Meeting John Wilson MBE and Fishing on the Kennet

Today was the day I had been looking forward to for a very long time, the angling legend himself was coming to town, well, Newbury, John Wilson MBE.

I decided we needed to get there early so we can beat the crowds and hopefully have time for a chat, as this was the last chance before he jets off to live in Thailand.

I picked Steve up at 7am and we headed to Newbury. We arrived at Experience Fishing tackle shop about 7:45am, a whole 1 ¼ hour until they opened, but we had a good space to park the car and we was first there, even before the shop owner.

Luckily we have spoke to Dave and the team at Experience fishing many times and he knows us and the site well, which was handy as when he arrived he let us in for a pre-Wilson brew, perfect.

Just before 9am John Wilson turned up and got set up in the shop. It was one of the best experiences of my life, we managed a whole 1 ½ hours with John just chatting away like we had known him for years, truly remarkable.

At about 10:30am we set off to the River Kennet in Newbury as its a free stretch and right around the corner.

This place is real urban fishing, parking the car in the centre of town and walking to the River.

We started at the beginning of the free stretch where the playground is and slowly worked our way down using lures to start with. After loosing a couple to under water snags we gave up and headed back to the car to re-tackle for trotting and some lunch.

After meeting Rich in the car park we headed back to the start of the run for a spot of trotting. It was slow going with not a lot happening. We carried on walking down stream until we got to the weir right at the end of the run. We was using bread as bait hoping for Chub, Dace etc. using a light 13' float rod and Centrepin reel was great fun. Finally in the weir I started catching fish, first a few Dace then a nice Brown Trout but after that it just died off. Such a great little venue and would have been even better I think if we had a pint of maggots or so, but never mind still a fantastic day and one I will never forget.

MORE Free Fishing on the Wey.

I’m starting to really like this free fishing lark, last week free fishing on the river Itchen, this week we were going to spend a few hours on the river Wey in Farnham.

As the darkness now hangs around for longer in the morning it means not quite so early starts, which is nice, so I picked Steve up at 7am (which is late for us) and headed for Farnham, Steve had fished here before so had an idea on parking which was handy as I had only driven over the bridge before.

About 7:30 we was parked and a whole £2 parking later we set off the river, its quite a thin section of the river and quite shallow in places but looked great, we walked over the bridge that I have driven over many times and cast in just beyond it. On the second trot through I had a nice little brown Trout, then all went quiet so we moved up to a nice stretch in front of a park, there was loads of fish here, every cast was either a Minnow, Dace, Chublett or Trout, it was fantastic fun, and as soon as the fishing slowed we just moved up a hundred yards or so and carried on, this is why we had to travel light, just a rod/reel in one hand a net in the other and a rucksack on my back with all I need in. We walked up and down the river and caught loads of fish but the most surprising thing for me was the quality Dace fishing to be had, and for free, we had fish to 8oz, I had one to 7oz and most over 5oz, great fishing.