If you've been reading my jottings for a year or so you may remember me taking my two nephews fishing, if not here's the post, Angling from the start - take kids fishing. At ten and twelve years old they've fished a few times with their dad, usually in the sea when on holiday, but on each occasion, and that includes when they came with me, they were just given the tackle ready set up. As part of my level two angling coach course I had to teach a series of four one hour sessions that were linked in topic and it seemed the perfect opportunity to try and get the lads really involved with doing things for themselves. I was under no illusion that it would be an easy task particularly as Uncle Rob tends to be one of the kids when they are around, usually resulting in me being jumped on, beaten, and generally run ragged! Trying to deliver an organised session when the participants are so familiar with you is not easy but in for a penny and all that and so we set a date.
Showing posts with label Float. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Float. Show all posts
Thursday, 10 October 2013
Friday, 30 August 2013
River Soar zander - into the unknown
For years I have known that the River Soar held a
few zander, odd reports came in of fish caught accidentally by pike
anglers but to be honest they were pretty few and far between. The
thinking was that these were escapee's from Frisby pit which lies a
considerable distance away next to the River Wreake, which then joins
the Soar. When I became more involved in the running of Loughborough
Soar Angling Society and spent more time walking the banks I started
to pick up a few more reports and my interest was fired up. By no
means was the river heavily populated with the species but they were
there alright and I now had confirmation of at least four fish in
double figures having been banked, spread across virtually the whole
length of the clubs waters, it would be rude not to have a go
wouldn't it.
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| A stunning piece of water full of features |
After my week of carp fishing I decided that I'd
have a week after those zeds, I was still very much in flitting mode
angling wise which can work against you in some respects but so what,
it's good fun and nice to have that variety, the campaign fishing can
come later.
Tuesday, 8 January 2013
Commercial perch fishing, or was it roach...
The next stop on Thomo's magical mystery tour was to be a commercial fishery that Leo had come across a year or so previously with the intention of catching a few perch and which was fairly prolific. I was well aware that I was flitting from one thing to another but by this stage I had come to accept that I just had to grab what I can until the weather settles down and be happy with a bite or two whilst praying for the flaming rain to stop.
As you might expect it was indeed raining as we arrived just before first light and unloaded two sets of kit onto a piece of grass that was more fluid than solid, it actually turned out that that was a dry piece compared to the track that we trudged along in a slip sliding manner to reach the lake. The wind was piling in to the first bit of water that we came to and it took little persuading for both of us to carry on walking towards the calmer water. We passed a couple of blokes with shotgun's in arm who remarked that we must be mad as it was going to rain all day, not what my forecast had told me and I hoped that my version was the right one.
Leo had told me that prawn was the way to go on this place, fished close in against the reeds and topped up with a flick of maggot every now and then. That sounded good to me, it's always nice to break out a float for a change and in fact I'm starting to find it becoming a more regular thing and I'm enjoying it. Many of the platforms were submerged and I plumped for a spot with a bit of bank to one side giving me access to a substantial bed of reeds. I decided to give the centrepin it's second ever sight of water just because it needs using to be honest and coupled up with my 14ft carp float rod it was just a case of an under arm swing and the bait was positioned a foot or so out from the foliage, game on.
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| You know you are bored when you start taking pictures of a motionless float |
As Leo toddled off round to the far bank and sat directly in my line of sight behind the float sitting motionless in my margin so I couldn't help but see what looked suspiciously like a strike not long after he had cast out, and then another, and then I got a text saying that it was a bite a chuck, I was off round there like a shot.Leo had actually already surveyed the area for a prospective move earlier in the day but had discounted it due to the waves rolling in and the fact that the bank was virtually submerged but there was a strip of dry ground just big enough to accomodate me in a swim just a few yards from Leo. From the first cast my float was knocking and bobbing almost constantly, you wouldn't believe that the fish could be so concentrated in a small area would you but they were, it was like fishing a different lake. It was obvious that most of the bites were from smaller fish than we were after though Leo hooked a small'ish perch early on. I was missing quite a few bites and had the option of scaling down the tackle to try and hook them or sticking with the bigger bait for a perch, I stuck at the perch plan and increased my hook to a size 8 with a slightly larger piece of prawn attached. Within ten minutes I hooked a fish but would you believe it, it was a roach, talk about reverse thinking. It was a nice fish though and after both guessing wether or not it would make a pound we decided that it had to be weighed, the scales made it 14oz's which was bigger than I'd had while fishing for roach a few days earlier.
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| Desperate times! |
Thursday, 20 December 2012
Big river pike - opportunity knocks
With the rivers yet again bursting their banks and me struggling to think of anywhere I fancy fishing my thoughts turned to this time a couple of years back, the weather couldn't have been more different...
December the 21st 2010
My plans for the winter of 2010/11 centred around having a crack for perch and chub on a local river with the ultimate goal being a personal best of either, or indeed both. By early December we were well and truly in the deep freeze and as a self employed gardener work was virtually non existent which though far from ideal in wallet filling terms did give me the opportunity to spend some extra time on the bank all be it in the worst conditions i'd ever fished in. One day saw a temperature of minus 10.5 centigrade taken at 10am and it would have been impossible to fish without a good coating of glycerin on the rod rings on most days. Mashed bread was freezing in its bucket on every outing and the bare skin of my hand stuck to icy metal work on more than one occasion. Nevertheless the chub were obliging on most days and particularly from one swim that I had earmarked as my banker and where I would often end the day.
December the 20th had been tough. I started fishing at around 9am and covered several swims without any indication before dropping into the dead cert around early afternoon, an hour later I started to wonder if anything was going to happen at all when the tip flickered and dropped back as the lump of flake was picked up. This particular swim features a nearside bush right next to where I was sitting and I was in the habit of walking downstream for ten feet or so as soon as I hooked a fish in order to keep it out of the snag rather than drawing it towards the tangle of woodwork. The method was paying off this time as the chub was heading straight for cover and I would not have stood a chance of stopping it had I of stayed put. I locked the spool with my finger and gave it full side strain, seeing the line turn away from the tree right at the point of no return. Just as the fish turned there was an almighty swirl that certainly wasn't caused by any chub! There could only be one culprit and I kept the pressure on to haul the chub away from what was obviously a pike intent on lunch. At that point my carefully laid plan went to pot as I managed to snag the line around a small twig protruding from the bank right next to where my seat was positioned leaving the chub wallowing just below the surface on a short line. I quickly shoved the net under the fish and leant the rod on my chair while I made my way to the front of the swim to free it. Crouching at the waters edge while untangling the line I happened to glance to the side and there lying about three feet away from me lay a seriously impressve pike looking rather disgruntled that I had got my catch and he had lost his. The line was soon free from the twig and I weighed the chub at four and a quarter pounds before walking it well downstream out of harms way. The marginal shelf was clear and only eighteen inches deep allowing me to get a very good look at the pike which was still present on my return, a white mark on ithe lower jaw was clearly visible so there would be no mistake should be lucky enough to come across her again. I'm no great judge of pike in the water but surely that was close to twenty pounds.
Now I'm not one to miss an opportunity when it arises and I was almost tempted to go and fetch some pike tackle there and then but realistically by the time I had made the return trip the day would be nearly over. Tomorrow, however, I would without a doubt be back. That evening was spent in a mental state that only an angler could possibly comprehend, part excitement at what might be, partly anxiety at what might not. The swim was not an unpopular one and there was always the possibility that I wouldn't be the first on the bank, the reality was that i'd hardly seen another angler since the big freeze started but did that stop me worrying? Did it hell as like. The freezer held a few decent sized roach that I'd stocked up with for yet another pike campaign that didn't happen but that was twelve months previous, they were not exactly bursting with freshness and my confidence was dented further when I discussed the state of the bait with my mate Steve who shared my doubts. The general consensus on my poor old roach was not good and I had to cover all eventualities and so made a trip to the supermarket to stock up on some other bait options. The next job was a overhaul of my rarely used pike kit. The reels were re-spooled, traces made, and chub gear replaced by pike in the rucksack. By the time I'd finished that lot I was just about as hyped up as it was possible to be, it's a situation I've been in many times and it tends not to be all that enjoyable to be honest. By the time I've finished it's normally time for bed and my entire night has been absorbed in nothing but angling thoughts, quite often resulting in grief from the wife too!
