Venues Report
River Rother
We have seen quite a bit of rain over the back end of the month and although we would hope that water levels would hold up better we are still seeing drop quite rapidly. However this does not appear to have adversely affected the fishing.
The EA survey at Coultershaw and Fittleworth threw up some interesting results.
Coultershaw produced some good sized dace together with roach and minnows There was also a pike, a sea trout and a carp recorded.
At Fittleworth a lot of pike (10) were recorded, these varied in length from 114mm to 663mm. There was a good spread of species with roach, dace, perch, gudgeon, minnow and eels also being recorded.
Coultershaw
Our Coultershaw bailiff – Martin Cornish and his team are still carrying out the barbel scale survey that was started last season so if you are lucky enough to catch a barbel on the stretch please check if one of the team are present so that they can take samples.
There is a steady trickle of barbel coming from the Coultershaw stretch, our Treasurer and venue Bailiff – Martin Cornish has reported the latest at 14lb 9oz which is one of his best from the river. Keith Hughes our Hurston bailiff fished the weir pool for an evening session, hoping to catch roach and dace, instead he connected with a barbel which he estimated at around 4lb, unfortunately his light float gear was not sufficient to tame the fish and it eventually got away. It is very encouraging to see smaller barbel like this putting in an appearance. There have been some excellent mixed silver fish catches reported, mainly to trotted maggot and from a wide variety of swims. It would appear that if you find a trottable swim and work at it for a few hours there are plenty of fish to be caught.
Don’t forget that Coultershaw will be closed to angling on Saturday 19th August until 2pm as there is a work party taking place. If you could lend a hand for a few hours on the day it would be greatly appreciated.
Shopham
There are a lot of trout and the odd grayling being reported to both the fly and coarse tactics from the top end of Shopham up. Further down chub and silver fish seem to predominate with the chub falling to static baits whilst the roach and dace prefer a trotted bait. A number of reasonable perch have also been reported.
Coates
Coates is very similar to Shopham with plenty of silver fish to trotting tactics and some good chub being caught on larger static baits
Fittleworth
There are plenty of roach, dace and chublets to be caught from virtually anywhere at Fittleworth and roach to around 1lb have been reported. As we saw last year there are also a few skimmer bream around and plenty of other species. There have also been a couple of barbel reported in the last month.
River Arun
Watersfield
Watersfield continues to fish very consistently; those that sit out on big baits are being rewarded with some good sized barbel, carp, bream and chub. We have heard of any big bream from the river for a couple of years but one of 6lb has recently been reported. There are also some very good Roach coming from Watersfield, our very own webmaster fished a session there recently and caught a very good net of roach mainly between 8oz and 1lb but the session was topped with fish of 1lb 15oz and 2lb 3oz. Those that prefer their fishing to be a bit more active are reporting plenty of roach and dace, however there are quite a few bleak on the top so you need to have plenty of shot down your line to get through them.
Stopham
Again, not a lot of news from Stopham, I will give it a go over the next month and report back!
Hurston Lane
Water levels are back to normal at Hurston after the recent rain and we have reports of good catches from all three ponds.
Mixed bags of tench and crucians from the tench pond with a dozen or so per session have been reported. The rudd can be a bit troublesome so large baits are best.
The middle pond is producing some really good mixed bags with plenty of carp interspersed with tench, bream, roach and rudd.
The match pond is producing good mixed bags of bream and carp to larger baits and there seem to be a lot of roach around as well.
Walberton – Stemps & Cart
Last time round I reported a session of 8 carp; well I can double that this time with one angler taking 16 carp in a session from Cart Pond. On that particular day, I had a quick walk round with a potential new member and the carp seemed very active all round both ponds. For those that prefer slightly more sedate fishing there are plenty of roach and skimmers to be caught and I have heard that a couple of the perch that we put in over the winter have been caught.
Chichester Canal
Some sections of the canal are currently not accessible as the towpath is being refurbished. This is likely to go on for another couple of weeks. Please pay heed to the signs at the canal access points.
There have been further reports of good roach catches with a few skimmers showing up as well although these are not much more than hand sized, however after a couple of years of fairly poor fishing on the canal it looks as if this fishery is recovering well.
Petworth Park
The bream fishing continues to be excellent at Petworth Park and interspersed with the bream you are likely to come across tench and crucians as well. The latest report I have is 18 bream in a session with a few other fish as well, although it was very windy, there was no difficulty in see the bites as they were very positive. Once the fish are going they will pick up almost any hook bait offered. I have heard of people catching on bunches of maggot, corn, worms and pellet. You need to keep your feed area fairly tight and expect a run of 3 or 4 fish and then a lull but they normally come back within 20 minutes or so. If you want to fish small baits then there are plenty of roach, rudd and perch with some of the perch getting to a quite respectable size.
The Granary
Although there are plenty of carp to be caught (we are getting more reports of double figure plus fish coming out. I am also reliably informed that there is at least one 20 in the lake but the best I have seen was around 15lb) there is a club rudd record up for grabs and this water will undoubtedly produce it. Over the last couple of weeks I have seen a number of rudd around the 1lb mark but so far no one has submitted one yet. It’s worth a go and can be as interesting as the carp fishing as you need to strike the balance between not being pestered by the smaller rudd (and there are plenty of them) and not attracting the carp – an interesting mission for someone!!
Please don’t forget to fill out the log books at our venues, it really helps us in compiling these reports. If you have any photographs of your catches that you would like to share please forward them to us HERE.