch some in amongst fishing for the Perch and Zander. Now the cooler weather has arrived I’m looking forward to targeting Pike a bit more often - unless I get distracted by Perch and Zander again!
Back at the end of September and early October, Dad and I were privileged to be invited to flyfish the River Test with some of the guys from Farlows, on the first occasion for Salmon, and for Trout on the second trip. Our day targeting Salmon was unsuccessful, but we learnt a lot on our first trip fishing the Test, and whilst looking for Salmon, spotted some big Trout and Grayling, which we pursued on the next trip. The highlight of the second trip was Dad landing a lovely Brownie, that gave him an aerobatic fight and fought like stink on his 5wt! We also landed some Grayling, plus a Roach that beat a Brownie to the fly!
All in all, it’s been an exciting and action-packed Autumn. I was meaning to post this blog a couple of weeks ago, but ran out of time as Dad and I headed to Bosnia for a week of fishing on the Una River to target Huchen - what a stunning river the Una is! I'll write about our trip in the next couple of weeks...
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