The River Leam - Old Boys and Ololygmancy

Well another birthday ticked off where the 3rd of November I turned the grand old age of 52. To be honest I didn't want much of a celebration so a slap up Sunday roast and a rather good fireworks display in Stratford-Upon-Avon with a few bottle of bitter, was most welcome indeed.

This weekend it's 3 nights of partying and to me these are the sort of things you need to do to keep you young and I couldn't care less about the finger pointers. The problem is the fishing of late has been rather curtailed especially when it gets dark early these days. 

Work if I'm honest has been a bit of a pain after coming back of holiday, rush CAD jobs, 3D prints that needed to be fitted to prototype vehicles YESTERDAY !! when will I get to go fishing ? Well luckily a syndicate stretch of the River Leam is not far away so after work had finished, as short drive later I rocked up at the river with fellow blogger and Artificial Flight Youtuber George Burton already in resident in the pump pool. 

He hadn't been there long but had already caught a nice roach and there was also other fish topping when we were having a natter. It had a couple of foot of visibility and was rather sluggish but the fish activity was encouraging.  

Dusk wasn't far off so I had to get moving so I settled in to a snag filled swim not far downstream where I'd scale down a little from my usual set-up where roach and chub were the target. Simple tactics with a small feeder full of liquidised bread and then a small piece of pinched bread on the size 12 hook. 

It's a lovely little river this and this stretch is surprisingly deep in places in-fact both swims George and I were fishing you had to count 1,2,3-------7 before the feeder hit the bottom.

Anyway it was looking good for a bite however my luck of late has been rather lacking however after only fifteen minutes or so after casting out, the 1oz tip jumped in to life where after a couple of small pulls a tentative bite developed and I struck in to a solid lump !!

This was not one of the nice roach that reside here but one of the chunky chub and sure enough after taking me all over the shop and trying to get in to every escape route thankfully I landed it. 

A nice one too going 3lb and 8 ounces on the scales with the trophy shot not really showing just how little light was left. It was definitely on the cusk of dusk and after putting it back in another swim I managed another one of about 2.5lb, so 2 chub in less than 45 minutes happy days.

George was being outwitted by the topping roach so he made and exit where I continued on for another half an hour or so with the torch illuminating the rod tip. One quick roach type bite that I missed and the odd rattle but when I left at 6.00pm the fish activity definitely lessened. Oh well at least I'm back on the score sheet, it's been a long time.