River Frome, The Factory and The Lane

This is a premier stretch of the River Frome providing top quality coarse fishing throughout the season. Most of the river through The Factory section is deep and impounded but there are a few nice runs of faster and shallower water in places. There is ample bankside cover which creates more diverse habitat and provides plenty of places for fish to hide and features to fish to. This varied habitat has helped establish a fantastic coarse fishery with a mixture of Roach, Dace, Chub, Perch and Bream.

Most people visiting this section of river will be coarse fishermen looking to spend a day trotting a stick float catching mixed bags of roach, dace and chub. They will undoubtedly have a tip rod setup which will be used throughout the session to tempt a take from the head of big chub which can be found in every peg. If the river is in flood and coloured, you have a good chance of catching some cracking bream in some of the deeper and wider pegs throughout the reach.

Another popular form of fishing in the section is winter roving for chub. This section of the river is full of big chub, and when I say big, I mean 6lb plus! Bread flake, lob worm, meat or cheese paste all work well in this reach and the chub put up a brilliant scrap on light tackle.

Predator fishermen are also regular visitors due to the good head of big perch (3lb+) and double figure pike which can be had during the winter months. Most predator tactics will work, but one tip is to avoid using static dead baits for pike as they seem to like their prey to be on the move!

The top end also provides some limited fly fishing opportunities for trout, particularly in the section just downstream of the Factory Weir and downstream of the road bridge. There is a good head of wild trout and some are known to grow very big. A brown trout over 4lb was once caught by a coarse fisherman in the Factory Weir pool and trout over 2lb are caught regularly.

Moving on to The Lane, this is a fabulous known for producing mixed bags of coarse fish. It’s heavily impounded by Lullington Weir making the river deep and slow flowing. In normal conditions, people fish similar tactics to The Factory and catch lovely bags of roach, dace and chub but when the river is coloured you could hit a shoal of big bream. Big perch and big pike are also present so once again its not uncommon to see predator fishermen roving the section during the winter months.

The Lane and The Factory are also known to have a small head of carp which are rarely caught. Many coarse fishermen have hooked carp whilst fishing for chub but very few have managed to land one!  No one really knows how big the carp go but some of our carp fishermen claim that they reach at least the late teens. Any carp fisherman looking to catch a river carp in challenging conditions will certain enjoy fishing this stretch.

The coarse fishing season is from the 16th of June to the 15th of March, from the 1st of April to the 15th of June it’s fly fishing only for the trout.

It’s catch and release, the wild brown trout are a valuable resource and need protecting.