Today
we had decided to fish the fantastic River Thames on the Kingston
stretch, its a part of the Thames we have wanted to fish for a long time
and decided its time to pay it a visit. But after being told by 2
different people that it will fish hard unless we get some rain did we
waste our time...
We
decided to leave nice and early so as to have plenty of time to search
for decent swims, so I pulled up outside Steve's house at 5am still in
the pitch black and we set off to Kingston.
We
pulled up in the small turnout next to the start of the stretch about
6am and still dark, we went for a walk along the path looking for some
good looking areas, a couple of swims down there seemed to be quite a
lot of disturbance on the surface so we got some gear and started to set
up, I decided to use a Barbel rod on a quiver set-up with a medium
fixed spool reel loaded with 6lb line, cage feeder with a 4lb hook link
to a size 14 hook baited with either maggots, worm or corn. I also had
another Barbel rod same set-up but size 10 hook baited with a big worm
as a sleeper rod hoping for a bonus Perch.
As
we started to be able to see the River it was obvious we was going to
have our work cut out as the River was low, slow and very clear.
Sadly
it was becoming obvious the fish were not really playing ball, with no
bites in the first few hours, but I was watching all the Bleak jumping
out in front of me and could take it no more, I had a backup float rod
with a centre pin on and 3lb line so decided to go for some Bleak, and I
caught loads.
The
Thames is a quite unique place to fish and can be hard to concentrate
on the fishing with so much going on around, by midday we had had a bike
rally/race behind us, probably over 2000 bikes in total, there was a
small boat with a huge speaker on the front blasting out reggae music,
and we still had a few hours left.
By
about 5pm we decided to pack up, mainly because there was some eastern
Europeans starting to fish next to us and they were so loud I couldn't
handle it anymore.
On
reflection the fishing was very hard, Steve had one Bream which was our
target fish, I had a lot of Bleak and a few small Perch, but the place
itself is so different to fish that it was enjoyable even with a lack of
fish, loved it, and looking forward to returning with a bit of pace and
colour in the water.
