‘That one fish totally changed my perspective on this stretch of river and for the next two weeks we caught lots more of them as well as bream, all captured on ledgered bread from the section from Oliver’s Island in Mortlake to Syon House in Isleworth. Low tide was the best time, especially if it coincided with the lower light levels of evening’
Discovering new fishing spots and trying different approaches were never what The First Day used to be about for me. I loved nothing better than heading for a familiar spot with a good chance of some action. I would not, however, be disappointed if these chances did not materialise. The first day was merely a time for reflection upon what has been, for anticipation of what is to come and just generally tuning back into the rhythm of the watery world after three months off, although this has by no means ever been guaranteed.
For the first four years living in Kew, I had only fished the Thames there twice. I was no stranger to this river further upstream, with a lot of well spent time with friends and family getting to know different parts of this enigmatic water fairly well. But the river running past my back gate felt different. For a start the towpath was busy with London life and was an environment I could not associate with my angling. The water was hard to read, going up and down with the tides every day.
On the two occasions I had fished it, I’d waded through sloppy mud after traversing high concrete banks with only a few bream to show for my troubles. This was a far cry from the quiet rivers that I had become familiar with, where I could be left in peace to let my imagination run wild.
During the close season, after having lived at Kew for four years, my thirty-year-old Vauxhall Nova failed its MOT for the final time. Being a horticulturalist at Kew Gardens, I was in no position to splash out on another, so therefore was patiently waiting for something to come my way as so often things did back then.
The sixteenth duly arrived and I was still without a way of getting to my remote fishing spots. So, instead, I made the decision to fish the river I saw every day at the bottom of the garden. I walked through the gate and met Tom, my fishing friend, who was waiting on the towpath for me. We went down some rather slippery, concrete steps and on to the well-washed bed of shingles that sloped down to the fast flowing river. The tide was going out and, with little to be seen in the way of features, it was like fishing a motorway of water.
With nothing to show after several hours in the midsummer sun, I was getting restless and began planning a move up river to a position opposite Syon House. It was one of the two places I had previously fished and thought it might save a blank. But then the flow began to slow as the tide turned and came to an absolute stand still as the tide coming upstream met the flow of the river down-stream. The sudden change in conditions gave me a renewed confidence. Sure enough, my rod came alive and I had one of those classic bream bites where the fish moves slowly around with the bait in its mouth. A cool, calm strike saw my rod hoop into a satisfying curve as the hook was set into a heavy fish. Five minutes in and we still hadn’t seen even a glimpse of the turbo-charged fish that (by the nature of the fight) was obviously no bream. Line was being ripped off the Altex reel in the direction of Kew Bridge and had forced me to run off behind it down river with Tom running behind me with landing net in hand.
A small crowd had gathered on the towpath behind us, watching the battle unfold. Had the fish come off at that point I think I would’ve rolled up into a small ball and waited for the tide to come back up and carry me away. Luckily however, it did not, instead it eventually glided over the net and, lying safely in the mesh, was my first ever sea trout, all four and half pounds of it. Tom turned around, holding the fish in the landing net up to the crowd and, with a small cheer, they all departed.
That one fish totally changed my perspective on this stretch of river and for the next two weeks we caught lots more of them as well as bream, all captured on ledgered bread from the section from Oliver’s Island in Mortlake to Syon House in Isleworth. Low tide was the best time, especially if it coincided with the lower light levels of evening. In the beginning I felt uncomfortable with the hustle and bustle of the towpath but, soon enough, it just became another part of the fishing trip, much like squeezing past a herd of cows had been in the past.
That summer I became well acquainted with the local seals randomly popping up in the swim at any given moment and then staring at me with their big brown eyes, adding an extra element to the day. I also unwittingly fulfilled a long standing dream to catch a Thames carp. I’d come close to doing so in the past during two incidences further up-river but hadn’t manage to net either. Despite the carp being the smallest fish of the day, weighing much less than the bream and sea trout, I could not have been happier.
