Cutting My Teeth.

 It's been a very long time coming but after so many years of reading reports, seeing images and hearing many good thing's about the River Itchen I had finally got the opportunity to "cut my teeth" on this historic waterway. About time too aswell, I have been lucky enough to fish a few of this countries many chalk streams with many successes on various fronts, all I wanted for this visit was to enjoy myself, catch many fish with the view of also targeting the Roach population that reside there.

An early start.

 For the trip down I was joined by Brian and met up with Mick and Jeff for a day's trotting and quiver tipping, for Mick this was his first stab at a chalk stream and I'm sure he would enjoy it, who wouldn't. I started off at the free stretch before the fishery opened but I never managed to connect with the only bite I had, then once we had made our way up the track to the top of the beat our sights were set firmly at trotting for Grayling.

What a looker....and a Grayling.

Beautiful fish.

 Thing's were bit of a slow burner apart from the dirge of small Grayling and Trout but when the better fish were located the fun began, a couple of pound-plus Grayling came to the net with the largest at 1.06, with the Trout coming in at around 3lbs which were fighting very well but in doing so were ruining run after run, on game fisheries that is to be expected, I did learn a couple of good thing's for my long trotting as I was adjusting on my 20-40 yard trots, if you've never been to the Itchen it's wider than most chalkstreams, most importantly wider than I'm used to so I had to adjust angles and trot technique so the bait would run the creases where a majority of fish would be.

It looks very good but this swim didn't produce.

A lovely place to fish.

Mick doing a spot of posing.....

Some of my friends.

 For the remainder of the day I continued to fish likely areas and a plenty more fish came by the net but nothing of note with half-a-dozen Grayling to a little under 1.06 but nothing large showed up and as dusk settled the constant flow of Grayling in a swim that looked very Roach like, certainly a swim I would have thought they'd exist but they were a no-show, conditions were okay and the tackle was right, just the bigger fish were not interested in feeding, but the company was great and would like to do it again but a change of venue I feel would be more productive and can't help but think this fishery in particular is living on it's reputation as opposed to current catches, but these things happen.