I was torn between heading to Swineford or the Jack Whites stretch, mainly due to the amount of temporary traffic lights around Keynsham and Bitton but with the satnav telling me it was a clear run, I decided Swineford was the venue for this evening. Things have been pretty busy on the river recently with a lot of anglers taking advantage of the fine weather which has forced me to try some new swims that I've not considered before. Although I did poke a nose into a couple of likely spots in the 1st field, it turned out that Houseboat Bay (the last swim before the kissing gate to the 2nd field) was free so it was hard to resist setting up before someone else nabbed it!
The swim is one of the best on the river as it's on a corner which narrows down slightly giving a lovely glide to trot a float through. It also has amazing bankside cover, a great area of slack water to the right and a houseboat on the far bank which is a fish magnet. Add the fact that it's one of the few swims you can set up a chair in, fish two rods comfortably and cast a decent distance and you've a real winner! I've had great success fishing for pike in this swim, as well as chub but as it does get a bit of a hammering I was slightly nervous it may have been overfished of late...
I needn't have worried! while setting up there were fish topping and showing all over the swim and I couldn't wait to get a bait in the water. For this session I decided to take a slightly different approach in that instead of baiting with liquidized bread and casting out straight away I was going to feed upstream with mix of cubed spam, sweet corn and pellets for a good 30 minutes before casting in. My feeling was that in previous sessions I've had early success but then the fish have backed off - this time, I wanted to get them feeding confidently and in a shoal before I cast out, the idea being that the fish would stick around for longer and the bites would keep coming throughout the session.
So while feeding upstream, I cast the feeder rod downstream and dumped the float in the margin by my feet, just on the off chance something was swimming around... Amazingly, the float dipped almost immediately! It was only a small chub, but it was followed by several more and then a couple of good fish on the feeder. In between bites I kept the feed going in upstream using the catapult and once the bites in the margin dried up, cast my float into the flow...
First few metres of the trot and bang, the float buried... A sharp strike and 1st fish on! And so it continued! Keeping a trickle of bait going in seemed to be the key, firing it a good 4 metres upstream of the float and I was so busy that I pretty much gave up on the feeder rod as the float rod was producing a fish a cast.
One change that I had made between sessions was to respool my reel with some new 4lb line. The difference this made to my casting was amazing as I was managing to land the float closer to the far bank near a overhanging bush that protrudes right out into the river. One cast in particular fell very close to the bush and it just looked like it would do a bite...
Seconds after the float hit the water it shot under and this time, the strike was met with a solid resistance. This was something far bigger but after a dogged fight where the fish charged for every available snag I finally managed to slip a prime size chub into the landing net!
It was a bit of a shock to be honest! I've had fish of a similar size from this stretch but never so early in the season. Re spooling that reel had clearly given me the extra casting distance I need to get close to the snaggy home of some truly monstrous chub.
After that excitement, things slowed down a little so I kept the float rod out of the water and went back to baiting the swim giving the fish a chance to get their confidence back. As I'd been neglecting the feeder rod I decided to make some casts downstream to see if the fish had backed off and was rewarded with a run of smaller chub. It was about 10 minutes later when I was contemplating another cast with the float rod when the tip on the feeder dragged sharply down... I picked up the rod, stuck and bam, something shot off downstream...
I genuinely thought I'd hooked one of the mythical carp that inhabit this stretch as the fish gave such a good fight! But it was of course it was another greedy chub of around the same size as the previous monster. Two in one evening, this session was really turning into something!
I really thought that would be it but over the next couple of hours, I had fish after fish on both rods. As the light began to fade the float rod continued to produce and I found if I could get a bait close to the bush, it would either disappear very soon after hitting the water or a short trot 4 or so metres later. As I began to toy with the idea of packing down, the river gave up one more epic bite as yet another massive chub hit the cube of spam!
So there you go, what a session?! Three clonkingly massive chub, a net full of smaller fish and a couple of random roach. The whole swim had produced bites consistently and it really felt like the gradual feeding, waiting and alternating methods had been successful in keeping the fish feeding in the swim throughout the whole session. I packed down a happy angler and I can't wait for the next session!