Sunday 15th December - Return to the River Kenn

I had not been able to get out for a few weeks and was determined to fish somewhere this weekend. I really did fancy the River Kenn following my last outing there about 6 weeks ago when I had loads of bites but did not hit the majority of them due to the high winds. At a Clevedon Committee Meeting last Thursday Secretary Barry Fowler showed me a picture of his recent catch from his phone, some really nice bream and other silvers which Barry said weighed 58lb ish, he had caught on the waggler 3 swims down from the Kenn Road Car Park. That was it then my mind was made up. When I picked up my bait from Cadbury Angling on the Saturday Dan informed me Scott Smallwood had a decent catch of silvers recently as well. I had checked the tide times, High Tide was 05:30, perfect and  would mean there could be some flow most of the day. Today I was out the door by 08:30 and parked up just before 09:00 on the Kenn Road bridge. A quick look at the river before unloading and I found the levels had been dropped about 4 feet!, not what I wanted really but the flow was good and so was the colour. I walked along the bank to where Barry had caught and saw I could get down in the water with my box, there were quite a few rocks so I would not sink too far into the mud. I set up a waggler and a feeder, the feeder never got used all day though. On the wag I had 3lb drennan and 0.11 preston power just in case the bream showed. Hook was a drennan wide gape micro barb size 18. I mixed up some Noire and Magic with a little brown crumb. On the bait tray was caster, hemp, red maggot and worm, sorted.

                                Nice and comfortable and all to hand, ready for the off.

I set the waggler up at about 5 feet to begin with in order to trip bottom down the middle but it was much shallower than that so it was a bit trial and error to get the depth correct as the bottom was not even, there was also some weed still around. I put 3 small balls of groundbait laced with caster and hemp at the start and some loose feed on the inside. Red maggot to start of with on the hook. Second trot down while I was still getting the depth correct I had a small roach at the end of the trot near the foot bridge.
Forgot to mention Barry also hooked a cormorant which took him under the bridge and then to the sky, bit different from fishing for squirrels and something John Wolstencroft would have been proud off (John usually catch the odd duck on a regular basis).
The bite I had was not that visual as I was still too deep, so shallowed up another couple of inches, same again at the end of the trot but this time a rod bender of a roach around 8oz.

My peg and the footbridge below.



I still had not got the depth right and did chop and change quite a bit until I found a compromise, I ended up about 3 inches over and worked out at what point to hold back as the float went through. I was catching quite steadily and getting bites, I dropped 2 good roach about 8oz each on the swing so netted the rest except for some of the sprats. Not sure what time it was but as I swung a leaf in I heard a familiar voice behind me shout ' a leaf fish', it was John Wolstencroft. He wasn't fishing although he had planned but the weather put him off earlier in the morning. John stayed about 30 mins and saw me catch a few more roach. I had a few better ones on the caster as you would expect but could not keep them coming but did have a couple of tidy perch. At about 14:45 the heavens opened and the rain came down heavy, that was enough for me and I packed up. All in all a good day and proof yet again that the River Kenn is far from dead.

Here is what I ended up with, 8lbs 4oz

Next weekend is the Christmas Match on the Plantations complex, the the Boxing Day Pairs on 29th Dec. In Jan I have the last 2 Commercial House Winter League matches on the K&A Canal and a club match on Apex Lake 19th Jan, so a busy few weeks ahead.