A prior comitment dictated that I couldn't make the dawn start that I longed for and prolonged the anticipation even further. It was 10am before I reached the end of the long and at that time extremely treacherous, lane which was thankfully free of the cars of other anglers. I started to carefully pick my way across the arctic landscape but it wasn't until I got with ten yards of the swim that I could safely say that it wasn't occupied and a weight was lifted from my shoulders. Two rods were rigged up ready to go with my standard river rig of a simple float which is set either free drifting or overdepth by simply adjusting a stop knot, in this case I wanted the bait to rest in the lee of the near bank bush and so both were set to fish static. I dropped the first bait five yards or so downstream of the feature and on the near side of the crease with a nice fresh sardine attached, the other rod was to be the banker and was going right next to the bush, surely the pikes lair I thought. I started to pull another sardine from the bag and then changed my mind, twelve months old or not those roach did look prime pike fodder and had to be worth a go for a while at least. I plopped the rig out into 3 feet of water leaving the float a foot or two from the branches,doing a little bobbling dance as the current hit it. Right then, now what? I was almost immediately becoming impatient, pacing the bank behind the rods and wondering if I was wasting my time with that roach, especially as I'd put it in the prime spot. I considered if the pike had just been travelling through on the previous day and was now elsewhere, surely if I'd got it right and it was there then the take would come quickly? Or perhaps it had been succesful in snaring another chub since attacking mine and had no need to eat for some time.
Thirty minutes after positioning the baits I got my answer. The float next to the bush slowly sank under the surface by a few inches, it was still clearly in sight and no other movement was seen for a few seconds but I had the rod in hand ready as it then trundled off downstream steadily tightening the line to the rod tip as it went. When it had tightened almost fully I cranked a couple of turns of the reel and hauled the rod back hard only to have it pulled straight back down as the fish shot out into the current with an incredible burst of power that made the clutch howl. A minute or so of battle out in the fast water knocked a great deal of the fight out of the fish and I soon had it under the rod in the slack. The fight gave the impression of a big fish but I still hadn't seen it until it suddenly popped up almost under my feet and I at once spotted the small white mark on its jaw, "thats the one" I thought and the old ticker started doing overtime. The net was out ready and waiting and without too much more trouble I had her lying prone and eased her towards me only for the net to rise in the flow just as her head reached the drawstring, snagging the mesh on an exposed treble point. That was almost too much to bear, to lose it within such easy reach would have been unthinkable yet there was no way I could get her into the net as it was. I took my chance and gave the handle a quick flick and with great relief saw the mesh fall away from her jaw, luck really was on my side and I wasn't going to mess up twice, in she went.
I pulled out one of my banksticks and rammed it into the bank between net and spreader block to hold the fish safely in the water while I got myself organised, the camera was definately coming out for this lady, a couple of minutes resting time would have done her a favour too. When all was ready I lifted her out and knew that my estimate was correct, well over twenty pounds. The Avons spun around to 22lb 2oz's making it a personal best and I really couldn't have wished to have done it in more satisfying circumstances. In essence a very easy capture with little effort on my part but as Hannibal always said, I love it when a plan comes together.
There's another twist to this tale. A couple of months later Steve was fishing several hundred yards away and had a hooked chub attacked by a pike. Three days later he went back to fish for it. I was driving up the M1 on the way to the river when I got the phone call, twenty minutes later I was photographing the fish for him and yes you guessed it! That pike has an appetite for chub!
December the 21st 2010
My plans for the winter of 2010/11 centred around having a crack for perch and chub on a local river with the ultimate goal being a personal best of either, or indeed both. By early December we were well and truly in the deep freeze and as a self employed gardener work was virtually non existent which though far from ideal in wallet filling terms did give me the opportunity to spend some extra time on the bank all be it in the worst conditions i'd ever fished in. One day saw a temperature of minus 10.5 centigrade taken at 10am and it would have been impossible to fish without a good coating of glycerin on the rod rings on most days. Mashed bread was freezing in its bucket on every outing and the bare skin of my hand stuck to icy metal work on more than one occasion. Nevertheless the chub were obliging on most days and particularly from one swim that I had earmarked as my banker and where I would often end the day.
December the 20th had been tough. I started fishing at around 9am and covered several swims without any indication before dropping into the dead cert around early afternoon, an hour later I started to wonder if anything was going to happen at all when the tip flickered and dropped back as the lump of flake was picked up. This particular swim features a nearside bush right next to where I was sitting and I was in the habit of walking downstream for ten feet or so as soon as I hooked a fish in order to keep it out of the snag rather than drawing it towards the tangle of woodwork. The method was paying off this time as the chub was heading straight for cover and I would not have stood a chance of stopping it had I of stayed put. I locked the spool with my finger and gave it full side strain, seeing the line turn away from the tree right at the point of no return. Just as the fish turned there was an almighty swirl that certainly wasn't caused by any chub! There could only be one culprit and I kept the pressure on to haul the chub away from what was obviously a pike intent on lunch. At that point my carefully laid plan went to pot as I managed to snag the line around a small twig protruding from the bank right next to where my seat was positioned leaving the chub wallowing just below the surface on a short line. I quickly shoved the net under the fish and leant the rod on my chair while I made my way to the front of the swim to free it. Crouching at the waters edge while untangling the line I happened to glance to the side and there lying about three feet away from me lay a seriously impressve pike looking rather disgruntled that I had got my catch and he had lost his. The line was soon free from the twig and I weighed the chub at four and a quarter pounds before walking it well downstream out of harms way. The marginal shelf was clear and only eighteen inches deep allowing me to get a very good look at the pike which was still present on my return, a white mark on ithe lower jaw was clearly visible so there would be no mistake should be lucky enough to come across her again. I'm no great judge of pike in the water but surely that was close to twenty pounds.
Now I'm not one to miss an opportunity when it arises and I was almost tempted to go and fetch some pike tackle there and then but realistically by the time I had made the return trip the day would be nearly over. Tomorrow, however, I would without a doubt be back. That evening was spent in a mental state that only an angler could possibly comprehend, part excitement at what might be, partly anxiety at what might not. The swim was not an unpopular one and there was always the possibility that I wouldn't be the first on the bank, the reality was that i'd hardly seen another angler since the big freeze started but did that stop me worrying? Did it hell as like. The freezer held a few decent sized roach that I'd stocked up with for yet another pike campaign that didn't happen but that was twelve months previous, they were not exactly bursting with freshness and my confidence was dented further when I discussed the state of the bait with my mate Steve who shared my doubts. The general consensus on my poor old roach was not good and I had to cover all eventualities and so made a trip to the supermarket to stock up on some other bait options. The next job was a overhaul of my rarely used pike kit. The reels were re-spooled, traces made, and chub gear replaced by pike in the rucksack. By the time I'd finished that lot I was just about as hyped up as it was possible to be, it's a situation I've been in many times and it tends not to be all that enjoyable to be honest. By the time I've finished it's normally time for bed and my entire night has been absorbed in nothing but angling thoughts, quite often resulting in grief from the wife too!
A prior comitment dictated that I couldn't make the dawn start that I longed for and prolonged the anticipation even further. It was 10am before I reached the end of the long and at that time extremely treacherous, lane which was thankfully free of the cars of other anglers. I started to carefully pick my way across the arctic landscape but it wasn't until I got with ten yards of the swim that I could safely say that it wasn't occupied and a weight was lifted from my shoulders. Two rods were rigged up ready to go with my standard river rig of a simple float which is set either free drifting or overdepth by simply adjusting a stop knot, in this case I wanted the bait to rest in the lee of the near bank bush and so both were set to fish static. I dropped the first bait five yards or so downstream of the feature and on the near side of the crease with a nice fresh sardine attached, the other rod was to be the banker and was going right next to the bush, surely the pikes lair I thought. I started to pull another sardine from the bag and then changed my mind, twelve months old or not those roach did look prime pike fodder and had to be worth a go for a while at least. I plopped the rig out into 3 feet of water leaving the float a foot or two from the branches,doing a little bobbling dance as the current hit it. Right then, now what? I was almost immediately becoming impatient, pacing the bank behind the rods and wondering if I was wasting my time with that roach, especially as I'd put it in the prime spot. I considered if the pike had just been travelling through on the previous day and was now elsewhere, surely if I'd got it right and it was there then the take would come quickly? Or perhaps it had been succesful in snaring another chub since attacking mine and had no need to eat for some time.
