Great Winter Fishing in the 1950’s & 60’s

Until the end of the 1960’s many coarse fishers wouldn't bother going fishing after the first frost, unless they were pike fishers. In those days clubs had a crazy rule stating pike fishing couldn’t begin until October 1st. Other anglers would say “It’s a waste of time fishing for pike if it isn’t frosty. Those anglers who did fish, targeted, roach, dace, perch and chub. It was thought a waste of time, fishing for barbel, tench, bream and carp. If you did catch one of these fish. You were considered very lucky.

Thankfully me and my mates did realise we could catch barbel, bream and the odd tench during the winter months. I well remember, in the very early 1950’s probably 1952 or 53, when I fished the river Beault at Hunton on Christmas day, catching two tench. One of 4-8-0 the other 4-14-0 from a bank high river. They were considered very big tench in those days; the biggest won me the tench trophy in Winget’s AC. In those days Dennis Trim, Len Cuckoo, Harry Rowlands, Bill Cutting, Bill Hall, Tony How, Brian Holloway and me caught a lot of big bream, quality roach and perch, along with the odd tench

We reckon we had the best bream fishing in the country on the River Beault. Our style of fishing was quite simple. 15 and 16 foot rods built by Clarkson of Rochester. Three piece rods with whole cane butts and two sections of split bamboo. Our reels were Rapidex centre pins, filled with 6 lb line, and a size six hook, bait was a big pieces of crust, flake, or a lobworm fished using a method known as float legering, or laying-on. The float was a big goose or swan quill, and a bored bullet was stopped about twelve to fifteen inches from the hook.

Favoured swims were slower water on the inside of a bend, a big eddy, or places where the water flowed deep and fairly fast but without those whirlpools that you often find when the river is fining down after a flood. Having plumbed the depth, the float was set about two feet over-depth. We would bait our swims quite heavily with mashed bread, bran and chopped worms, made into cricket size balls. We would throw in three or four balls to start with, and a couple more each time we caught a fish.

I well remember fishing on the last day of the season, I think 1954, I tackled up for laying on, and using 4 lb line, a swan quill float and a bored bullet stopped some 18 inches from a size 6 hooks. My bait was lobworm favourite bait in coloured water. I fed four balls of mashed bread, bran and chopped worms into the swim, then cast out so that the tackle swung round and lay downstream of the rod tip. I put the rod in the rest and sat to await events. Two hours later I had my first bream, a fish of about 4 lbs; and then a couple of pound perch followed by three more bream around the four pound mark. It was looking good. Then the float sank slowly out of sight, I lifted the rod and tightened into a good fish—these river bream could really pull your string and bend your stick. After a fair bit of pulling and boring the fish swirled on the surface and came to the net; it was a bream of around 5 lbs. I thought it was my biggest ever, and I placed the fish in the keep net so that I could get the weighing scales.

It was a long run to the Bull pub where the club scales were kept, and I was a quite breathless when I arrived. "Can I have the scales please, mister?" I asked. "What have you caught, then?" the pub owner asked, and I told him it was a big bream. "I'll be right with you," he told me. He fetched the scales and we made our way back to the river where he set them up on the bank while I got the net out of the water. "That's a big 'un, boy," the landlord said. And it was... 5 lbs 4 ozs, my best ever bream and on the very last day of the season. Since then I've had quite a few good fish on the last day of the season, including a 3 lb perch, a 6 lb chub a 22 lb pike and a 2 lb roach.

Cream of Roach Fishing

In the fifties and early sixties the Hampshire Avon, River Medway, Kentish Stour, Thames, Kennet and Beault provided some of the best roach fishing in the country. During autumn and winter the fishing was excellent and not at all difficult if you followed the simple rules of keeping quiet and fished the bait on or near the bottom. One good river was the Medway. In normal conditions the Medway was a deep, slow-flowing river with big shoals of quality roach and bream. With the best fishing between Yalding and East Farleigh. It wasn't a river with a gravel bottom with swaying water crowfoot with those lovely white buttercups we see on the southern chalk streams; the Medway flows through Kentish clay and there is very little weed apart, though there were some good areas of water lilies and sedges lining the margins here and there. It was in those places that we would seek the winter roach.

On the railway side of the river, notably from the high bank downstream of Yalding to Nettlestead and from Barming Bridge down to East Farleigh where most of our fishing was done, much of the bank was tree-lined and there were lots of stinging nettles, blackberry bushes and elderberry trees. I loved the weir pools at Yalding, Teston and Farleigh. At Teston Weir, on the right hand bank of the pool, there were some old ruins where we used to camp in the summer. This was my favourite place. Just below the weir is a lovely old stone bridge where you could stand in summer and watch shoals of fish darting for scraps of food. Further downstream were some hawthorn bushes, where e had some wonderful roach fishing with lots of pound plus fish and the occasional two pounder. Legered crust was the method and bait.

