We must be MAD!!!

We was supposed to be fishing at Barons pond in Liss but due to frosts and a lot of snow we decided to find a river instead. Whilst most people would not dream of fishing let alone driving in these conditions we decided to give it a go, and head to a little known river in Thatcham. I picked Steve up at 8am after scraping the 5 inch's of snow of the car and headed for the river, which was basically a ford and that's it, but worth a go. We parked the car at the top of the hill as there would be no chance of getting it out if we didn't. Only problem was we then had to walk down the hill with the fishing rod in hand, risky. We have heard if some nice Roach inhabiting this small pool so I tackled with a 10ft float rod, centrepin reel with 4lb line, chubber float and a 3lb hooklink to a size 14 hook, for bait it was maggots.

It was some interesting fishing as we was stood on a silt pile covered in snow, so we kept sinking.

After a couple of trots through it was obvious that the water was very shallow only about a foot in places so I didn't hold out much hope. Then the tip bent round and I was in. I initially thought if its a Roach it's a good one, but it turned out to be a feisty little brown trout, but a fish and in this very cold day I was happy. After about an hour and another fish which I lost we decided to leave and off to a little river near Basingstoke, and although we got some cracking shots we got no fish so we called it day.

Although we didn't catch much, well just one, its better to be on the bank catching nothing with a backdrop of snowy countryside and trying to catch.