Thirty minutes after positioning the baits I got my answer. The float next to the bush slowly sank under the surface by a few inches, it was still clearly in sight and no other movement was seen for a few seconds but I had the rod in hand ready as it then trundled off downstream steadily tightening the line to the rod tip as it went. When it had tightened almost fully I cranked a couple of turns of the reel and hauled the rod back hard only to have it pulled straight back down as the fish shot out into the current with an incredible burst of power that made the clutch howl. A minute or so of battle out in the fast water knocked a great deal of the fight out of the fish and I soon had it under the rod in the slack. The fight gave the impression of a big fish but I still hadn't seen it until it suddenly popped up almost under my feet and I at once spotted the small white mark on its jaw, "thats the one" I thought and the old ticker started doing overtime. The net was out ready and waiting and without too much more trouble I had her lying prone and eased her towards me only for the net to rise in the flow just as her head reached the drawstring, snagging the mesh on an exposed treble point. That was almost too much to bear, to lose it within such easy reach would have been unthinkable yet there was no way I could get her into the net as it was. I took my chance and gave the handle a quick flick and with great relief saw the mesh fall away from her jaw, luck really was on my side and I wasn't going to mess up twice, in she went.
I pulled out one of my banksticks and rammed it into the bank between net and spreader block to hold the fish safely in the water while I got myself organised, the camera was definately coming out for this lady, a couple of minutes resting time would have done her a favour too. When all was ready I lifted her out and knew that my estimate was correct, well over twenty pounds. The Avons spun around to 22lb 2oz's making it a personal best and I really couldn't have wished to have done it in more satisfying circumstances. In essence a very easy capture with little effort on my part but as Hannibal always said, I love it when a plan comes together.
There's another twist to this tale. A couple of months later Steve was fishing several hundred yards away and had a hooked chub attacked by a pike. Three days later he went back to fish for it. I was driving up the M1 on the way to the river when I got the phone call, twenty minutes later I was photographing the fish for him and yes you guessed it! That pike has an appetite for chub!
Friday, 14 December 2012
River Soar chub fishing - using my loaf
Although bitterley cold the weather had at last become dry, for a while at least, and the rivers were finally starting to get close to normal levels. Tuesday had seen me head for the River Derwent after the perch but a blank was the result, the water was holding a bit more colour than I would have liked and still a little bit too much flow, the stripeys would have to wait.
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| The two rod perch trick, watching tip and float at the same time, efficient but fruitless this time |
The forecast for Wednesday was bright and sunny with temperatures possibly just creeping above freezing point at best but I've never known that to stop the chub feeding and that's what I fancied fishing for. The Soar was to be the venue and I am usually confident of a bite or two on my local river. I did consider picking up a few pints of maggots but I wasn't sure just how much water was on, it wouldn't take much to make maggot fishing very difficult and so I settled on a bucket of mashed bread with another loaf for hookbaits, a lump of cheese paste went into the bag as a reserve.
I arrived at the swim I fancied at about ten am and after putting my kit down threw in three good hand fulls of mash straight away, once that job was done I could take my time setting up knowing that the swim was building. I had bought one of the Marco Cortesi centrepins a couple of years ago, more because it was a bargain than anything else to be honest but it certainly does seem to be a cracking reel for the money. The daft thing is that it had yet to see water and I thought it really was time that I had a go with it, there was no wind to speak of so that wouldn't cause me any grief so why not. I rigged up a 2 1/2 swan shot chubber with the 4lb mainline straight through to a size 6. A few practice casts were always going to be needed but a few ended up being about twenty and no matter what I tried I wasn't getting the range required to send the float along the far bank tree's, there was no point in fishing short of the cover so the pin came off and on went a fixed spool, the pin can wait until I fish a bit closer in.
With the trusty Carbomatic now in place and a dose of Mucilin applied to keep the line floating I was ready to go. The first few trots down were ignored but I gradually increased the depth until the float vanished after a few yards on one cast and a fish was on. I don't float fish anywhere near as much as I should and I tend to forget how much better the fight is without a feeder or weight on the line, the chub wasn't much more than 3lb's in weight but was good sport nevertheless.
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| A little un for starters |
The next cast produced another fish proving that they were hanging near the bottom and wouldn't come up even for a tasty lump of breadflake., This one was a bit bigger and after returning it well upstream I introduced more mashed bread and sat down for twenty minutes to rest the swim. A few more casts gave me two more chub with the best 4 1/2lb's odd and again the swim was rested after being baited. I watched a fox work it's way across the frozen field, scratching away for anything it could find no doubt in the harsh conditions and it occurred to me that being caught isn't actually too bad a price to pay for a fish when it has had a good feed thrown in for it's trouble.
The fish were now definately starting to become a bit wary after four of their mates had gone missing and it took a good half dozen runs through apiece to bag the next two, the last one coming to a cast as far over as I dare let the float run. I knew I was starting to push my luck at this stage particularly as I had to limit the session to four hours but I gave it another rest and managed to scrape out one more small chub before deciding to move upstream for the last hour to fish the tip.
My favourite banker swim on the stretch was the obvious place to visit but I knew that it might not be a viable prospect with the extra water on and I was proved right. The chub in that swim hang right over the far side in a big back eddy, the main flow pushes through the inside and even with the rod as high as possible it wouldn't be possible to hold the line out of the turbulence resulting in the rig being constantly dragged out of place. There was one more possibility and I heaved the rucksack back on and trudged on upstream.
That swim was looking more like it, a few surface boils were visible on the near side of the crease but I was sure that I could get away with an medium sized open ended feeder. First cast resulted in a great big drop back bite and a good old scrap under the rod tip before a fish of maybe 4 1/4lb's was in the net.
It took a while to get the next indication but eventually I landed chub number nine before stopping for ten minutes to chat to a bloke walking the field who told me about the otter he had seen in his swim at the weekend. That is getting to be a very familiar tale this season and I wonder how much longer we have left before we notice the barbel population start to suffer. I had said that I was going to hang out for fish number ten but time was running short and I ended up bottling out on that one, nevertheless I'd had a cracking days sport when not many would have bothered to have left the house.
Monday, 19 November 2012
River Derwent perch fishing - the grindstone
After my last perch success on ther Trent I mentioned that I fancied a change and so started to fish the Derbyshire Derwent. The river has treated me quite well in the past but it seemed that it was payback time.
Week commencing the 29th of October I managed to fit in four sessions, on each occasion the time actually fishing was two or three hours at the most. As darkness proper now falls before rush hour my travelling time was extended to an hour or so in total, much of which was spent crawling along in traffic, the round trip being in the region of thirty or so miles I guess.The sum total for all of that agravation and effort was one perch of about 8oz's, you don't have to be mad to be an angler but it certainly helps.
The next week saw me back again on the Monday and I went straight into what has been a reliable peg for me in the past, three hours of intense concentration later and I had upset that track record, another blank.
I returned once again on Wednesday the 7th and walked further downstream. I knew the swim had pedigree but had never personally fished it, it certainly looked the part and it blatantly obvious as to how it should be approached. With a tree to either side of me and a good nine feet of water off the rod top I was soon lowering the bait dropper straight down into the margin to bait a float spot., A feeder was fished to the downstream tree and the two rod rests were positioned so as to allow me to watch float and tip at the same time. The weather man had predicted a bright clear day but just for a change, cough cough, was wrong, and for once error was in my favour as the light levels were really low long before dusk, I really did fancy my chances.
