With work up and down and my drivers van blowing a pair of injectors, it looked as if I would have to cover the whole n my own.
Thankfully his mechanic got on with the work very quickly and got him back on the road and got me the chance at a one last gasp big roach before seasons end!
I packed the van early hours on Wednesday and went into work to complete the days deliveries and finishing at 11:30am meant I had some time to get down to Ringwood to get some bait and maybe even wet a line that evening.
The drive took me about two and a half hours and I rolled up at the shop around 1pm. Lovely to see Richy and Ash as usual and after grabbing 2 gallons of maggots and receiving the usual verbal abuse from the boys, I decided to have an hour by the bridge pool behind the shop.
This proved fruitless and after loosing a couple of feeders to under water obstructions, I headed to the lower section of the Ringwood fishery where I had caught some nice roach earlier in the season.
This also proved to be quite tricky and I ended up catching just a handful of inch long dace, roach and chublets. On a plus side the scenery was fantastic with a wonderful view of 5 Roe deer in the field opposite my swim!
I spoke to Wayne from Bournemouth Fishing Lodge around 5pm and he told me about a show that was on that evening in Winton at the RBL featuring the legendary Terry Theobald!
I raced to pack up and get down there before 6pm to get a ticket. Parking in Winton was a little tricky at closing time as I had the van and all the car parks had low barriers.
I eventually managed to find a quiet road to park and headed over to the RBL building to be greeted by the lovely Virginia Rushmer who made me feel very welcome, introducing me to her hubby Bill and numerous other lovely folk.
We chatted for a bit about the River Wye, our joint love for barbel and all other things fish related before Terry started his talk.
It was a great evening full of brilliant stories, pictures and laughs. I left around 10pm and headed off to park up for the night and get myself ready for an early start on the Avon. It was a chilly night in the van and I arose around 4.30am making myself a flask, a little breakfast and getting my kit out the van ready to go on at 5.30am as per the rules. I walked on without a soul around and got my kit into the going swim.
Bailiff Dave turned up for a nice chin wag around 6am and watched me start my session. It looked promising from the off with bites coming fairly quickly on the feeder and red maggot.
I alternated between float and feeder tactics but it seemed the feeder was taking more fish.
I put a sleeper rod out to my left by an overhanging willow tree with a worm on and within minutes it was away with a cracking 2lb 15oz perch which was followed up instantly with another of about 12oz!
The roach kept feeding on the tip line and I was starting to build a reasonable weight up. Around an hour later I had another nice perch on the sleeper rod of 2lb 7oz.
Around 3pm I had a really savage bite on the feeder rod and struck into a much harder fighting fish.
It stayed low and kept shaking around in typical big roach fashion.
I got it to the surface and it looked pretty decent as it went over the rim of the net. On the scales she went 2lb 2oz! I was over the moon!
The trip couldn't have started any better and at the close of play I weighed in around 40lbs of stunning roach, perch and dace.
I couldn't wait for day 2 to start as I felt the swim had way more to give up yet! I went off around 7pm and off to grab some evening food and some supplies from the supermarket ready for another very early start on Friday morning.
It was a slightly milder night on Thursday and when I awoke on Friday morning at 4.30am it was pleasantly milder than that of previous mornings that week. There was a little cloud cover which was supposed to burn off during the morning and then we had bright sunshine which I thought may kill the fishing stone dead, but I couldn't have been further from the truth as I was about to find out!
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