My local community Braybrooke Nature and Fishing Club suffered a blow early this year, when no sooner had they taken over control of the fishing rights on the river that runs through the town, it was heavily polluted, killing thousands of prime fish. Since then the little river has been polluted a further four times, when various oil based liquids have been fly dumped down rain water surface drains, which feed into the stream.

With no more events over the past months, the river appears to have recovered and during a working party to remove snags from the bottom, fish were topping all over the surface and resolved to come back for a fishing session. Arriving after lunch on a sunny afternoon, I chose to fish a swim, which had yielded a shopping trolley, two cycles, a metal chair, part of a BBQ and a building site bucket full of breeze blocks.

On getting down to the swim, my heart sank, when I saw the state of the river. It was covered a white scum with large pieces of flotsam drifting downstream.

Expecting not to even get a bite, I decided not to waste time setting up a stick float and running line, getting out my pole and quickly attaching a rig, before punching out a 5 mm pellet of bread for the size 16 hook. Without feeding, the rig was plonked into the middle of the scum. The float settled and went under. Surprise, surprise, a rudd bounced on the end of the line.

With only half a pint of liquidised bread, this was not going to be a long visit, but encouraged I fed a couple of small balls to the edge of the flow and followed through with the float. More rudd were soon swinging to hand, plus the occasional netter.

Setting the float deeper found the first roach of the afternoon, a couple more balls of bread keeping them on station.

The float dived away upstream and lifted into a small chub, that stormed round the swim.

So it went on, silver fish coming every cast, the bread punch once again proving it’s worth, each pellet accounting for a fish.

Then the gudgeon moved in, pushing out the roach. At least these fat little bottom feeders had also survived the period of pollution, when it had been impossible to get a bite on any bait.

A nice roach managed to get through the mass of gudgeon, but it was a one off, finding them where ever I place the float after that.

A couple of hours had been enough to prove that the river still holds enough fish to keep an angler busy.

Throwing the remains of my punched bread slices into the river as I packed up, I was entertained by the sight of a 3 lb carp demolishing the remnants as they drifted downstream.