I was in a world of my own, day dreaming about something or other, when I thought I saw the float move, and then I definately saw it move. The chubber was slowly moving out into the river and then it bobbed twice before sinking into the depths, a very perchy looking bite. A strike was met with solid resistance for for a seconds or two I was very pleased with myself, then whatever was on the other end powered off towards mid river and my heart sank, if this was a perch it was in double figures. No it was another worm snaffling pike, good sport on the float rod but not really conducive to building a perch swim. Eventually I managed to get it into the net, not a bad fish at approaching ten pounds I would think, and relocated it a few swims along the bank. Full darkness was just about upon me, I could just make out the shape of the float sitting in the reflection of a fluffy cloud when it disppeared and I struck into a perch, no grand finale to this story though I'm afraid as once again it was a little fella.
The traffic was particularly bad on the way home and I sat there thinking that I really was ready for a break from all of this. In fact I had been thinking similiar thoughts for a couple of weeks or so and mentioned it in a previous blog entry but as I am prone to do I pushed myself on for a while longer in the hope of a result, sometimes I don't know when to stop.
Back at home I sorted out something to eat and did a bit of tidying up, rammed bits of tackle into any available space as usual and was about ready to put my feet up at half past eight when I remembered that I was out of coffee and decided to nip out and get a jar. There are three supermarkets within less than a mile of my house and for some reason I decided to go to the one furthest away which involves driving past the other two. I passed Tesco and was a second or two from the entrance to Asda when a car pulled out straight in front of me and inevitably my van ploughed straight into it. Why didn't I go to Tesco?
The recovery vehicle finally got me and the van home, all of a few hundred yards away, at eleven pm. The van was looking considerably worse for wear, more than likely a write off, it seemed that like it or lump it I would be getting that break.
Week commencing the 29th of October I managed to fit in four sessions, on each occasion the time actually fishing was two or three hours at the most. As darkness proper now falls before rush hour my travelling time was extended to an hour or so in total, much of which was spent crawling along in traffic, the round trip being in the region of thirty or so miles I guess.The sum total for all of that agravation and effort was one perch of about 8oz's, you don't have to be mad to be an angler but it certainly helps.
The next week saw me back again on the Monday and I went straight into what has been a reliable peg for me in the past, three hours of intense concentration later and I had upset that track record, another blank.
I returned once again on Wednesday the 7th and walked further downstream. I knew the swim had pedigree but had never personally fished it, it certainly looked the part and it blatantly obvious as to how it should be approached. With a tree to either side of me and a good nine feet of water off the rod top I was soon lowering the bait dropper straight down into the margin to bait a float spot., A feeder was fished to the downstream tree and the two rod rests were positioned so as to allow me to watch float and tip at the same time. The weather man had predicted a bright clear day but just for a change, cough cough, was wrong, and for once error was in my favour as the light levels were really low long before dusk, I really did fancy my chances.
I was in a world of my own, day dreaming about something or other, when I thought I saw the float move, and then I definately saw it move. The chubber was slowly moving out into the river and then it bobbed twice before sinking into the depths, a very perchy looking bite. A strike was met with solid resistance for for a seconds or two I was very pleased with myself, then whatever was on the other end powered off towards mid river and my heart sank, if this was a perch it was in double figures. No it was another worm snaffling pike, good sport on the float rod but not really conducive to building a perch swim. Eventually I managed to get it into the net, not a bad fish at approaching ten pounds I would think, and relocated it a few swims along the bank. Full darkness was just about upon me, I could just make out the shape of the float sitting in the reflection of a fluffy cloud when it disppeared and I struck into a perch, no grand finale to this story though I'm afraid as once again it was a little fella.
The traffic was particularly bad on the way home and I sat there thinking that I really was ready for a break from all of this. In fact I had been thinking similiar thoughts for a couple of weeks or so and mentioned it in a previous blog entry but as I am prone to do I pushed myself on for a while longer in the hope of a result, sometimes I don't know when to stop.
Back at home I sorted out something to eat and did a bit of tidying up, rammed bits of tackle into any available space as usual and was about ready to put my feet up at half past eight when I remembered that I was out of coffee and decided to nip out and get a jar. There are three supermarkets within less than a mile of my house and for some reason I decided to go to the one furthest away which involves driving past the other two. I passed Tesco and was a second or two from the entrance to Asda when a car pulled out straight in front of me and inevitably my van ploughed straight into it. Why didn't I go to Tesco?
The recovery vehicle finally got me and the van home, all of a few hundred yards away, at eleven pm. The van was looking considerably worse for wear, more than likely a write off, it seemed that like it or lump it I would be getting that break.
Thursday, 15 November 2012
Mad cows and an Englishman
Something a bit different this time. Phil is a friend from long ago and has his own blog which is a very worthwhile read, have a look here. A while back he asked me if I would like to contribute to a piece he had in mind about a mutual friend and I agreed, here's that piece.
Phil starts the story.
It’s a shame isn’t it how our imagination diminishes as we age? We have a collection of children’s rides at work. To me they are just bits of painted fibre glass. To the children that come in they are so much more than that. “Look Mum, it’s Hello Kitty!” They shout as they clamber all over the kitty car. The parents often shake their heads while they begrudgingly put a pound in which sets the ride off in a gentle rocking motion. The children hug the cat and steer enthusiastically with the fake steering wheel while prodding the various pretend buttons. The parents and I look on. It is as if we have been evicted from imagination land without warning or notice.
We had a shop at the end of my road. I can remember it being a plain old hardware shop in the early eighties. The man in their wore a long brown coat just like any Hardware shop owner worth his salt did in those days. Almost nothing in there was of any interest to a six-year-old. Everything was drab and functional. I would go in from time to time with my mum or my dad to get various bits and bobs. A couple of years passed and the shop closed. Maybe the old man retired or the emergence of DIY superstores finished his business off. Whatever, things were about to change in the small shop at the end of my road.
The new owner was a man called Rod. I can remember going in there when he first took over. Basically Rod had split the small shop in two. At the front was all the best-selling hardware stuff, pet foods and gardening equipment. Yawn. As we got closer to the counter my eight year old imagination went into overdrive. Wow. There were bags of brightly coloured powders, rows and rows of mysterious little packets, a cabinet with shiny mechanical things in, some glossy poles with small metal loops hanging from them and best of all, a big rack of stick like things of all shapes and sizes with iridescent tops. The little stick things all had names below them – Chubber, Zoomer, Wind Beater and Waggler (my favourite). For those not in the know a waggler is simply a straight piece of peacock quill or balsa wood or even clear plastic with the top painted a flourescent colour, usually orange. My eight year old eyes could look at all those floats for ages. Rod, rather ironically was a purveyor of fishing tackle.
I have three older brothers and also my parents were keen on canal boat holidays. Fishing opportunities were endless. I can remember getting ten pounds for my birthday and running down to Rod's shop to buy some kit before a two-week summer holiday afloat. Happy times. All too soon though my brothers went off to university. Couple this with the rise of the package holiday my fishing opportunities began to diminish. My Dad wasn’t really interested and none of my mates were either. In fact things were getting tough at school. Being bullied is no fun and has a strange effect in many ways. For example I ended up trying to be nice to people who were horrible to me and horrible to people who were trying to be nice. As a result my pool of friends wasn’t exactly overflowing anyway.
As time went on I began to become friends with the regulars in the shop. There was one man in particular though that seemed to be there more than most. He was a short man, maybe 5ft 8. He had a moustache and a motorbike and always seemed a bit scruffy. This may have been because he was either just going or just coming back from a muddy riverbank or lakeside. He had a nickname which he could never quite describe how he got. For the purposes of this story I shall use he real name – Simon.
