Angling from the start - take kids fishing

Saturday the 2^nd of June

I have been promising to take my two nephews, Will and Tom, fishing for a few years now though in all honesty they are probably only now at the stage where it would be worthwhile, meaning they might be able to sit still for more than five minutes without running riot! At a recent family bash I promised their dad Paul that this year we would actually do it and a date was arranged to spend a few hours down on the canal, though as the date approached I thought better of that plan, with it being the jubilee bank holiday weekend the canal was going to be busy and the extra boat traffic would create problems. After a bit of thought and advice from some mates I settled on a small farm pond which although local to me I had actually never set eyes on, but I was assured that it was stuffed with small fish and that was exactly what I wanted, a day struggling for bites would lead to boredom and I wanted to give the lads a day to remember.

We arrived at the crack of 10.30 and on peering over the five bar gate at the water my heart sank, the pond was tiny and full of weed, the one or two swims on it were quite steep and I had visions of wet feet, or worse. But after we made our way on to the banks we could see another piece of water glinting through the trees and on making our way towards it things started to look a bit more promising. It turned out that there were actually two ponds and the second was much more appealing for a beginner, not much weed bar a few small sets of pads, a couple of small islands, and a reasonable amount of flat bank to work with, all we needed now was some fish.

My initial plan when the intended venue was the canal was to set the lads up with a short whip each, the thinking being that taking the reel out of the equation would simplify things and eliminate one source of tangles, I well remember when my Dad used to take us fishing when we were young, I don't think he spent much time fishing himself and he certainly spent an awful lot of time un-picking tangles that we constantly got into. The problem was that the pond contains carp and hooking one of those on the whip would be entertaining for all of two seconds, so I dug out my trusty Drennan waggler rod along with my Daiwa Whisker whilst saying saying several prayers that they would return home intact. Both are cracking rods, true classics that would be difficult to replace nowadays but I don't own anything else that would do the job while still being light enough for a kid to use. My first proper rod was an Abu glass fibre float rod that I could just about get my fingers around the butt off and which weighed a ton, this pair didn't know how lucky they were, I just hoped that they didn't trample my prized carbon.

I set up the first rod with a 5bb insert waggler and swung it out with a swan shot clipped to the hook to plumb the depth, less than four feet, float adjusted and out it went again, less than three feet, hmm, adjusted again until I found it was two feet at the most, blimey that was a shocker. I wandered around to several other swims and found exactly the same so we stayed put though I must admit that did my confidence no good at all. I passed that rod over to Paul while I set up the other rig, this one with a float more suitable for the now established depth, and was relieved to hear a shout go up almost immediately as a small roach was swung in, phew, pressure off then.

First one for Will

Tom gets in on the act

Double trouble!

Myself and Paul then looked after one of the lads apiece with them swapping over now and then, usually when it seemed that the other swim was producing more fish! A steady number of fish came our way, mostly roach and rudd with some lovely fish pushing 8oz's, plenty of sticklebacks that kept pinching the bait before the proper fish got a look in, a couple of gudgeon, the first I've seen for a long while, a couple of skimmers, several small crucians and the specimen of the day was a small common carp caught by Paul who funnily enough seemed to be holding the rod quite often himself!

Dad gets in on the action

Tangles were also a regular feature of the day I must admit, though I should also admit to causing some myself. I found the hardest thing was to try and get the boys to strike with the correct amount of power, it was often either too feeble or else the float shot out of the water and ended up on the bank, usually signalling yet another tangle! That was something else I remembered from when I first started fishing, one particular memory that stands out is of me looking up at a tree behind me to see a small roach swinging from the branches after an over enthusiastic strike.

One happy lad

Starting to look quite proffesional

Tom caught himself a carp

The lads did really well, we had thought that two or three hours would be enough and that they would lose interest but in fact we ended up fishing for almost five hours and I'm sure that there wouldn't have been many complaints had we stopped for longer. There was the odd bit of compeitiveness as you would expect and a few minutes of disillusionment now and then, soon cured when the next fish arrived, but all in all it was just pure fun fishing. No doubt about it us adults had a cracking day too, I really enjoyed introducing the lads to the sport and will certainly take them again, I get the impression that it might be sooner rather than later as apparently they had a "wicked day uncle Rob"!

Smashing chub

Friday the 17th of February

Having struggled to find time to wet a line this week I was itching to get out on Friday and I had Derwent chub in mind though on the way I fancied dropping into a swim on the Soar that I had barbel fished in the summer which was riddled with chub including one or two that looked to be of a very good size for the river.

The Soar in this area is very narrow and shallow and a cautious approach was in order, I left the kit ten yards back from the water before sneaking up and dropping in three handfuls of liquidised bread twenty feet upstream of the holding area along a willow treeline before retreating to set the rod up. I half crawled into position in front of the tree and squeezed on a piece of flake before swinging the three swam shot rig out to the branches, the tight started to tighten up quickly in the flow and just kept on going, a fish had hit the bait instantly and I struck, which is where it all went wrong. Half into the strike the rod went with a bang, a clean break straight through the blank that left me holding a four foot length while the remaining section slid down the line towards the hooked fish briefly before there was a second crack and the line parted. There wasn't really a great deal I could do or think at that stage, mishaps happen so regularly to me that I think I half expect it nowadays and take them relatively calmly. Leaving hook and line in a fish I certainly wasn't happy about but there's consolation in the fact that chub rarely seem to have any problem whatsoever in shedding a hook so hopefully all was well on that front. I can only imagine that the rod had taken a knock at some stage and disaster was just waiting for a chance, another one on my long list of destroyed kit, the last broken rod was only a couple of months ago!

