Mid August saw us hit a new venue for a Wands trip – the Throop Fishery on the Dorset Stour. We decided to meet in Ringwood for our day tickets and bait, but obviously we had to have a look over the road bridge into the Avon which, as always, looked amazing.
As tempting as that looked, we couldn’t be sidetracked as I knew the Stour from old and it’s just as nice a river. The day was overcast but very warm, so ideal fishing weather and the river looked absolutely fantastic.
John started off fishing the mill pool to try to catch his first pike while the rest of us headed off to try our luck fishing the main river. Adrian and I got off to a nice early start with a couple of pike
before getting stuck into some quality dace fishing, with Adrian also getting some bonus fly caught perch
We tried a fair few swims, catching quality dace in virtually every one. Unfortunately the large chub and barbel didn’t put in an appearance, but I did hook into a very large pike on float gear which I lost after 25 minutes when my 3lb hooklength parted.
Towards the end of the day, John had some excitement when a large perch took a dace on the way in. The poor dace perished but was put to use in classic sink and draw tactics to catch his first pike that decided to show itself chasing some silver fish near the surface.
All in all a great day’s fishing on a superb stretch of river. I was happy to be back on my old stomping grounds, the pike were feeding well, the river was absolutely full of quality dace and the pub lunch wasn’t bad either!