Simon didn’t have a job. To all intents and purposes he was a full-time fisherman. This coupled with his lack of social etiquette didn’t endear him to many people. “He’s a parasite,” is how one man described him. It turns out Simon was mentally ill and as a result claimed disability benefit. A series of failed relationships and his reading of the Nostradamus predictions had left him with a poorly brain. He had previously been sectioned and resided for some time in a mental hospital. To the casual observer he was perfectly fit for work. In reality he wasn’t, not even close. Anyway we became friends. Unlike some of my peers at school he didn’t care what clothes I wore or how hard I was or if I had looked at him funny. We just talked fishing with mutual enthusiasm. When I was about thirteen or fourteen he came around my house. I needed to ask my mum if I could go fishing with this strange man. They met and he got my mum’s stringent approval. And so it was. We were fishing buddies.
I didn’t really catch a lot of fish till I started going fishing with Simon. He was an expert and taught me all sorts of knots and techniques and subtleties you just can’t learn from a book. We went down to the river, the canal or more often, to the local reservoir. It was like a little inclusive club up there and I soon became a regular guest. Most of my summer holidays would be spent at the reservoir and usually with Simon close by. We became firm friends and when I was old enough we would socialize together too.
Simon used to live in a block of flats with his girlfriend Mags. In a tragic twist of fate Mags was an alcoholic. Sometimes I would be welcomed into the flat, other times I could hear her going nuts and was told to ‘piss off’ by her. Simon used to joke about the meter reader getting more than he bargained for one day when he opened the cupboard door and it rained empty sherry bottles on him. They were always splitting up and getting back together. Simon would return to his elderly parents around the corner for a few days and then go back to endure some more drunken abuse. I think you call it a vicious cycle.
I was out with Simon once and we ended up trying our luck on a fairly remote section of our local river. We settled quite far apart and after a fruitless couple of hours I decided to see how he was faring further downstream. As I approached I could tell something was wrong. Simon was laying on the riverbank behind all his gear. He was struggling to breathe. “Help me, I’m dying!” Simon mumbled. Having never seen someone in such a state I panicked and sprinted back to my motorbike. I quickly rode to the nearest phone box and called one of my mates that had a car. Why I didn’t call an ambulance I don’t know. Probably because I couldn’t really describe where Simon was. Anyway my mate soon came and we rushed Simon to the nearest hospital. Have a guess what was wrong with him? That’s right. Nothing. It was my first experience of a panic attack.
I can remember the passing of Simons dad. He didn’t seem particularly upset. Simon was a great believer in the afterlife. He swore to me that the day after his dad passed he could smell flowers in the hallway, a sign from his dad that he was ok. While I didn’t believe a word of it I also didn’t find it weird. It was just Simon being himself. Of course the fishing was the main thing that binded us together and we went whenever we could. He was a great lover of our fishy friends but his regard for other wildlife wasn’t always so great. He was fishing once and a duck kept stealing his bait. After the usual techniques for getting rid of it were exhausted Simon deliberately caught it. He took the duck in his arms and removed the tiny hook from the corner of his beak. The duck was unharmed but in Simons’ eyes still a potential nuisance. He removed all his gear from his big fibreglass seatbox and replaced it with the duck. He dropped down the lid and sat back down to carry on fishing. “I could hear the duck bumping around,” he later told me. After ten minutes of solitary confinement in the dark he released his feathery prisoner. It didn’t bother him again.
When I was eighteen I swapped my motorbike for a car and we started going further afield. One particular place we went was very picturesque and well off the beaten track. What made it strange was a family the lived by the river that we were fishing. They lived in a makeshift teepee. I’m not making this up. A thirty something couple and their two children resided there. They also had a big cart horse that grazed in the small field. Simon used to take apples to feed it and it’s owners always gave us a cheery wave. They lived there for months before one day, they were gone. Simon and I used to love it down there. I’m very much hoping my friend and fellow blogger Rob will tell you a tale about Simon when he returned from one of his trips here.
Simon and Mags eventually split up for good and we started going out more. One particular night Simon and I along with our friend Ian were quietly playing pool in a town pub. It was a dangerous place but we were naive. It had doormen but they were just for show. Neither they or Ian or I could save Simon from the kicking he got for absolutely no reason what so ever. It could have been anyone and probably was every weekend in that place. It’s shut now. In yet another bitter twist the council housed Simon just up the road from this pub. He had to walk by it to go and see his mum. He refused and always went the long way around. The mental effects far outlasted the physical ones.
I wasn’t Simon’s only fishing buddy. Steve used to go fishing with him a lot too. They had drifted apart as Steve got older. “He got too competitive,” Simon would say. A similar thing happened with me. I can’t put my finger on one particular thing but we started going our separate ways. It was long after the pub incident and I can only put it down to the fact that Simon got enjoyment from teaching people. He had almost nothing in the world apart from his wonderful knowledge of how to catch fish. He was always helping people. I remember one lad he used to go fishing who had cancer. He had one of his legs amputated and Simon was with him all the way, taking him fishing and sitting behind him, coaching him. I’m hoping Rob can remember this lad.
In my early twenties I had little contact with Simon. I always took an interest in what he was catching though and would find out through the grapevine what he had been up to. He was still fishing avidly and had a new girlfriend. In the year 2000 I moved away. I hadn’t been here long when I got news that Simon had been taking ill again. He was back in a mental institution.
Summer 2012
I was back in town for a few days. When I used to go to the reservoir with Simon it cost just over two pounds to fish there. It cost me nearly nine pounds to go back. It was a glorious day and the venue was fairly busy. I parked up and had a quick scan around. The tower was always one of our favourite areas so I headed around there straight away. The banks were steeper than I remember but I got sort of half comfy and set up my gear. As I cast out and waited for my first bite a pair of ducks splashed about in the water tower and my mind began to wander. I was like this for most of the afternoon.
I had let Rob know that I was there via facebook and was rather hoping he would turn up. I had this really odd feeling of familiarity with the place but not the people there. I yearned to see a face from the glory days. I imagined Simon was fishing a few yards away. I could picture him hunched over his rod, ready to strike and moaning about me casting into his swim. Steve knew I was there too but I knew he wouldn’t show. I carried on, half fishing, half daydreaming. I stayed longer than I normally would have. Like not wanting to leave the warm confines of a quilt on cold morning. The place was comforting to me. So many memories.
After a few hours I packed up and trudged back to the car. The sun was lowering but it was a warm evening. I loaded up my gear and went to open my door. Something stopped me. I looked around and saw a bench by the lakeside just near the car park. I recognised it. I went over and read the plaque. It was placed by the lake in memory of one Andrew Bird. Simon used to take him fishing too. He died at just thirty years old. Cystic Fibrosis. I sat on the bench for a good quarter of an hour just taking in the atmosphere and it suddenly struck me. I’ll go and see Simon. It’s been too long I thought to myself and he wasn’t all that far away.
Woodhouse is a small village but I hadn’t been there for a long time. I’ll know it when I see though I thought. I drove into Woodhouse and nearly out the other side when I recognised the gates opposite the small stone church and parked my car up. The gates were substantial but opened easily. A line of trees bordered the lawned area. Big, imposing trees. Tall and elegant they were perfectly still in the still summer air. The sun rays were filtered by the thick vegetation and the whole area was lit with a hazy glow. I looked to my right and followed the path. I tracked close to the stone wall to an over grown area right in the top corner. It was darker here and I knew I was close.
I crouched down and read the inscription on the big granite headstone. SIMON HARVEY COOKE. This threw me. Was his middle name Harvey? I didn’t really know. Confused, my eyes followed the writing down. I read the rest of the inscription and still couldn’t be a hundred percent sure.
Then I saw it. Poking out of the grave vase. A clear plastic waggler with a bright orange top.
Simon Harvey Cooke died in July 2001. I miss him.
