IT has been mixed fortunes for anglers out and about over the past week with some days giving them good sport and other days proving to be hard going.

For Salisbury Angling Club members fishing a club match on their city Avon stretch on Sunday, it was the latter – a difficult day in far from ideal conditions. The river started rising as the match went on due to the arrival of heavy rain and it slowly coloured up. Paul Barnard won the match with a bag of roach weighing 6lb from near the city centre, while Mick Keynes found some roach and dace for 5lb 12oz. Andy West lost two chub but managed to bank two more to weigh in 4lb 13oz for third place. It would probably have been a different result had he landed the other two as well.

As the cold weather started to give way to milder conditions and the wind swung from easterly to westerly, sport picked up on the Britford Fishery with the main carrier, the top end of the navigation channel and the old river stretches all fishing quite well on various days. Ian Glover struck it lucky on his day with over 20lb of dace and 20lb of grayling trotting a stick float along the old river. John Murgatory fished the navigation channel near Harnham Island and banked two quality roach, one at 2lb 4oz and the other at 1lb 10oz. Steve Joseph also had two good roach, from a swim above the fishery’s car park on the main carrier – one weighed 2lb 4oz and the other 2lb 1oz. But at the start of this week, sport started to slow again as the weekend’s heavy rain started bringing water levels up and turning the rivers brown.

The milder weather has improved sport on the lakes and at Witherington Farm Fishery, all five lakes were free of ice by the weekend. Anglers began turning out and fishing steadily got better with skimmers, silver fish appearing in nets. Other lake fisheries also report a slow improvement as the water temperature rises slightly.