A raw week when only the brave would consider venturing out, or in my case the mad.
Tuesday saw myself and father heading towards the river Wey at Addlestone, a Cemex venue that has been kind to me in the past and a small stretch of river that lm sure anyone prepared to explore could turn over a few surprises. Arriving at 8am l soon questioned my reason to fish the centre pin as the metal constantly on my bare hands soon had me reaching for the warmth of my pockets. It took around forty minutes of constant feeding to get my first bite and as the rod bent round l knew it wasn’t the hoped for dace but a chub of around 3lb 8oz. The next two casts saw a repeat, albeit from smaller chub before a lull in action. I know that there are quite a few pike around so put it down to this however continuously feeding bought another bite, this time from the desired species, dace, but at around an ounce slightly of what l was after. That bite signalled a flurry of fish including roach to 6oz, small chub and dace however just before the heavens opened at around midday, what l first thought was a roach fell into the net? It wasn’t until l went to unhook the fish that l realised that it wasn’t a roach but a dace and a good one at that. I even had to double check it wasn’t a small chub but to my amazement it was in fact what l was after just slightly bigger than the 5.5oz that l had set!
Having caught perch, pike and now dace all over my set targets for the Cemex Challenge Cup I thought it was time to treat myself to some chub fishing. Ian Day at Sonubaits had sent some paste baits that he wanted looking at, so after a few in-house tests, set of to my favourite stretch of the River Loddon to see if they would perform. I was expecting the river to be cold and clear but for some reason found it coloured and running at a temperature of 43.6f along with carrying some strange black weed that made my mainline look more like a washing line after just a few minutes. I was beginning to think that something was wrong with the water as it wasn’t until the third swim that the tip flew round and a four-pound chub came to my net. A couple of swims later another bite saw a 5lb 4oz chub falling to Ian’s prototype paste along with another two, three pounders on the way back to the car. Four chub in three hours on a strange looking river and all taken on a selection of new baits from Sonubaits only makes me want the weather to get better so l can take them onto the Kennet in the hope of barbel.
