With the new coarse fishing season almost a week old and with the recent spell of massive heat finally dying off I was itching to get back onto the bank to try to snag one or two of the Wandle’s often elusive fish.
So after work last night, I headed in the direction of one of the local London parks and settled on a swim which has been very reliable for me in the past couple of seasons. The swim in question does not look that inspiring at first glance, being rather shallow and a little muddy. There is however a ‘deeper’ channel on the far side underneath the overhanging bank and trees.
I didn’t waste anytime in flicking a chunk of Lidl’s finest luncheon meat into the far gully to let it roll around and get into all the fish holding dark spaces under the trees,(although for future reference if anyone is interested in using Lidl tinned meat it does appear to be quite a bit more bouyant than the main brands). Pretty much from the first cast I was getting rapid twitches and pulls as unseen fish were snaffling the bait from the hook, I was just to slow on the strike. Its easy to get out of practice in the closed season, well that’s my excuse and I’m sticking with it. Eventually though I managed to connect with a couple of fish, a brace of nice Chub of around 3lb or so (I didn’t weight them) and a cracking little Barbel of 4lb 4oz, not a monster by any standards but good to get off the mark with.
One more escapee fish followed, again unseen, but did feel very Barbelly before the fish completely died off signalling my time to head off back home.
Incidentally all my pictures (well most of them) are simple self takes on an iPhone mounted on a Gorilla pod with the aid of a cheap little attachment sourced from E-bay, saves having to carry a camera separately which helps to keep the weight of gear carried down to a minimum.