The long awaited opening of the Royalty Fishery after the three month lay off finally arrived on the glorious 16th and, as has become something of a tradition, anglers started queuing up outside Davis Tackle in the early hours of the morning to ensure they were one of the first to obtain a ticket. By the time we opened at 7:30am the queue had swelled to over 40 anglers, both local and visiting from far and wide. A mad spell of about twenty minutes saw them all served and out onto the fishery where they could get down to the business of river fishing for the first time in ages.
Reports of the first barbel landed - around 8lbs from the Pipes - begain filtering through shortly after 8am and after that a steady stream of news was passed to us as anglers came back to the shop for more bait and tackle. A brace of doubles from the Gate Swim, a double from Watersmeet plenty of smaller barbel in the one to three pound bracket from around the fishery as well as a number of barbel between seven and nine pounds. 'Wigan Jeff' had a brace including a 7lb 10oz barbel whilst his friend Les Mamoaney had a 6lb 15oz barbel. Alby had three barbel all around 8lbs in weight including one on his fathers rod and Daniel Welch tempted a 10lb barbel from Trammels on halibut pellet.
Plenty of dace, roach and chub were also being caught to anglers fishing maggot along with some cracking perch of which a number hit dace being retrieved by unsuspecting anglers. All in all a great start to the season and only a hint of the sport that was to follow. The next day was even better with Dennis Nye landing a 12lb 8oz barbel from the Road Bridge whilst his fishing colleague Kevin landed three carp to twenty pounds, also from the Road Bridge area.
Local angler Pete Moores from Burton took a new PB with a 12lb 4oz fish which took at last knockings whilst another local Les Dwight landed a 10lb 6oz barbel along with a 5lb bream from below the Pipes on rolling meat. The smaller barbel also continued to feed with once again plenty taken from around the Fishery. Richard Booty had a great trip down landing barbel of 11lb 8oz, 10lb 10oz, 10lb 4oz and 8lbs along with a lovely chub weighing 6lbs. Successful areas for Richard included Trammels, Gate and Johnsons and pellet and boilie were the baits that worked for him.
Another angler who had a great session - or in his words "bloody brilliant" - was James Thomas of Minehead in Somerset. Having taken a couple of doubles earlier in the week on his first visit to the Royalty he decided to return and fish Greenbanks where he landed barbel of 5lb 4oz, 7lbs, 7lb 6oz, 9lb 5oz, 10lb 10oz and 12lb 8oz on ledgered halibut pellet. Eight barbel including three doubles to 12lb 8oz on his first two visits to the fishery is indeed something to remember. We also heard of a number of other doubles, along with carp to 11lbs, a catch of large bream to just under 10lbs from the Parlour, perch to 3lb 2oz, plenty of chub to 4lbs along with a few larger ones and most pleasingly a number of roach between 1lb - 1lb 12oz.
All in all one of the best starts to a season on the Royalty for many a year with the sheer number of small barbel being both seen and caught is extremely encouraging, as is the improvement in the head of chub which finally seem to be making a comeback on the lower Avon. Likewise the roach fishing continues to improve in terms of both quality and quantity. Indeed the Roach Club placed four artificial spawning boards in the Royalty as part of the Avon Roach Project and so successful was the spawing that only two boards were removed for the project, with the others being left to hatch in the river. Hopefully the eggs from the two boards removed, once hatched and grown on will go towards re-stocking the middle reaches of the Avon where the roach stocks are worryingly low.
