The Tidal River Arun - Pulborough

I fished an inter club match on the River Arun below Pulborough in West Sussex. I am fairly sure that my mates had never seen the river before, I certainly hadn't  None of us had any real idea as to how we should fish it on the day and didn't know what to expect. 

We were really at the mercy of any snippets we could ascertain from our opponents and fishing neighbours. I find that most anglers are willing to tell the truth regarding how a venue is or was fishing. Normally it is,” You should have been here last week, it fished its head off”.

At the draw I got talking to a couple of the local anglers and I was told that I needed to draw in “Bream Alley”, which was a 60 yard stretch of the river which had real “slabs” in it. By slabs they meant it had bream weighing about 4 – 6 lb in weight and real dustbin lids. I was told that if I didn't draw in the area I could forget about winning the match.

  If not the alley, I could expect the normal river fish such as, dace, roach and the odd chub, but not in any great numbers. The lads would not however, reveal how I was to fish the river if I had a good draw. I suppose that’s fair enough. They obviously wanted to beat us and saw that as their main weapon against us beating them on their own water.

We made the draw and walked up river to our pegs, at least it was up river at that time. I was told that being tidal the river would flow both ways at some time during the match as the tide turned. The two lads smiled at me when I told them what peg I had drawn. “Sorry mate but your just out of bream alley and below it I am afraid”.

This did not fill me with confidence as I approached my swim. It seems that the alley was a straight bit with a slight bend just below. 

I had drawn on the end of the alley as it made the slight turn into the bend.  To be fair, my swim looked just like all the others and I could not see what would hold the bream in any of the swims. There wasn't any real holding spots that I could see. Perhaps there was a change of depth or something which made the difference between the swims. Looking across the swim to the other side, I could make out one bed of weed down the middle. There were beds of weed down the far edge and right in front of me in the near edge. I figured that if I hooked a near decent fish I would have a job landing it through the weed beds.

For this reason I decided to fish with decent sized hooks on both my float rod and my leger rod. I put a size 16 hook onto the float tackle and upped it to a size 14 on the leger. If I did hook a dustbin lid I wanted to give myself a chance of landing it.  I noticed that as we started the match no one was eager to put ground bait in or to go on the leger, so I thought the best thing was to do what the locals did and start on the float with loose fed maggot and casters. I mixed up a load of ground bait as I thought that if the main quarry was large bream I would need it at some time during the match.

For the first hour the river was flowing left to right towards the sea and I spent most of the time trotting the nearside and then switched to the far side. It was difficult to hold your line off the main weed bed in the middle while fishing the float on the far side. After that first hour the flow slowly came to a standstill and after a further ten minutes or so. The river started flowing right to left.

I was then fishing what I regarded as upstream. It felt really weird fishing a river which flowed both ways.  I can understand why the locals had held back on putting in any ground bait earlier as if they had, they would have their feed in the swim of the angler above by now. I decided to wait and see what happened, but with only a few bits in the net I was getting a bit edgy as almost half of the match had gone and no bream.   Any sort of fish were becoming really hard to get at this point.

On most normal rivers you usually caught your fish in the flow, especially if it was slow moving. After a while the river started to slow down a bit. I had caught nothing in the last hour and I was a bit worried by then. The river flow stopped again and came to a standstill. At this point all the locals started to lump in big balls of ground bait. I thought that I should follow suit and did so. The whole scene was quite a bombardment and it was if we were on a large destroyer giving the far side a broadside.

Everybody switched to leger rods and I followed suit even though I didn't know quite what to expect. I baited my hook with worm tipped with red maggot to help to keep the worm from flying off on the cast. I knew that if I hooked a decent fish I would have to bully it up and over the two main weed beds. After about 20 minutes an angler about 6 pegs to my left hooked and lost a good fish. A short time later the angler to his right landed a nice bream. Almost immediately the angler two swims to my left caught a bream.  It looked like the shoal was moving down towards me. I could wait no longer. It was obvious that no one was holding on to the shoal and before I could stop myself I threw out two more balls of ground bait into my swim on the far side. Ten minutes went by and nothing.

Then the angler on my right hooked into a big fish. I thought I had blown it and that the shoal had passed me by without stopping.  I was put out of my misery by my rod tip pulling round. I lifted into a good fish and stood up to my full height. Pointing the rod up to the midday position I gave the fish some stick to get it to the surface and over the middle weed bed. Thankfully the fish hit the surface and I was able to bully it over the nearside weed bed and into the landing net. Nothing for about another ten minutes and then the angler two to my right hit into a fish. I really thought that the shoal had moved on past me. I needn't have worried as almost immediately I got another fish.

 I had a period of about five minutes when I thought I had to introduce more ground bait, but for some reason I decided against it as no one else was doing it. Even though the river started to flow left to right again slightly I managed three more bream.

Together, my five bream and a few bits, pulled the scales round to just over 23lb. Apart from my fish the rest of the anglers only had one bream and bits so I had won comprehensively.  How lucky can you get when fishing a water for the very first time with no real plan on how it should be fished. I felt very fortunate with my red letter day, returning home very happy indeed.