River Frome Roach Trip

Addiction is a terrible monster, for nearly 10 ten years I have been rolling up and inhaling the sweet sweet fumes deep into my lungs, giving vital organs a nice bitumen brown paint job in the process. Despite knowing this and other associated health risks, I have been happily smoking myself into oblivion. This habit has cost me thousands, knackered out my lungs and cast me onto the edge of social circles in today’s leftie, health conscious world. I have now been smoke free for 3 weeks, well, I have been smoking a fake nicotine cigarette which you might argue is an even more retarded than smoking.Unfortunately, there is one addiction that I am showing no signs of overcoming. It’s a habit that has shrouded me in a camo’ cloak of loneliness, smashes the s**t out of my wallet and it even occasionally gives me stinky fingers…. just like smoking used to. The addiction in question is fishing and I bloody love it. I think its because fish are kind to me unlike bastard people with their mouths and their opinions.

So, as a recent none smoker the only roach on my agenda these days are of the fish variety and I know a place where there are some absolute stonkers. The River Frome in Dorset, is a beautiful chalk stream river that rises in the Dorset Downs. The river is bridged in Wareham and from this point to the rivers outlet into the sea is free fishing as with most tidal stretches of water.

I arrived in the morning shortly after high tide early in the morning even though the tides are abit strange in the area because of the Isle of Wight. The usually gin clear water had a slight Pimms colouration to it. I had originally planned to trot the stretch but instead decided to lob a feeder into the slacks by the bridge as I thought this would be a cracking holding spot for some roach and I had heard it has produced some monsters. Unfortunately, it was not to be so I kept mobile land got the hell out of there.

I followed the river downstream for about 3/4 mile tried chucking a feeder under a few different boats and other likely fish holding features. The further down the river I got the less confident I had in finding any decent roach but I am told that bass and flounder are regularly taken from the stretch as well as sea trout and salmon. After a while I decided to turn around and head back to the bridge for Jack vs bridge Roach Round II.

When I got back to the bridge I decided to fish the other side of it this time. The water at the time was around 2-3 foot deep with the tide coming in as I settled down to fish. I had opted for a classic red and white cocktail of maggots. Suddenly the unthinkable happened. I caught a fish. It was a salmon smolt which was a new species for me unfortunately I dropped it back into the river as I was unhooking it, slightly inconvenient as I will probably never catch one again as the salmon is one of the rarest fish in  the U.K these days. Pissed off that yet another fish had evaded one of my photo shoots, I plopped the feeder back in hoping to get another fish. Eventually the feeder tip began twitching ever so slightly and I caught another first in my fishing career.The baby sea trout shown below, what a beauty despite being about 3-4 inches long. I have actually posted this slightly out of order I am afraid as this trip actually took place about 3 weeks ago and up till this point 3 weeks ago I was balls deep in a fish drought. So as humble as this small fish may be it brought an end to the second longest “dry spell” in my life and it made a wise old angling man very happy.

end note – it actually did make an old man very happy, he walked past and said he hadnt seen a sea trout for ages and he felt “very happy”.