The River Rother

River Rother is part of Rother Fishery Association which was founded in 1872 and is a group of over twenty local Angling Clubs, which have joined together to provide cheap, but good and accessible local fishing in the Kent and East Sussex area. The waters are varied from small stream fishing in natural surrounding at the upper reaches of the Rother, to wide, fen like water with pronounced near and far side ledges at Blackwall Bridge, near Wittersham, Kent. All their waters are indicated by green RFA signs.
River Rother is a shallow, fast flowing, meandering river, with good stocks of chub, dace, roach and occasional trout. (The Rother does have a run of sea trout and, lower down, mullet too.)
Above Bodiam the River is quite narrow and in places only 25 feet wide. It’s in these sections that the chub is the main quarry along with roach and dace as well as the odd sea trout, both the chub record 5-09 and the roach 2-05 1/2 having been caught in recent years shows the improved quality of the river. Meat, bread-flake, maggots and worms are favourite baits.
In the lower stretches the river widens out to 25 yards in places and has depths up to ten feet, all species can be caught here and again carp are there for those that are prepared to put the time in, pike are a favourite target in the winter months with fish to 20lbs being taken. The pole, float and feeder are the most used method with all the usual baits scoring. The river is often run off and flow can sometimes make fishing more challenging, after heavy rain in the winter it can be unfishable for a day or two but soon fines down.
Access can be gained at many points along the river with virtually no walk required to the water’s edge or for those prepared for a trek endless possibilities, there are few trees on the bank in the lower reaches and the banks very flat themselves.