Torrential rain at the beginning of the week had worked through and I found the River Blackwater low and clear, when I arrived on Thursday. This stretch is relatively new to me, my club Farnborough and District AS only acquiring the water at the turn of the year. The bottom end of the stretch narrows giving several deep runs, where I have had good roach and dace fishing on the stick float, but today I walked up toward the top gate, where the river is very shallow, finding a swim with just enough room for my 12 ft Hardy among the trees.

The bottom was visible right across, but a couple of balls of liquidised bread soon had fish heading into the clouds of particles, the float sinking away with the first of several small chub.

Then another ball of bread brought a surprise, a small skimmer bream out of place in the fast flowing shallows.

A better fight meant a roach had taken the 6 mm bread pellet and the landing net came out for the first time from the high bank.

The roach were now queuing up, many swingers, plus the odd netter.

The roach were slowly drifting back down the swim, taking longer to get a bite and longer to net, so I added more bread to the tray, damping it down and throwing further back upstream.

The roach followed the feed and I began to hit fish on a tight line as I followed down with my rod.

This clonker took off the top of the rod, tail walking in a shower of spray, but staying on the size sixteen barbless long enough for the net.

I had had a couple of small dace, but my next was a beaut, doggedly tumbling and rolling to the net.

These dace were hard to hit, tipping and holding the float just below the surface, often hooking the fish only to lose it seconds later.

This roach was competing with the dace in only two feet of water, the bite taking the float straight down, while the dace continued to play games with me, losing, or missing the majority.

Keeping a tight line just off bottom and going down to a smaller 5 mm punch was the answer, although some still hooked themselves, only to come off again. Regular feed of tight, damp balls of bread kept the bites coming in a short area.

As quickly as they had come on the scene, the dace gave way to roach again and I gave a couple of bread punch tutorials to passersby, the roach sitting over the feed five yards down the trot, making it look too easy.

The best roach of the session came during one of these demo’s, making sure that I did not rush it to the net.

I was still taking a roach a cast, but had to call it a day after almost five hours, having run out of feed, this roach being my last fish.

One of my watchers helped me bring in the net, he being amazed at the number of fish. I tipped the contents of the keepnet into my landing net, which he was supporting, unfortunately he let the landing net slide to one side and many of the fish fell onto the bank, needing to be scooped up again, covering them in dirt. A quick photo and a weigh in at just under eleven pounds, soon had them back in the river.