Early Doors at a Thames Jungle and Pimlico

I've had a couple of trips out in the last 2 weeks. The first, to a small stretch of the Thames west of Oxford which is on a Club card I recently bought. Although it takes only 30 minutes to drive to the track leading down to the river, it's another 15 minutes negotiating the rutted track and field to get to the water. 2 gates later, one of which is padlocked, I saw what lay ahead of me.

Driving down to the bank I was careful not to lose the exhaust system. Having parked, I decided to walk the stretch and managed to get soaking wet struggling through the knee-high grasses and weeds.

I must remember that at 5 o'clock in the morning everything is saturated despite any fine weather forecast!

Along the whole length, about 1.5 miles, there were only 3 or 4 "easy" swims. Everything else entailed major gardening and ground work to reach the river.  I settled in a swim which was just below a bend, having a quick walking pace flow.

I didn't connect with any of the barbel for which I was hoping, but did manage several smallish chub up to about 2.5 lbs.  As the holiday makers started their breakfasts and decided to move their boats I decided to head off home. Particularly as at about 9 o'clock this one got confused and thought he was at Silverstone with Lewis et al. Good job I had packed away most of my stuff otherwise sitting on the edge I would only have got soaked again.

So yesterday I had another early (for me) start - 5 am - and went down the the small lake where I caught my PB carp a few weeks ago. This entails a bit of a walk, although nothing compared with Martin's new water. I think he said it's a 35 mile walk, or was it 35 mins?

Although there were 3 anglers there before me, I had most of the main lake to choose from. and fished a swim opposite the one I fished earlier. I chose this because I'd noticed that the fish were showing on the surface there rather than on my side of the lake.

 Good job my boots are waterproof

You may see the gloopy mud which went up to my ankles.

As it was early and I couldn't see any activity up in the water, I started with 2 bottom baits, one under a tree to my left and the other a little way out. It was from the "tree" rod where the action came and 3 nicely scaled mirrors just making doubles came in fairly quick succession.

I'll have to sort out this self-take stuff!

This one had some nasty marks, spawning trophies?

Around 7 ish I started to see some dark shapes cruising just under the surface in the middle of the lake so I got out my floater gear and put away the bottom rods. I'd recently bought a brand new Sonic rod from a lad on eBay for buttons and wanted to try this out. Although it's a 2.75lb TC I'm  impressed with its action. Nice and relatively soft tip, so with a 10lb main line and a 8lb hooklink I had no problem playing fish close in.

I had a further 3 off the top and funnily enough all were commons and all torpedo-shaped. As forecast it started to rain around midday so I packed up having had a most enjoyable 6 or 7 hours fishing.