Autumn came and the fishing turned to roach. I had such wonderful trips cycling up the towpath in the dusk after work. The roach would feed through into dark and touch ledgering with my Allcock Wizard and a bag of bread was a great way to catch them.But with the heavy rain moving in at the beginning of November, the tidal Thames fishing season was over and, having acquired my granddad’s old Skoda, my angling activities moved back to familiar ground once more.
The next season was started back on the tidal Thames at Syon. For some reason the bream took hold and nothing else got a look in. The autumn was much the same and, due to the lack of roach, my enthusiasm for the stretch dwindled and I didn’t fish the tidal Thames the next season at all in June or July. It was only in August that I decided to go back to Syon one afternoon, needing to rid my tackle box of some leftover stinky maggots.
Things did not start well, however. Within two minutes of my first cast a rower came past about ten feet from the bank and accidently picked my line up with his oar. I tried to reel in but the line snapped and I lost my feeder, baited hook and my cool all at the same time. I stupidly shouted something out to him for coming in so close. His reaction was nothing short of ‘river rage’ and I was lucky not to have ended up with him coming ashore for a bankside showdown!
After the dust settled and I had tied on a new hook and feeder, a steady flow of lovely, healthy chub graced my net. It got to the point where there was no time to put the rod in the rest, such was the immediate response after every cast. Then the flow of chub was interrupted by a roach, a dace and then a bream. After this, there was a sudden drop off of bites and I wondered whether something bigger had shown up to the party. When I eventually got another fish on, it did fell much bigger and after a good scrap, I had my second ever Thames carp on the bank. This one was bigger, weighing about five pounds, and had felt every ounce of it while crashing about on my thirteen foot glass fibre Bruce & Walker rod.
My enthusiasm for the tidal Thames was fully restored and I had already planned my next trip on the cycle back home through the cool evening air on the towpath. Over those following few months I had one of the best spells in my angling career. Every time I went I would invariably catch something unexpected. In no particular order, I caught zander, sea bass, some huge dace, silver bream, hybrid bream and all manner of bream. I also caught roach, eels, mitten crab and so many chub that I lost count.
I got into the swimfeeder fishing in a big way on those trips and my diary around this time is peppered with small diagrams and ideas that I had tried out that day on the river bank. The biggest hurdle I had to overcome was receiving ‘snatchy’ bites from too much weight and tension on the line caused by the heavy feeder and fast current. My solution was to cast slightly upstream and let some line out, creating a bow in the current. The bites were sometimes very subtle but the trick was to strike on any changes in tension seen on the rod tip or, if it was windy or dark, to feel this through the line.
It all came to an end though that November, when my partner and I moved to Dorset. The last trip I had there as a local and it had rained heavily for three days straight. I did not know what to expect when setting off for the final time on my bike. The tide was going out but, because of the amount of water coming down river from the rain, the level barely dropped all day. I was forced to cast close in where the raging current had little effect. I was a bit reluctant about casting this close because I knew the water could not have been much over a foot deep. But after several moves and plenty of casts in quick succession to get a flowing bait trickling through the swim, my rod top shuddered as the tension in the line suddenly collapsed. I lifted into a good fish; a chub was most likely, from the feel of things, but was half expecting a roach.
A flash of red appeared as something surfaced downstream – it was a roach! I walked downstream in the direction of the fish, trying to hold the net while reeling in the slack. The fish surfaced again and panic set in when I saw that this was by far the biggest roach I’d hooked for a long while. And, when landed at one pound twelve ounces, this was indeed my biggest and I could not have wished to finish on a better note.
There was not a single sea trout amongst all the different species I caught there that last summer and autumn. It was the species that had sparked off this entire unexpected journey when I had stepped out through my back gate and was greeted by Tom on the opening day over two years previously.
I’m fairly sure that had it not been for the turn of events that led me to fishing the river that day and the chance encounter with a splendid sea trout, I probably would never have got round to fishing it with any real effort. And, as a result, all those fond memories would not exist and my feelings towards that stretch of water would be quite different.
Writing & Images Edward Barrett – Dorset June 2026
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