Back to Fishing - Joining Salisbury and District Angling Club

My return to fishing in Salisbury

I had a job working for Woolworths in the city of Salisbury. The store backed onto the Hampshire River Avon. The store had a flat roof above the storage part of the building and we were allowed to go out onto it to have our sandwiches at lunchtimes during the summer.

The warehouse would get quite hot and it was nice to get a bit of fresh air each day. The roof overlooked the river and due to the gin clear clarity of the water you could virtually count every stone on the bottom. The river had lots of streamer weed  Ranunculi’s I think -growing in it and between the patches of green weed I could see some fairly big shoals of fish swimming up and down.

The shoals were mainly quite large chub and nice dace, with the odd grayling coming out from the cover of the weed every now and again. I guessed the chub were up to about three pounds in weight. The dace were quite a specimen size at just under a pound and the few grayling were well over a pound in some cases. This was the moment when I knew that I would have to return to fishing again.

Glenys, my wife, agreed to let me take up my hobby again and I got myself kitted out; and joined the local Salisbury and District Angling Club.

After joining I made it my business to check out the club waters and also to find out where the various tackle shops were situated. The local tackle shop was called John Eadies and the owners were on the local angling club’s committee.

 Loads of anglers congregated in the shop which was in the centre of town and easy to get to. In my thirst to gain knowledge of the local waters and the various successful fishing methods I spent many hours talking to the local club members.

The club had two stretches of river in close proximity. One was the River Avon and the other was the River Nadder, both being on the outskirts of the city. The club had six main lakes for stillwater fishing. The most prized lakes, which they actually owned rather than rented were situated at Petersfinger  about a mile outside the city on the Southampton Road.

These were two lakes of mixed coarse fishing. The first lake had a head of the usual suspects such as roach, rudd and perch. It also had some really nice tench and big carp of specimen sizes. There was also some pike in the lake which made for good winter fishing.

The other lake which was behind the top lake was alongside the River Avon.

This lake was mainly mixed fishing with roach, rudd, perch, pike, and some big bream and carp as the quarry.  During times of heavy rain the river would flow into; and out of the bottom lake. Species from both the river and the lake would emigrate between the two and it made for very interesting fishing at those times. You could trot the stream within the lake sometimes, a very weird experience I can tell you. As far as I know they are still there these days.

Just before you arrived at Petersfinger was a very small lake known as Savilles Lake. The club had an understanding with the tractor firms’ owner and they allowed members to fish it. As the lake was fed by a small stream – river Bourne - entering at the top end and the fact that it flowed out into the Hampshire Avon at the bottom, it held mainly river species such as roach, dace, chub, perch, a few grayling and the odd pike. Some of these species ran to specimen sizes as the river held an excellent head of good sized fish.

The club also had the fishing rights to two lakes at Steeple Langford, which was situated on the Warminster Road, around ten miles out of Salisbury. The first lake was quite large and a slim peninsula separated it from a much smaller one. The species were mainly tench, bream and roach. The roach were not of a specimen size but the tench and bream were around the four to five pound mark.

 As lake fishing goes these lakes were good winter venues as you could still catch tench even when it was snowing. I cannot offer any good reason why this should be so, it just was.

All the club lake fisheries could only be fished outside the “close season”. That was between June and March. It was thought that in those days, all the fish were in need of a rest period and also needed time to spawn.

We now know that different species spawn at different times, but in my opinion a close season would still be a good idea, to give nature a helping hand to allow new growth of the banks around all fisheries and also to give the fish a rest.