Weir Pool Magic Part 1

By Tony Runnalls

This is a first for me - so I think it best I introduce myself.

My name is Tony, I've been 39 years on this earth and fishing is my life. I can remember catching red belly sticklebacks from the River Roding as a child using bamboo sticks and bent pins. The rest is history.

I run a very successful day ticket fishery in Essex for a local businessman - we have lots of great ideas for our waters - so watch this space.

At present I am spending most of my rod hours on the River Chelmer in Essex, the main reason are the weir pools - they are pure magic and the fish are plentiful.

Fishing the weir pools along the 14 miles of the Chelmer, roaming all day with minimal tackle and the best season's fishing I've ever had, has sparked a flame in me to catch a barbel and my chosen venue is The Old Mill at Aldermarston on the Kennet

My mate Darren Creswell and myself have had two consecutive Mondays down there and we have had some nice fish. It’s a very attractive fishery with moving water everywhere and the bailiff Peter is a very pleasant man who will try and put you on the fish. There are clean toilets and the grounds are extremely well kept, in my humble opinion this place is superb and all credit should go to the people that run such a lovely place. Make sure you take some refreshments as the nearest store is five miles away and holds very little in the way of hot food.

There is a truckers cafe on the road just before you turn off at the little roundabout before the visitors centre, it opens at 6am, the food is good and the people friendly.

Monday 6th Feb
Weapons of choice were my Drennen combo’s, one with a 5010 Shimano loaded with 8lb Drennen feeder braid and 6lb fluorocarbon hooklengths, hair rigged 10mm Nash Scopex Squid Liver Boilie Pellets wrapped in paste and a 2oz semi-fixed lead.
In the fast water I often find that if you fish upstream - if a fish mouths your bait and dislodges the weight the movement of water will carry the lead towards you resulting in slack line and the fish thinking that the bait is going off down stream, this can bring on some thumping takes as you pick up the slack line. Ideally you want no more than enough weight to hold bottom, you don’t want it to be too heavy, but you want it to trundle a bit before it stops again. I had one fish like that but my second rod was a different ball game altogether.

My second rod was intended to be used for trotting in the long fast water, so the reel of choice was my BJ centre pin loaded with 3lb Genesis fished straight through to an 18 Drennen Super Specialist and a 5 BB Avon trotter.

The fishing
Swims were selected, banter exchanged and fishing commenced. Darren fished upstream of me and went straight out with semi-fixed leads with massive lumps of meat. I asked him if he was trying to knock them out and he said something back that I don’t think I can print!

I put my lead upstream, sat back and started spraying maggots and pellet at a steady rate. After an hour of maggots and pellet I had my first put in and took a small trout on single red maggot just as it hit the shallows, I was pleasantly surprised with my first ever wild trout, so chuffed was I that I marched off to Darren and showed him my prize, he hadn’t had a rattle so it was one nil to me.

Five minutes later Darren called me and as I rounded the corner I could see that his rod was bent double with a sizeable fish that was charging upstream. The smile on Darren’s face said it all, barbel!

As he tried to get some line back by following the fish upstream, he shouted for me to get his net and disappeared behind one of the tall conifers. Grabbing the net I chased after him, after a good fight from the fish we saw it for the fist time, could it be a double? After a couple more minutes we had Darren’s first barbel - and what a cracking fish at 1oz over 10lbs - it was a double!

So now we were buzzing and after the photos and weighing I am on my rods, new bait, a recast and settled with my eye on my tip, 5 minutes later I saw a little tremble and then there were loads of slack line. I picked the rod up and started winding hard, I could see the braid moving on the surface of the water at the same speed as the flow. I caught up with it just as it passed me by and I hit into some thing solid.

My spirits were instantly lifted as I called down to Darren 'fish on!' The fished went downstream and I turned it before it got to the shallows and a dangerously low over hanging tree. Darren was behind me and I said something along the lines of anything you can do, I can do, just as the fish leaped out of the water, I looked at Darren, he looked at me and we both said the same thing - trout! I had hooked a rainbow and it was leaping about and giving a right account of itself, after 5 minutes we had it in the net it weighed just over three pounds.

I sat there for another hour and nothing happened so I started trotting again and immediately started picking up more small trout and chublets. I was catching steadily most of the afternoon on caster and maggot running through the shallows and at about 3 o’clock I decided to move up to the big weir at the back of the main house. The water runs very fast and hard but it creates a very deep slack that comes back on itself, it's deep and slow so I thought I would have a go, also I had dropped some boilie pellets in there earlier.

I sat there for an hour with not a sniff as I trotted through, but from my vantage point I was positive I could see flashes in the deep water below me, so I pulled my float down to the shot, bit it off and tied a size 8 straight to my main line, pinched a couple of shot on the line and put a lump of meat on the hook.

I changed position and dropped the meat in down the edge, I felt the meat hit the bottom and just held on to the line so I could feel the tension. A minute passed and I am sure I felt a rattle, again another one, I've made my decision the next one I hit. As the tip rattled again I lifted the rod nice and smooth and it went solid, but nothing moved, I put a bit more pressure on and I felt a little rattle, there was defiantly a fish there.

I made my way upstream to try and get above the fish, now I have been fishing a long time and I have never had a fish just hold bottom on me like that and I am sure that this fish was using the fast water above its head in the same way as a Formula one car uses wind to hold it down, because the fish just hung there and my rod was bent as far as I dare. All of a sudden the fish turned into the main flow, at this point I made a right pigs ear of it - being a new boy with the centre pin, I more or less stopped the running wheel with my thumb and the line broke just under the shot.

I learnt a lesson with that fish - and scalded myself all the way home, the reason I lost the fish was because while I was trotting, I had a tangle and unpicked the knot, when I changed set ups and pulled the float down to the shot, I didn’t take off the extra 2 ft of line that had the kink in it, hence it broke just under the shot, well that’s my theory.

As it got dark we were not looking forward to our journey back home, but we were already looking forward to the journey back to the fishery next Monday.

To be continued...

Tony Runnalls