Fishing in Granchester

So on returning to Cambridge post-holiday, I was on the scout for places to fish, ideally for free. One place that I had been fascinated with for years was the bridge mill pool in Granchester. This is a real tourist hot spot but it is possible to fish from the bridge. On a sunny day you can see the fish milling around in the medium-slow flowing water which is a bit murky once you get below 2 feet. There are plenty of ducks and swans around as well and you have to be careful not to feed them or attract them to the hook bait.

Swans in the pool

I estimate the bottom is only 3-4 feet in the whole pool. I fished this a couple of times with basic float fishing tackle, mainly puddle chucker self-cocking waggler and the 8lbs mainline reel with 4-5 lbs hook link onto a variety of hooks ranging from size 18 barbless, 16 barbed (mustard) and 12 barbless spade-end. It did not make much difference which hook I used, they all caught fish. The main difference was whether the bait stayed on or not. I fished this swim with bread flake pinched onto the hook. I had to shot this down to make it sink otherwise the small fish would peck at the bait on the surface but nothing would take it. With a bit of moisture, the flake sank and it was hit by numerous fish. The fish would shoal around the bait with the odd fish taking a swipe at the hook bait. This was all no more than 1-2 feet under the water and it was possible to watch the fish taking the bait.

Small 0.25lbs Dace

A few different fish were caught here, some Dace, Roach and Chub all in the 0.25-0.75 lbs range. There were a couple of larger fish knocking about but they were much more wary.

Fat 0.75lbs Roach caught at dusk

One 1lbs Chub was hooked (it had a noticeable large spot on its back – possibly an infection or attack from a predator etc.) but this was lost as I went for the landing net. This highlights the extreme problem of this swim. I was fishing from the bridge, and this is where you sort of have to fish for the shoal of fish, the water surface is about 4m below the bridge side. My landing net handle was 3m in length and even with this I had to lean dangerously to get the fish in the net. I bought a drop pan net (which was really for sea-fishing) but this had the problem that it only dropped straight down over the edge and it was hard to manoeuvre the fish into it, plus the landing net lines would get tangled and in the way. A longer landing net handle is required here but as it will have to be non-telescopic, it may annoy the tourists on the bridge and be dangerous to haul in with cars mere feet behind.

The time of day seems to have some bearing on whether fish are biting or not. It is not clear if it is temperature related or not but earlier in the morning – 10am and later at night, 8pm (just before dusk) seemed to work best. Also, I tried cheese paste squeezed onto the hook and this worked for the Chub. If you throw in a bit of bread or cheese, this seemed to keep the fish interested and bring the shoal around to the hook bait.

It is clear that the bigger fish hang lower in the water and are much more wary than the little ones. Talking to a couple of anglers who stopped by, it seems ledgering with worm is a good way to get the bigger Chub with reports of 3lbs fish being caught. Also, there are supposed to be some big pike in the pool. It would be interesting to try corn or maggots here although, I suspect the later would bag up on smaller fish if float fished on the drop. This will be an interesting venue to fish ledger from the bank. The proximity of the road on the bridge make it a bit too dangerous in my opinion to fish seriously – still with a short spinning rod and light float, it was fun handing in fish on bread and cheese.

Lean 0.25lbs Chub

I did scout further up the river which loops around to a road bridge further along the road towards Trumpington. There are a couple of places where you might be able to get into a clear swim but it all was both very weedy in the main flow and there were a couple of meters of marshy fringe plants preventing setting up on the bank. A pole and a long landing net would be needed to fish these swims. They are likely never fished so may well be ripe pickings. Judicious use of a swim rake would be interesting. One issue is who owns the fishing rights in the upriver sections, the Cambridge Fish Preservation Society claim rights over certain sides of the river leading up to Byron’s pool and beyond.

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Mill Pond Fakenham - Trout, Roach, Ducks!

So somewhere to try out the new fishing gear was the Mill Pond in Fakenham, Norfolk. This is just outside the Wensum Lodge Hotel. The River Wensum runs under the old Mill and creates a weir pool of sorts next to the bridge into Fakenham. As far as I know this is free fishing.

Wensum Lodge Hotel and Mill Pond

The pool has lots of ducks in it with some deep runs with fast water in the middle (probably about 2-3 feet) and lots of very shallow 1 foot areas around the edges. I could see some fish milling around under the bridge in the shallows and there was a lot of weed in the middle of the faster run.

