Opposites

I've been out on consecutive days this week, visiting two venues that were vastly different. The first session was on the River Teme, which is a venue I'd never fished before. I was accompanied by Charlie and the intention was to act on a tip off from his cousin, who had said that plenty of Grayling were showing up in a certain section. Having never caught a Grayling before (or even seen one in person) I was well up for this venture.

It was a cracking bit of water, if perhaps running a little on the clear side. Mountain goat blood and climbing skills are required in many places though to cope with the steep banks. That said, there were plenty of pegs to go at and we covered quite a bit of water.

Sadly though, the Grayling never showed up and the fishing was actually quite hard. I thought I was going to blank, but a chub of around two and a half pounds saved me from that fate. Charlie managed a couple of Chub of that stamp and also came off second best when hooking a Barbel on gear that was under-gunned.

The next day saw me heading off to tackle the more sedate College Pool with Brian. Although clearly around 4 foot below normal level, there's still plenty of depth to it. I was hoping for Perch and set up a couple of leger rods - one with prawns and the other with red maggots. I would have liked some worms, but my preparation was hampered (bad planning on my part) and I had to do without them.

The Perch didn't show up and I eventually moved from prawns to bread, pellet and boilies at various times throughout the session. All of the action came on the maggot rig, but it was tough going to find the bites. I only had 6 fish all session.

The Bream put in an appearance and I had 3 of them. The two best went 5lb 5oz and 5lb 8oz.

The other fish were small Rudd, Roach and a pretty little Carp, the latter of which gave a right old pull around on the quiver tip and tore off with such force that I thought I'd hooked one of the Barbel.

Brian didn't trouble the scorecard on this occasion.