Jungle Warfare. Fishing the River Chew



The grayling safely in the net

Stealthily creeping around an overgrown river bank, getting stung by stinging nettles growing four feet high and getting the rod tip stuck in overhanging tree branches and losing end tackle. Doesn't sound like a brilliant day fishing! But it was! The River Chew is largely neglected by anglers and during the summer months the river looks wild, with much of it unfishable unless you're prepared to do a bit of gardening to get near the water. The fishing can be great though and today was one of those days. Taking just one rod and a few bits in a bag with me, I set about trotting maggots under a float in some likely looking areas. Fish were forthcoming from the first cast, a large dace kicked things off. More dace, minnows and a single gudgeon were soon to follow before the bites dried up and I moved upstream. This next swim, a large pool on the outside of a bend, is always a good producer of fish and the float slid away on cast number one. A dace, biggest so far too, about 10oz. More dace of a similar size and a few small wild brown trout were seemingly queueing up for my bait and it was a fish a cast. A larger brown trout was up next and gave a good scrap before I hooked in to another hard fighting fish which turned out to be a grayling. I don't catch many of these and so I was really chuffed! I moved swims several more times and caught more dace and trout, ending the day with a big brownie of nearly a pound in weight and twelve inches in length. A great day that I really enjoyed!


One of many dace caught