Afterword
This was my twentieth blog entry and as such I wanted to do something special. I only started writing after reading other peoples blogs they advertised on facebook. Rob’s was one of them and he has very kindly added a few words to the story. Take it away Rob…
Like Phil my first sight of the legend that was Guff, calling his Simon is alien to me, would have been in Roddy’s, officially known as Soar Valley Tackle (the shop at the end of Phil’s road). Most people called it Roddy’s and to Guff Rod was the “fat balding maggot riddler.”. Guff had this way with words you see and loved to dish out nicknames. He fished I would say five days a week on average and would invariably be in the shop at least once a day, usually for quite some time, propping up the counter talking fishing and ripping the mickey out of anyone he could. I think Rod had a kind of resigned attitude to him, you see a lot of people didn’t like him, he didn’t work and was seen as sponging off those that did. His mental illness wasn’t generally apparent, without a doubt he came across as mad as a bag of snakes but in a daft way. The thing is that Guff actually had a heart of gold and would always help out anyone who came into the shop especially youngsters like the young lad with cancer that Phil mentioned. I would imagine that this was frowned upon and seen with suspicion by some parents but there was certainly nothing untoward going on and if Guff took someone “under his wing” as was his favourite expression they learnt a hell of a lot, he really was an exceptional angler.
As a regular at the reservoir I encountered Guff very regularly, he fished up there quite a lot and sat talking a lot more. His angling was based on a match fishing kind of mentality adapted to suit and he used to knock out carp either float fishing sweetcorn down the edge or floater fishing using a Traverse X feeder rod while surrounded by the matching rod type carpers who couldn’t come close to his results. A few of us learnt from this and followed suit and to be honest I think I learnt more from him in a few years than I ever have from a single person since, I still use a link ledger rig that he showed me to this day.
Lingering was Guff’s speciality, you would see his blue Yamaha RD350 roll into the car park and round he would come, sitting down on his bike helmet and nattering away for hours, I can’t deny for too long at times. He had a terrible habit of eating your bait and thought nothing of grabbing a handful of whatever he could from the bait bucket. Hemp was a favourite and apparently tasted nutty. Tiger nuts, maple pea’s and chick pea’s were all scoffed down and sweetcorn had no chance. It got to the stage where we would hide our bait when we saw him coming as he would eat so much of it.
As a person he wasn’t what you would call tidy but as an angler he was meticulous, he had his rigs and methods absolutely right and remembered everything, he could reel off a list of what he, or anyone else for that matter, had caught years before. He detested liars in the sport and always said that you have to have a good memory to be a good liar and he was absolutely right, time and time again over the years I have seen people trip themselves up on that one. His dedication to angling was relentless, often he would be seen perched on his seatbox without an umbrella in the pouring rain snatching small roach on his beloved Sigma wand, in fact one day he was so engrossed in his fishing that his box gradually moved on the steeply sloped bank and tipped him into the reservoir!
Although he always had a go for bigger fish Guff’s background was pleasure fishing, though he always took it seriously, over time though he leant more towards the specimen side and a 2lb roach was always his dream. He had spent quite a bit of time fishing the River Wreake over the years and I knew that he thought he was close to reaching his goal. One dark autumn night I was alone on the reservoir sitting in my bivvy. I was set up out of sight of the water down a reverse slope and all of a sudden I started to hear shouting. Being alone and quite young I started to panic and couldn’t work out what was going on, the shouting got closer and as I poked my head up above the bank I could make out two figures approaching silhouetted against the skyline, oh dear this wasn’t looking good. Then I started to make out what the shouting was, “I’m pretty, I’m f’ing prettyyyyyy!” repeated over and over, and then I twigged that it was Guff. He was a big boxing fan and was mimicking Muhammad Ali! It turned out that he had achieved his goal and caught a 2 pounder. On the way home he made his mate Ian call in at the reservoir so that he could tell announce it to the heavens.
A five pound chub was another target on Guff’s wish list and he spent time chasing one on the Trent at Thrumpton, it seems an almost ridiculous target nowadays but back then they weren’t common. He discovered that steak was the killer bait and caught countless fish on it but not quite up to the mark. His plan came to an abrupt halt however when Mad Cow disease hit the news, he was terrified of catching the disease from the steak and stopped using it immediately. He did catch his target fish but I believe that it was on a piece of fish.
As I got a bit older I started to fish other waters and didn’t see so much of Guff, he still fished just as much but whenever I saw him he seemed to have more troubles. He complained of illnesses that somehow didn’t seem quite right to me but he thought they were serious and when Andy Bird died he found it very difficult. The two of them had fallen out after Guff said that Andy was selfish. Andy had lived with a death sentence since birth with his cystic fibrosis so I guess that a little selfishness was the least that he was entitled to but Guff found it difficult to comprehend.
The first five months of 2001 I spent abroad, I travelled from Australia into Indonesia, Singapore Malaysia and Thailand. England was a very distant place to me and didn’t occupy too much of my time. When I spoke to family back home I heard of the disaster that was foot and mouth disease and told that I had picked my time well as I wouldn’t have been able to fish. The countryside was a no-go area for months.
A couple of weeks after my return I learnt that Guff was gone, killed by an overdose alone in his flat some time while I was away. It wasn’t the first time that he had attempted to kill himself but I never saw him in a state where I thought it possible. A while later I was flicking through the local paper when something caught my eye, it was the inquest into Guff’s death. I started to read the report with some sadness and then came to a statement that his old mum Sybil had made, it was the Foot and Mouth disease that had killed her son because he couldn’t go fishing. What Mad Cow disease couldn’t do Foot and Mouth had, I couldn’t help but have a little smile at that, Guff would have appreciated the irony.
Last year a collection of classic old floats came my way, sticks by Pete Warren and John Allerton amongst them, I think Guff would appreciate one of those- they were always his favourites. I might even pop one next to that waggler the next time I find myself near Woodhouse.
Phil starts the story.
It’s a shame isn’t it how our imagination diminishes as we age? We have a collection of children’s rides at work. To me they are just bits of painted fibre glass. To the children that come in they are so much more than that. “Look Mum, it’s Hello Kitty!” They shout as they clamber all over the kitty car. The parents often shake their heads while they begrudgingly put a pound in which sets the ride off in a gentle rocking motion. The children hug the cat and steer enthusiastically with the fake steering wheel while prodding the various pretend buttons. The parents and I look on. It is as if we have been evicted from imagination land without warning or notice.
We had a shop at the end of my road. I can remember it being a plain old hardware shop in the early eighties. The man in their wore a long brown coat just like any Hardware shop owner worth his salt did in those days. Almost nothing in there was of any interest to a six-year-old. Everything was drab and functional. I would go in from time to time with my mum or my dad to get various bits and bobs. A couple of years passed and the shop closed. Maybe the old man retired or the emergence of DIY superstores finished his business off. Whatever, things were about to change in the small shop at the end of my road.
The new owner was a man called Rod. I can remember going in there when he first took over. Basically Rod had split the small shop in two. At the front was all the best-selling hardware stuff, pet foods and gardening equipment. Yawn. As we got closer to the counter my eight year old imagination went into overdrive. Wow. There were bags of brightly coloured powders, rows and rows of mysterious little packets, a cabinet with shiny mechanical things in, some glossy poles with small metal loops hanging from them and best of all, a big rack of stick like things of all shapes and sizes with iridescent tops. The little stick things all had names below them – Chubber, Zoomer, Wind Beater and Waggler (my favourite). For those not in the know a waggler is simply a straight piece of peacock quill or balsa wood or even clear plastic with the top painted a flourescent colour, usually orange. My eight year old eyes could look at all those floats for ages. Rod, rather ironically was a purveyor of fishing tackle.
I have three older brothers and also my parents were keen on canal boat holidays. Fishing opportunities were endless. I can remember getting ten pounds for my birthday and running down to Rod's shop to buy some kit before a two-week summer holiday afloat. Happy times. All too soon though my brothers went off to university. Couple this with the rise of the package holiday my fishing opportunities began to diminish. My Dad wasn’t really interested and none of my mates were either. In fact things were getting tough at school. Being bullied is no fun and has a strange effect in many ways. For example I ended up trying to be nice to people who were horrible to me and horrible to people who were trying to be nice. As a result my pool of friends wasn’t exactly overflowing anyway.