So that was me rodless, in fact even worse I couldn't actually think of a rod back at home that would do the job either, I've got heavier tip rods and lighter tip rods but nothing quite right, I rang around some local tackle shops to see if they had any of the Drennan models in that I had been considering recently but they hadn't so I did what I normally do in times of crisis and rang my old man up! After raiding his tackle for a carp feeder rod and being advised that it would be nice if I didn't break it I was back on the road, there wasn't much point in heading back to the disturbed swim so I went straight to the Derwent thinking myself lucky that I hadn't done that first else the trip to borrow a rod would have been much longer.

The plan was to start towards the upstream end of the stretch and work down and the first swim was one that I knew gave me a good chance of a bite having fished it several times last winter in extreme conditions, catching fish in temperatuires approaching minus ten degrees.

One from last winter in temperatures way below zero

Same routine again, in with some loose feed on the slack side of a lovely crease coming off a near bank tree before setting up the rod, with a choice of three quiver tips I had to go for the lightest which was still heavier than I would have preferred for use with a light swan shot rig. I flicked out a lump of bread flake just into the flow and let it swing back into the crease before tightening down, the tip behaved as I expected and was a bit too heavy with it proving to be difficult to put any tension in without moving the rig but it would have to do, constant small adjustments at the reel were needed to keep the tension correct. Within a couple of minutes the tip pulled smoothly and confidently round and I hooked into a fish, immediately jumping up from my chair and walking downstream to get an angle on it in case it headed for the upstream tree. The fight was steady though and it made no attempt to snag me so before long it was in the mesh and it wasn't a bad old chub at all, its always especially nice to catch one soon after a mishap I think, it certainly didn't look as big as the 4lb 13 fish from last week but the scales told a different story and made it 5lb 4oz's, very nice.

5lb 4oz

After a few pictures I walked the fish downstream a little way before releasing it to avoid disturbing the swim but another hour spent in the spot told me that I need not have bothered as the only indications were tiny knocks from small fish so it was time to move on.

Next stop was a tricky one to fish, tree's lined the far bank and there wasn't much doubt that chub would be present but the flow belted through across most of the river at express speed and holding a bait in position would be tricky. The plan was to cast the rig into a gap in the treeline, feed out a bow of line and allow the rig to bounce downstream before settling under the branches. To reduce water pressure on the line I sat at the top of the high bank with the rod tip maybe fifteen feet above the water, likewise the weight was increased to six swan shot and the current catching bread hookbait was replaced by a lump of cheese paste. The first cast was dragged out of position almost instantly and within seconds was directly downstream of the rod tip in the main flow, no good at all, second time I got it right and watched the quiver bounce as the weight tripped the gravel before coming to a halt putting a considerable bend in the tip. There was only one form that a bite could take in that situation and the massive dropback came after five minutes or so prompting a big sweeping strike to pick up the bow before connecting with the fish. This one put up a dogged fight in the fast water but I was pretty sure that it wasn't a big fish and I was proved right as I netted a chub of maybe 3 1/2lbs at the third attempt, the net head fighting the flow more than I fought the fish.

Another half hour in that swim produced no more action and I made my way to another area that I'd not fished before but which looked the part, not long after starting I had a couple of knocks and a sharp dropback which I failed to connect with but although I gave it a while longer that was the only sign of life. A move downstream by another fifty yards or so put me in a swim that always looks the part but which I've yet to see a fish caught from, a record I failed to change. I set of on another walk down river with the intention  of  fishing the swim I had last weeks chub from, on the way I plopped a few samples of cheese paste into two likely looking areas with the intention of giving them a go on the way back to the van. Three quarters of an hour in the "perch" swim without the tip moving and I made my way back towards those spots but it was apparent that the warmer weather had enticed a good few anglers out and the first baited swim was now occupied. It is actually rare for me to see another angler on the stretch but all of a sudden they seemed to be arriving in droves, two more were roving the far bank and several others were now in the top field. I gave it another forty five minutes in the first spot I had baited without result and decided to call it a day.

After a lot of umming, arring and internet scouring I cut the choice of replacement rod down to a couple of Drennan series 7 models, either the Avon quiver, though I have no use for yet another avon topped rod, or the Puddle Chucker carp feeder models. Fortunately one of my local shops had some rods in stock and I was able to have a good look at them today, finally settling on the carp feeder in 11ft which comes with tips of 1.5, 2 and 3oz and has enough poke for my normal style of chubbing yet should also be perfectly adequate for my river perch fishing though I will take some white paint to those tips sometime soon and I have a 1oz tip on order. Its a shame they label it as a carp rod actually as it looks perfect for the job in hand, I'll report back when I've put it to the test, or broken it...