Itchen for Grayling.

With maggots left over from yesterdays fishing at Ashmoor and with the Wife working for a few hours in Winchester it was only right I took the kids onto the river Itchen for a few hours as my son was really hoping to catch his first Grayling.

We arrived in Winchester at about 8:30am, dropped off the Wife and headed for the city stretch of the river.

After strolling up and down a couple of times we decided to try a different stretch as not much was happening here and was very busy with dog walkers.

Next we tried the Shawford stretch as it seems to be a more prolific part of the river.

After wading through some very flooded parts of the tow path we got to the free stretch and started to bait the swim. After a few trots down I had a nice little brown Trout which I slipped back quickly. It was very hard to get the presentation right as it was flowing so fast, I was running the maggots about half a foot of the bottom but wasn’t having much luck, I saw a small fish right in the margin so shallowed up and dropped it in, after a few little plucks I soon had a Salmon par on. I dropped it in the edge again this time a nice Grayling of 1lb 1oz.

As I had promised my son I would try and get him a Grayling I handed the rod over, this was also his first time using a centre pin reel, which he picked up really well and soon had his first Grayling on the bank.

With that we headed for back and it was mission completed, and a cracking way to spend a few hours.