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I have to admit that the move from Ringwood to the Waterside area was made with a degree of apprehension on my part, but with my wife’s new job in Southampton and me travelling to Fawley every day it seemed like the sensible thing to do. It was inevitable that I was not going to find a house with a 2lb roach swim at the bottom of the garden, so initially I persisted with travelling back to the Avon and Stour, and the Ringwood pits a couple of times a week including the odd after work session. For a spell I even used to fish the Half Pit on early morning sessions before work – driving back to Fawley in time for a 9am start (I must have been mad!). After a while the travelling became a drag. In the grand scheme of things Ringwood isn’t that far, but having lived there, and having become accustomed to fishing very short sessions of maybe only an hour or two at a time, I wasn’t enjoying my fishing as much as I used to. I was still catching on the Avon – a number of good barbel to 12:12 and a several PB chub to 6:15:08 came my way, but the birth of my baby daughter and a run of blanks on Throop resulted in me making a conscious decision to try and make the most of the fishing closer to home.
At first this started as a compromise distance wise, and I started a mini campaign to catch a big roach from Sway. My river PB was shared jointly by fish of 2:09 from both the Dorset Frome and Hampshire Avon, so I knew it was going to have to be a good fish to beat it. During the weekends Sway was virtually always packed and I was rarely able to get any of the swims I fancied, so I decided on a series of after work sessions during April and May. The number of 2lb roach in Sway was truly incredible, given the size of the place, and it wasn’t long before I sussed the method and was regularly catching fish over the 2lb barrier by waggler fishing single maggot over crushed hemp and pellet. I became so confident that I invited my dad down from the Lake District, put him in my swim and guaranteed him a “2”. Suffice it to say that he landed a number of PB’s in that session including a 5lb+ golden tench, 6lb+ green tench, big perch and a 22lb grass carp!! His biggest roach was 1:15 - typical. During the following weeks I managed first to match my river PB and then beat it with a fantastic young looking fish of 2:12 – mission accomplished.
With the roach about to spawn and my next target venue operating a close season I decided to switch my attentions to bass. A number of pre- and post work raids were carried out and it soon became clear that early morning is by far the most consistent time for catching bass on lures, at least in the Solent. Most of the fish were small, up to around 2lb in weight, but with 3 or 4 fish in an hour long session it was great fun. The odd larger one also put in an appearance and it was an enjoyable period, and a great way to start the day.
June 16th arrived and my focus was again switched back to freshwater and the tench and bream of Hatchet pond. I had heard a lot of rumours about Hatchet – that the lake was bottomless, that there was a spitfire on the lake bed and that the lake was tidal! The most interesting (and plausible) ones were however that the bream went to over double figures and the tench were of a high average size, and that virtually everyone else fished for the carp. Over a number of short visits I was able to confirm each of the last three rumours. Although the really big bream have evaded me, I did witness an 11lb+ fish to a carp angler and did catch fish to 8lb on the method. I also did really well fishing the car park end before work on maggot feeder catching loads of tench over 6lb to a maximum of 7:12, and a new PB. All this without spending hours in the car!
When winter arrived there was a strong temptation to go back to Avon and Stour as the papers were full of big chub and barbel captures, but I resisted the temptation most of the time and instead had a few sessions on the Test and Itchen. The Lower Itchen Fishery opens up to any method fishing in the winter and the sport can be spectacular, particularly for grayling. In the first coupe of sessions I had a number of fish over 2lb, but with backing fish of a pound and half it was the sheer quantity of fish that was most impressive with 30 or 40 fish possible in a day. One of the most memorable fish from the Test actually came from a millstream and at 15oz it was the biggest dace I have seen in a long time – definite record prospects for the future, if the cormorants can be ‘discouraged’.
As you can probably tell by now I flit around a fair bit, both in terms of species and venues, rarely fishing one place for long. During recent years one of the species that I have not really spent much time after was perch. Over the years I had caught fish to over 2lb from a number of places, mostly by accident, such as on Sway, and sometimes by design, but I had never really had a perch campaign. With this in mind I decided to test out the perch potential of some of the local stillwaters. It soon became clear that many of the waters which had produced big perch in the past had since lost their specimen fish and now either had no form for the species, or were overrun with smaller samples. Rather than fish for “ghosts” I decided my time would be better spent pioneering venues which may just have the odd big stripy lurking.
As you might expect early results were less than spectacular, but I did catch enough perch to keep my hopes and enthusiasm up. Then on one short after work session my perseverance paid off. My usual tactic is to feed cloudy groundbait to attract the roach and rudd and then fish one rod on a paternostered lobworm and the other on a small livebait. Perch are not great lovers of bright sunshine, but as dusk approaches they go on the prowl and in the last half an hour of daylight I managed 2 two pounders, both to the livebait rod. That was enough to convince me I was on the right venue, and over the coming weeks I caught 7 big perch to 3:02, all on livebaits. Analysis of the photos convinced me that 2 of the fish were re-captures, and during a dawn raid in the spring I caught a new PB of 3:11, the same fish as I had caught at 3:02 in the autumn, this time on lobworm. I can’t begin to describe the satisfaction of catching a fish of this size from a local water, using nothing more than watercraft and perseverance.
So to the moral of the story….
For me, with my fishing time limited, my love of short sessions and my dislike for travelling far, the move to the Waterside area initially felt like a backward step in terms of my prospects for catching good fish, at least compared with the unparalleled riches I had experienced before. In reality, however, with a shift of emphasis, a bit of local knowledge and a fair amount of pioneering I was still able to put plenty of good fish on the bank without travelling miles, including some new PB’s, and often without seeing another angler – at least not one that was actually awake.
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