Sunday 11th November -River Nene Oundle

Its been a while since I have written anything for you and although I have been fishing most weekends I have struggled to find the time to tell you about it, so its time to get back to it.
Sunday saw myself and my fishing friend Graham heading for the river Nene at Oundle, we had had some rain in the week and as expected the river was nicely coloured but the overnight temperature had been pretty low.

Nice colour and flow on the Nene at Oundle

We picked the stretch between Ashton footbridge and Ashton weir with me about 3 pegs below the weir, the river wasn't very wide at this point but had a reasonable depth of around 10ft.
I decided to start on the feeder and see how it went from there, I rigged up a simple running rig with a 40gr open ended feeder and a size 16 hook. I then made a few casts to the middle of the river to get some bait in the swim before slipping 3 Red maggots onto the hook. The bait hadn't been in the water very long when I started getting the first indications on the tip, these were typical roach bites and difficult to hit but it wasn't long before I had my first fish. The first fish was a pristine Roach of about 6oz and the very next cast produced one of 4oz and this was the pattern for the rest of the morning with plenty of missed bites and the odd 1 or 2 fish coming to the net. Graham was 2 pegs upstream of me but was struggling with only 4 fish to show for his efforts and was planning to have a go on the float but I had a feeling he wouldn't do a lot better with that. Anyway I went back to my swim and it wasn't long before I was into something more substantial and after a spirited fight I slid the net under a 4lb Chub.

A nice 4lb Chub from the River Nene at Oundle

The afternoon was quite a bit slower than the morning had been but I was still getting the odd Roach or 2 to keep me interested. Graham had however moved swims and was now 3 below me and plugging away on the stick float and all he had to show for it was a couple of Roach and an odd missed bite.

A quality Roach on the Feeder

I ended the session with about 9lb which wasn't too bad but I think if it had been a little milder over the previous couple of night we may have seen the Bream on the feed and things could have been very different. Lets hope the river can hold some colour for next weekend as I would like another go on my favourite river.