Whilst returning from a day driving around the Cotswolds with Mrs Pikey, we found ourselves on the B420 heading home. We'd just passed Farringdon when I spotted the turning to Tadpole Bridge and a nifty bit of navigating soon had us parked up in the Trout Inn car park by the River ! The picture shows me chub spotting from the bridge !
My first memories of the Upper Thames came from the early seventies when Bobby Moore was still captaining my beloved Hammers in a team that included Geoff Hurst, Martin Peters, Trevor Brooking and Billy Bonds. The music charts included such bands as The Sweet, T Rex, The Rubettes and Slade - how times have changed ! Well, not everthing changes as Daiwa Dorking (or just plain Dorking, as they were then) were still winning most of the top matches !
Anyway, I can still remember my first match on the Upper Thames, I was still a wet behind the ears junior with very little match fishing experience and had been dropped off at Tadpole Bridge to fish for Leatherhead DAS in the Upper Thames Championships. I remember drawing a peg in the nineties and when I asked where it was the chap organising the draw said it was just past the pylons that looked about three inches tall in the distance ! Fortunately I was young and fit then but in future years I often wondered how nobody died walking to the end pegs ! I always heard rumours that the farmer got his tractor out and transported your tackle for a small fee but in all the times I fished there over the years, I never saw this happen. Arriving at my peg on a nice bend, I fished in the flow a rod length or so out and weighed in about 3lb of gudgeon I think. The chap to my left fished a waggler tight to the grass on the far bank and had 5 0r 6 chub and I vowed at the time to learn how to fish as he had - which I did as waggler fishing up in the water and at full depth became my favourite methods on both the Upper and Lower Thames and was to win me a lot of matches over the years.
In the "Old days" (I'm beginning to sound like Uncle Albert in Only Fools and Horses Now) we used to get about 30 of us on Leatherhead DAS club matches and on sunday mornings we would all pile on the "Bloodhound" coach we had hired from the local scouts and set off for Ashtead to pick up the Competition Secretary who had always over slept. We managed to get home in about 90 minutes in the "Pikey Mobile" the other day but in those days on the coach It seemed to take about a week to reach Tadpole Bridge - although to be fair it wasn't the worlds fastest coach and I remember a number of occassions when we had to all get out and push it up a hill and every now and then a bit would fall off it ! I hate to think what the Health and Safety chaps would make of it nowdays !
As the years passed, we seemed to fish the Tadpole Bridge section less and switched our attention to Rushey Lock which was only the other side of the bridge (see picture) with the fishing being as good but with much shorter walks. By the late seventies / early eighties I'd got this Upper Thames far bank chub fishing well and truly sussed and had some brilliant matches. My tackle consisted of a 12 foot Normark Norboron rod with an Abu 507 Gold Max reel and the terminal tackle was usually a waggler between 2aa and 3aa, with a 2.6 Bayer Perlon hooklength to a size 20 Mustad 90340 hook. Baitwise it was Maggot, maggot or maggot and usually the bronzer the better.
The only problem you had on the Upper Thames in those days was boats, now I never minded the boats at all as they didn't seem to bother the fish and with the constant opening and closing of the lock gates, they actually helped to keep a bit of movement on the water. The only problem I had was that I always left it too late to reel in when a boat came along, which was ok as long as you didn't hook a fish on the far bank as a boat reached your peg ! I remember fishing a Thames Champs on Rushey and I'd drawn a couple of pegs away from Geoff Withcombe who was fishing for Woking at the time. I'd done my usual and left my float tight to the far bank whilst a boat was approaching and as it got about 6 foot away fom me, the float disappeared !
It was impossible to get the line under the boat as the water was too shallow, so there was only one thing to do.......I lowered the rod to my right, and just reeled in as fast as I could as the rod took up an alarming curve. Within about 4 seconds I had a very suprised 3lb chub in the net and some interesting comments from my downstream neighbours !
I also remember a pleasure day me and my mate Ross had fishing the little channel that runs out of Rushey Weir pool. We both fished a little maggott feeder and despite having no indications at all on the tip, kept reeeling in to find our hooks gone ! In the end we worked out that the chub were just sitting still on the bottom, eating our hookbaits and biting off the hooks with their throat teeth. I seem to remember we ended up fishing really short hooklengths in the end with a "Bolt Rig" set up and both caught a load of fish.
The more I think about it, the more memories come flooding back, I really used to love fishing matches on the Thames, but unfortunately nowdays for whatever reason, nobody seems to want to fish matches on it anymore.
I've now not fished for 8 days (I missed Sundays Leatherhead DAS club match as I was helping to run the Wildlife Aid open day) and am having severe withdrawal symptons ! I now can't wait for wednesdays "Double Header" match at Willinghurst where I can fish 2 x 4 hour matches !
Pop back before then though in case I update this with any Guest Bloggers from the weekend.