I fished a 0.5g fat bodied pole float rig that I had from the last time I went fishing. This was held on the line by float rubbers at top and bottom and had a few shot a couple of inches down. I used one of the size-18 barbless hooks to try and alternate between casting to where I saw fish and to trot down the faster flow. Fishing single mixed maggots, it was easy to see the fish hitting the hook under the water. Almost immediately after the first cast, I was in to something in 30cm of water. It gave a good fight and I was surprised when it was in the net to discover that it was a small half pound brown trout. I was expecting it to be a chub from the shadows that I saw under the water.

0.5lbs Brown Trout

I kept throwing in a few maggots each cast as is customary with trotting and I caught a few more small roach and another brown trout all around 0.25lbs or less. It was fun fishing for an hour an a half even with a light drizzle of rain. The ducks kept chasing the float as it hit the water and also the fish as I was trying to land them. This did eventually get annoying and on hooking one of the ducks, which fell off the barb-less hook eventually, I gave up. Still nice fun location and I suspect there were some larger fish in there. I hooked into something better in the faster flowing water but lost it in the fight. I felt that the 8ft rod was making it difficult to pick up the line fast enough to strike some of the fish. Also the barb-less hooks made it more challenging to keep them on during the fight. Perhaps a self-cocking float rig would have been perfect but I would have had to trade-off the stalking of specific fish versus getting the bait down fast enough in the faster flows.

Still nice fun intro back into fishing!

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Some (re)starting tackle

Not having a rod was a bit of a limiting factor for doing any fishing so we went to Dave's Tackle in Fakenham, Norfolk to take a look and see how much a small rod and reel would cost. Rob Parnell, the owner, was very helpful and recommended a short 8ft spinning rod and reel which the kids could handle. We said we were most likely just going for roach in the broads so he kitted us up with a small landing net, set of floats for trotting, weights etc. He threw in some mono filament line 5-6lbs main line and 3-4lbs hook link - I was surprised at how heavy this was having been used to 1.5lbs hook link and 4lbs main line as a kid but it seemed to be the right stuff given the range of fish and snags. A pack of size 18 barb-less hooks, bait-box and rod license (bought on line) and I was good to go. All in the kit cost me about 100 UKP - which is comparable to what it cost back when I was 13, given the intervening inflation, this is a lot cheaper now. Compared to my first glass fibre 12foot float rod, this spinning rod and reel weighed almost nothing, again the progress of composite materials technology being evident.

A holiday and unexpected fishing adventure

So we recently returned from a two week family holiday to Norfolk. This is very reminiscent of a similar trip over twenty-five years ago with my parents and siblings. Back then, I was just starting fishing and really did not know what I was doing. Back then, we had a house boat which we ran up and down the broads. I think for the whole holiday I caught perhaps two small roach (I was restricted to using bread as bait).

This time out, I was the 'adult' and I took the kids age 4 and 5 to the bank a couple of times. It was surprising how they really took to handling the bait (maggots), chucking it out, casting the rod etc. Still, there attention span was too short to really sit around for an hour. Their first bash at fishing was two years ago when we went to Devon on holiday and we took the kids to Tavistock Trout Fishery. They had a nice children's pond full of eager rainbow trout and the kids bagged some one and a half pound trout which we ate. It really was a case of cast in and pull them out though - still good fun for all.

Fast-forward two years to the summer holiday in Norfolk and I took my fishing jacket with me just in case we got 'a chance' to do a spot of fishing. And boy was I not disappointed...

Welcome and musing on the passing of time

I've created this blog to keep an electronic diary of my fishing trips. It has been probably nearly 18 years since I last fished regularly (as a kid) and it is interesting to see how the world of fishing has moved on. Most markedly, equipment is a lot cheaper or at least a lot more affordable. A summer of stacking shelves to buy a new rod is no more. Also, it surprises me that much of my fishing craft has not been lost, I still know how to tie a four turn double tucked blood knot! One trend I recall starting myself when I was just finishing fishing was moving towards using barb-less hooks - this seems to be mandatory on most commercial waters which is no bad thing all in all. Also, the 'banning' of keep nets on many of these waters is interesting and also probably better for the fish.