I was geared up for my first visit of the season, to the Farnborough DAS stretch of the River Blackwater at Camberly this week, now that Autumnal temperatures are the norm and following reports of roach and bream bags being taken on the bread punch. My enthusiasm evaporated at the top of my road, where it crosses a dual carraigeway at traffic lights, when I joined a queue of traffic waiting to cross. My side was slowly moving forwards, a few cars at a time. Drawing closer, I could see the blue flashing lights of police cars, while traffic on my side wishing to cross the lights, were being directed to the right away from the junction, back into the town. As the normal function of the lights was allowing traffic each way along the carraigeway, it took sometime for me to reach my turning point, seeing that a large van had hit an estate car in the rear, blocking progress across, while bollards restricted those cars turning right and across to follow left. At the next lights was another queue. This was mid Friday afternoon, when traffic is usually heavy, and knowing the diversion route would be clogged, I abandoned the Blackwater idea and cut through the centre of the town and headed for the Cut at Jocks Lane.

Parking the car, I loaded up my trolley and headed for the river, seeing that it was still low, despite rain earlier in the week. The oil barriers are now a permanent fixture at the weir, which was passing a scummy trickle over the sill into the slow moving river. I continued down to the disabled platform and saw that the level was right down again, with exposed mud and the bottom visible across to the opposite bank. Being on the inside of the bend, there was no flow and a film of scum was static over the shallows, with a pervading smell of oil.

Thames Water are obviously extracting more water from the Cut, recently a multi gallon tank was sunk into the ground, attached by a pipe to the outfall tunnel above the weir, having a direct link to the water treatment works a mile downstream. At the time, Thames engineers said that this was to avoid flooding of the river, but the water passing over the weir sill is now always a trickle, even in times of high flows on the main river. With thousands of new houses on estates springing up all around the local area, the water has to come from somewhere?

The days of using 5 No 4 bodied ali stemmed stick floats on this river are long gone, my new float of choice being a pole float carrying the equivalent of 2 No 4. A single No 6 under the float with three No 8 shot shirt buttoned down the line to the size 14 barbless hook. The old river depth here was three feet, with the float trotted down and held back in the flow, but now there is only two feet of depth with minimal flow. This week I was casting downstream to the deeper water, to avoid being seen by the fish, while the float was shotted with the fine tip just above the surface film. Bites were usually a couple of bobs before the tip disapeared, followed by the greased line, when I struck. Feeding was by catapult, at intervals firing small balls of strawberry flavoured liquidised bread, mixed half and half with ground hempseed. My first cast produced a runaway bite from a hard fighting chublet, that put a good bend in my 12 foot Hardy match rod.

A few gudgeon followed, before the steady thump, thump was felt from a small roach, that took the 7 mm punch of bread.

Some of the gudgeon were of a good size, fighting well above their weight on this fine tackle.

Among the gudgeon, the silver fish were keeping me interested, another small roach taking at range, followed next cast by a chublet.

Steady feeding brought a gudgeon a chuck, along with a better chub that took the bread on the drop, seconds after the cast, then running downstream needing a backwind from my ABU 501, requiring the landing net for the first time that afternoon. Not a big fish, but it certainly gave me a run for my money.

I was beginning to get a few better fish, when a young couple walked down the disabled platform and peered over the rail looking for fish, saying that they had been watching me catching fish, making it look easy, but now couldn’t see any. As politely as possible, I informed them I had purpously sat ten yards upstream to avoid scaring the fish in the clear water and suggested that they stand behind me, if they wanted to see some fish.

I fed some more groundbait with the catapult and cast downstream, the float disappeared and I struck into the best fish of the afternoon, a good roach, that was visible from the moment that it was hooked, ziz zagging from side to side, until I netted it, saying that they had brought me luck. They were impressed! There you are, making it look easy again!

The couple thanked me for the demonstration and continued downstream, which coinsided with the arrival of some noisy teenagers with a ball, which soon found its way into the river upstream. One of the lads soon had his shoes off and waded into the FREEZING water, hollering at the top of his voice about the cold. A game of kick about football was soon taking place on the green above my swim and the ball was back in the river. This is a public recreation ground and open to all and I decided to call it a day after two and a half hours of fishing. Beggars can’t be chosers.

My last fish, another fat gudgeon

A sign of a busy afternoon in Gudgeon Alley