As time went on I began to become friends with the regulars in the shop. There was one man in particular though that seemed to be there more than most. He was a short man, maybe 5ft 8. He had a moustache and a motorbike and always seemed a bit scruffy. This may have been because he was either just going or just coming back from a muddy riverbank or lakeside. He had a nickname which he could never quite describe how he got. For the purposes of this story I shall use he real name – Simon.
Simon didn’t have a job. To all intents and purposes he was a full-time fisherman. This coupled with his lack of social etiquette didn’t endear him to many people. “He’s a parasite,” is how one man described him. It turns out Simon was mentally ill and as a result claimed disability benefit. A series of failed relationships and his reading of the Nostradamus predictions had left him with a poorly brain. He had previously been sectioned and resided for some time in a mental hospital. To the casual observer he was perfectly fit for work. In reality he wasn’t, not even close. Anyway we became friends. Unlike some of my peers at school he didn’t care what clothes I wore or how hard I was or if I had looked at him funny. We just talked fishing with mutual enthusiasm. When I was about thirteen or fourteen he came around my house. I needed to ask my mum if I could go fishing with this strange man. They met and he got my mum’s stringent approval. And so it was. We were fishing buddies.
I didn’t really catch a lot of fish till I started going fishing with Simon. He was an expert and taught me all sorts of knots and techniques and subtleties you just can’t learn from a book. We went down to the river, the canal or more often, to the local reservoir. It was like a little inclusive club up there and I soon became a regular guest. Most of my summer holidays would be spent at the reservoir and usually with Simon close by. We became firm friends and when I was old enough we would socialize together too.
Simon used to live in a block of flats with his girlfriend Mags. In a tragic twist of fate Mags was an alcoholic. Sometimes I would be welcomed into the flat, other times I could hear her going nuts and was told to ‘piss off’ by her. Simon used to joke about the meter reader getting more than he bargained for one day when he opened the cupboard door and it rained empty sherry bottles on him. They were always splitting up and getting back together. Simon would return to his elderly parents around the corner for a few days and then go back to endure some more drunken abuse. I think you call it a vicious cycle.
I was out with Simon once and we ended up trying our luck on a fairly remote section of our local river. We settled quite far apart and after a fruitless couple of hours I decided to see how he was faring further downstream. As I approached I could tell something was wrong. Simon was laying on the riverbank behind all his gear. He was struggling to breathe. “Help me, I’m dying!” Simon mumbled. Having never seen someone in such a state I panicked and sprinted back to my motorbike. I quickly rode to the nearest phone box and called one of my mates that had a car. Why I didn’t call an ambulance I don’t know. Probably because I couldn’t really describe where Simon was. Anyway my mate soon came and we rushed Simon to the nearest hospital. Have a guess what was wrong with him? That’s right. Nothing. It was my first experience of a panic attack.
I can remember the passing of Simons dad. He didn’t seem particularly upset. Simon was a great believer in the afterlife. He swore to me that the day after his dad passed he could smell flowers in the hallway, a sign from his dad that he was ok. While I didn’t believe a word of it I also didn’t find it weird. It was just Simon being himself. Of course the fishing was the main thing that binded us together and we went whenever we could. He was a great lover of our fishy friends but his regard for other wildlife wasn’t always so great. He was fishing once and a duck kept stealing his bait. After the usual techniques for getting rid of it were exhausted Simon deliberately caught it. He took the duck in his arms and removed the tiny hook from the corner of his beak. The duck was unharmed but in Simons’ eyes still a potential nuisance. He removed all his gear from his big fibreglass seatbox and replaced it with the duck. He dropped down the lid and sat back down to carry on fishing. “I could hear the duck bumping around,” he later told me. After ten minutes of solitary confinement in the dark he released his feathery prisoner. It didn’t bother him again.
When I was eighteen I swapped my motorbike for a car and we started going further afield. One particular place we went was very picturesque and well off the beaten track. What made it strange was a family the lived by the river that we were fishing. They lived in a makeshift teepee. I’m not making this up. A thirty something couple and their two children resided there. They also had a big cart horse that grazed in the small field. Simon used to take apples to feed it and it’s owners always gave us a cheery wave. They lived there for months before one day, they were gone. Simon and I used to love it down there. I’m very much hoping my friend and fellow blogger Rob will tell you a tale about Simon when he returned from one of his trips here.
Simon and Mags eventually split up for good and we started going out more. One particular night Simon and I along with our friend Ian were quietly playing pool in a town pub. It was a dangerous place but we were naive. It had doormen but they were just for show. Neither they or Ian or I could save Simon from the kicking he got for absolutely no reason what so ever. It could have been anyone and probably was every weekend in that place. It’s shut now. In yet another bitter twist the council housed Simon just up the road from this pub. He had to walk by it to go and see his mum. He refused and always went the long way around. The mental effects far outlasted the physical ones.
I wasn’t Simon’s only fishing buddy. Steve used to go fishing with him a lot too. They had drifted apart as Steve got older. “He got too competitive,” Simon would say. A similar thing happened with me. I can’t put my finger on one particular thing but we started going our separate ways. It was long after the pub incident and I can only put it down to the fact that Simon got enjoyment from teaching people. He had almost nothing in the world apart from his wonderful knowledge of how to catch fish. He was always helping people. I remember one lad he used to go fishing who had cancer. He had one of his legs amputated and Simon was with him all the way, taking him fishing and sitting behind him, coaching him. I’m hoping Rob can remember this lad.
In my early twenties I had little contact with Simon. I always took an interest in what he was catching though and would find out through the grapevine what he had been up to. He was still fishing avidly and had a new girlfriend. In the year 2000 I moved away. I hadn’t been here long when I got news that Simon had been taking ill again. He was back in a mental institution.
Summer 2012
I was back in town for a few days. When I used to go to the reservoir with Simon it cost just over two pounds to fish there. It cost me nearly nine pounds to go back. It was a glorious day and the venue was fairly busy. I parked up and had a quick scan around. The tower was always one of our favourite areas so I headed around there straight away. The banks were steeper than I remember but I got sort of half comfy and set up my gear. As I cast out and waited for my first bite a pair of ducks splashed about in the water tower and my mind began to wander. I was like this for most of the afternoon.
I had let Rob know that I was there via facebook and was rather hoping he would turn up. I had this really odd feeling of familiarity with the place but not the people there. I yearned to see a face from the glory days. I imagined Simon was fishing a few yards away. I could picture him hunched over his rod, ready to strike and moaning about me casting into his swim. Steve knew I was there too but I knew he wouldn’t show. I carried on, half fishing, half daydreaming. I stayed longer than I normally would have. Like not wanting to leave the warm confines of a quilt on cold morning. The place was comforting to me. So many memories.
After a few hours I packed up and trudged back to the car. The sun was lowering but it was a warm evening. I loaded up my gear and went to open my door. Something stopped me. I looked around and saw a bench by the lakeside just near the car park. I recognised it. I went over and read the plaque. It was placed by the lake in memory of one Andrew Bird. Simon used to take him fishing too. He died at just thirty years old. Cystic Fibrosis. I sat on the bench for a good quarter of an hour just taking in the atmosphere and it suddenly struck me. I’ll go and see Simon. It’s been too long I thought to myself and he wasn’t all that far away.
Woodhouse is a small village but I hadn’t been there for a long time. I’ll know it when I see though I thought. I drove into Woodhouse and nearly out the other side when I recognised the gates opposite the small stone church and parked my car up. The gates were substantial but opened easily. A line of trees bordered the lawned area. Big, imposing trees. Tall and elegant they were perfectly still in the still summer air. The sun rays were filtered by the thick vegetation and the whole area was lit with a hazy glow. I looked to my right and followed the path. I tracked close to the stone wall to an over grown area right in the top corner. It was darker here and I knew I was close.
I crouched down and read the inscription on the big granite headstone. SIMON HARVEY COOKE. This threw me. Was his middle name Harvey? I didn’t really know. Confused, my eyes followed the writing down. I read the rest of the inscription and still couldn’t be a hundred percent sure.
Then I saw it. Poking out of the grave vase. A clear plastic waggler with a bright orange top.
Simon Harvey Cooke died in July 2001. I miss him.