Medway roach anglers eagerly awaited the first floods of autumn. The surging muddy water would sweep away all the rubbish left by summer visitors and hop pickers. This was the land of hops, and just upstream of Yalding at East Peckham were Whitbread Brewery's Oast House’s where every year hundreds East Enders came to pick hops and have a good time. Lots of those hop pickers were roach anglers who brought their black wooden seat boxes and Sowerbutts roach poles, and most of them used hemp for feed and bait. There was many a brief love affair between the East London girls and the Kentish lads; when we went off fishing for those weekends we took a change of clothes. So we could go off and meet the girl’s in the pubs or to a dance around East Peckham, Yalding, Nettlestead and Wateringbury.

Enough of this, let's get back to the roach, a favourite fish not just of the Kentish anglers but also of Londoners who came in coach loads on Sunday mornings. You would see them sweeping across the fields to their favourite swims—lovely people, always willing to help and share there knowledge with us. I made many friends and sometimes a couple of them would fish on a Saturday and stay the night at my house, when we would all go off to the Pavilion dance hall at Gillingham on the Saturday evening, and fish again on the Sunday. This way they had two days fishing for the price of one.

In the fifties, four styles of fishing were popular with Medway roach anglers: swimming the stream, legering, float legering and laying-on. The top baits were bread crust, flake and paste, gentles and lobworms, although occasionally we did use such baits as hempseed, stewed wheat and cheese. When the river was carrying two feet of extra water, anglers would fish with ten or twelve foot rods and centre-pin reels, but now and again you could see someone with a fixed spool reel such as the Omnia—a reel that looked like a cycle dynamo. Thankfully I had a Mitchell 300

With the river at its normal winter level we used float tackle, either swimming or trotting the stream, although some anglers still fished with the old Thames-style roach pole with great success, and I enjoyed watching them as they fed with hempseed and fished with hemp or an elderberry on the hook. I too had a Sowerbutts roach pole which I still use today.

I had some great bags of pound plus roach on lobworm bait when the river was in flood. One February day I was at Teston, downstream of the bridge. The river was over the fields, and the road on the approach to the bridge was under water. I fished laying-on style with lobworm bait in front of some half-submerged hawthorn bushes. I caught seventeen roach all over the pound mark, the best making 1 lb 12 ozs, as well as several bream around the three pound mark and a few eels.

Another time I had gone by train to Yalding and walked down river to the start of the trees on the high bank. It was a frosty November morning, the river had some flow and colour, and the puddles on the field were thick with ice. I didn't think much of my chances. The swim I chose, in front of some withered brown sedges, was around eight feet deep. I fished laying-on, with a 16 foot rod whole cane butt with a split bamboo middle and top joint, Rapidex centre-pin reel and 3 lb line. Four BB shot were bunched twelve inches from the hook, and my bait was flake on a size 8 hook. It was not until around two o'clock in the afternoon that I had my first bite, a pound plus roach. This was followed by a couple of bream, and then six bites and six good roach. The frost was coming down now and my fingers were getting numb. Rooks, crows and pigeons were going to roost; there was the occasional sound of gun shot. The sky overhead was electric blue, and in the direction of the setting sun it was pink and orange—a sure sign that there would be a heavy frost. A pheasant crowed from the tree behind me as it went to roost. I would stick it out until dark, and maybe do an extra half an hour with my cycle lamp beamed on to the float.

I changed over to crust and moved the shot down to within three inches of the hook; then, in a magnificent couple of hours fishing into the darkness, I had a succession of pound plus roach and two 4 lb bream. Every cast brought me a fish. I ended the day with 26 big roach, the best weighing 1 lb 14 ozs. I didn't want to pack up but the cold was so intense that I couldn't stand it any longer. I was a happy angler as I trudged up river to Yalding station thinking of the warm train carriage and of checking my football pools when I got the evening paper at Maidstone.

I used the same method on another chilly day when the banks at Nettlestead were covered with frozen snow and cat ice fringed the margins. I was with Brian Long and to help us contend with the cold I had a bottle of brandy. I chose a swim in front of some dead water lilies, and my hook bait was bread cube. For a long time we saw not a sign of a fish and as we chatted the level in the brandy bottle fell steadily. Eventually my float slowly slipped from sight, and the answering strike brought me a good roach. By the time it got dark I had caught several nice roach including three over the two pound mark. It had been a good day.

We arrived back home, a little worse for wear having consumed all of the brandy. Brian, who was married, had invited me back to his home for a meal, but it was gone 8-30 pm when we staggered up the garden path. Brian knocked the door, it was answered by a woman who screamed, "Here's your bloody dinner," and then she threw it at him. I decided not to stay! Fifteen minutes later I was in a taxi heading for home after a great days roach fishing.