Afterword
This was my twentieth blog entry and as such I wanted to do something special. I only started writing after reading other peoples blogs they advertised on facebook. Rob’s was one of them and he has very kindly added a few words to the story. Take it away Rob…
Like Phil my first sight of the legend that was Guff, calling his Simon is alien to me, would have been in Roddy’s, officially known as Soar Valley Tackle (the shop at the end of Phil’s road). Most people called it Roddy’s and to Guff Rod was the “fat balding maggot riddler.”. Guff had this way with words you see and loved to dish out nicknames. He fished I would say five days a week on average and would invariably be in the shop at least once a day, usually for quite some time, propping up the counter talking fishing and ripping the mickey out of anyone he could. I think Rod had a kind of resigned attitude to him, you see a lot of people didn’t like him, he didn’t work and was seen as sponging off those that did. His mental illness wasn’t generally apparent, without a doubt he came across as mad as a bag of snakes but in a daft way. The thing is that Guff actually had a heart of gold and would always help out anyone who came into the shop especially youngsters like the young lad with cancer that Phil mentioned. I would imagine that this was frowned upon and seen with suspicion by some parents but there was certainly nothing untoward going on and if Guff took someone “under his wing” as was his favourite expression they learnt a hell of a lot, he really was an exceptional angler.
As a regular at the reservoir I encountered Guff very regularly, he fished up there quite a lot and sat talking a lot more. His angling was based on a match fishing kind of mentality adapted to suit and he used to knock out carp either float fishing sweetcorn down the edge or floater fishing using a Traverse X feeder rod while surrounded by the matching rod type carpers who couldn’t come close to his results. A few of us learnt from this and followed suit and to be honest I think I learnt more from him in a few years than I ever have from a single person since, I still use a link ledger rig that he showed me to this day.
Lingering was Guff’s speciality, you would see his blue Yamaha RD350 roll into the car park and round he would come, sitting down on his bike helmet and nattering away for hours, I can’t deny for too long at times. He had a terrible habit of eating your bait and thought nothing of grabbing a handful of whatever he could from the bait bucket. Hemp was a favourite and apparently tasted nutty. Tiger nuts, maple pea’s and chick pea’s were all scoffed down and sweetcorn had no chance. It got to the stage where we would hide our bait when we saw him coming as he would eat so much of it.
As a person he wasn’t what you would call tidy but as an angler he was meticulous, he had his rigs and methods absolutely right and remembered everything, he could reel off a list of what he, or anyone else for that matter, had caught years before. He detested liars in the sport and always said that you have to have a good memory to be a good liar and he was absolutely right, time and time again over the years I have seen people trip themselves up on that one. His dedication to angling was relentless, often he would be seen perched on his seatbox without an umbrella in the pouring rain snatching small roach on his beloved Sigma wand, in fact one day he was so engrossed in his fishing that his box gradually moved on the steeply sloped bank and tipped him into the reservoir!
Although he always had a go for bigger fish Guff’s background was pleasure fishing, though he always took it seriously, over time though he leant more towards the specimen side and a 2lb roach was always his dream. He had spent quite a bit of time fishing the River Wreake over the years and I knew that he thought he was close to reaching his goal. One dark autumn night I was alone on the reservoir sitting in my bivvy. I was set up out of sight of the water down a reverse slope and all of a sudden I started to hear shouting. Being alone and quite young I started to panic and couldn’t work out what was going on, the shouting got closer and as I poked my head up above the bank I could make out two figures approaching silhouetted against the skyline, oh dear this wasn’t looking good. Then I started to make out what the shouting was, “I’m pretty, I’m f’ing prettyyyyyy!” repeated over and over, and then I twigged that it was Guff. He was a big boxing fan and was mimicking Muhammad Ali! It turned out that he had achieved his goal and caught a 2 pounder. On the way home he made his mate Ian call in at the reservoir so that he could tell announce it to the heavens.
A five pound chub was another target on Guff’s wish list and he spent time chasing one on the Trent at Thrumpton, it seems an almost ridiculous target nowadays but back then they weren’t common. He discovered that steak was the killer bait and caught countless fish on it but not quite up to the mark. His plan came to an abrupt halt however when Mad Cow disease hit the news, he was terrified of catching the disease from the steak and stopped using it immediately. He did catch his target fish but I believe that it was on a piece of fish.
As I got a bit older I started to fish other waters and didn’t see so much of Guff, he still fished just as much but whenever I saw him he seemed to have more troubles. He complained of illnesses that somehow didn’t seem quite right to me but he thought they were serious and when Andy Bird died he found it very difficult. The two of them had fallen out after Guff said that Andy was selfish. Andy had lived with a death sentence since birth with his cystic fibrosis so I guess that a little selfishness was the least that he was entitled to but Guff found it difficult to comprehend.
The first five months of 2001 I spent abroad, I travelled from Australia into Indonesia, Singapore Malaysia and Thailand. England was a very distant place to me and didn’t occupy too much of my time. When I spoke to family back home I heard of the disaster that was foot and mouth disease and told that I had picked my time well as I wouldn’t have been able to fish. The countryside was a no-go area for months.
A couple of weeks after my return I learnt that Guff was gone, killed by an overdose alone in his flat some time while I was away. It wasn’t the first time that he had attempted to kill himself but I never saw him in a state where I thought it possible. A while later I was flicking through the local paper when something caught my eye, it was the inquest into Guff’s death. I started to read the report with some sadness and then came to a statement that his old mum Sybil had made, it was the Foot and Mouth disease that had killed her son because he couldn’t go fishing. What Mad Cow disease couldn’t do Foot and Mouth had, I couldn’t help but have a little smile at that, Guff would have appreciated the irony.
Last year a collection of classic old floats came my way, sticks by Pete Warren and John Allerton amongst them, I think Guff would appreciate one of those- they were always his favourites. I might even pop one next to that waggler the next time I find myself near Woodhouse.
Sunday, 4 November 2012
Back on the big perch hunt
Tuesday the 23rd of October
I was Trent bound again by mid afternoon after seeing more than enough of work for one day, we are well into the period when the gardens never really become dry and scrambling about on hands and knees in the muck and damp takes some motivation I can tell you, motivation that seems to diminish each year.
Ten minutes of dodging cowpats found me back in the area of my previous success but I had my eye on a new swim this time, once again an near bank tree gave plenty of cover and was hopefully home to some stripey sargeants. The feeder fished on the tip rod was going to be the approach but there was room to sneak out a second rod to be fished on the bobbin and Delkim too.
I whiled away a couple of biteless hours by recasting the feeders on a regular basis and swearing at the cormorants that seemed to be almost constantly in transit up and down the Trent valley, sticking two wings up at us anglers down below. I was just contemplating how many fish the birds had bagged from the river during the day compared to the anglers present when I was shaken from my depression by a bite on the alarm rod. It was only a little fish of not much more than a pound but it was one that the black plague had missed, as I felt compelled to inform the next passing pterodactyl.
I had not long slipped the fish back and settled down when the tip gave a couple of taps, almost always the preliminary to a good positive pull but it didn't happen. I left the bait static for another five minutes before recasting, no signs of damage were visible on the lobworm hookbait so it could have been a small fish. A couple of minutes later another couple of taps on the tip and then whack, round it went and up went the rod in my right hand. Have you ever noticed that when you are really in tune with a method that you act on auto pilot when a bite comes and quite often can't remember what happened before you struck? I've taken friends new to quiver tipping fishing before and tried to explain to them when to strike and when not to and I find it incredibly difficult it just becomes an in built instinct. That instinct had obviously worked its magic anyway as I was attached to something doing it's best to get stuck in a dead reedbed in front of me. A bit of pressure from directly above did the trick and up popped a lovely big perch that I soon scooped up. It turned out in fact to be the biggest perch that I had caught for some years at 3lb 8oz's and was in great condition.
.JPG)
That was my last bite of the session but who cares eh!
Thursday the 25th of October
I felt like a change of scenery after spending so much time on the Trent recently and so headed to the river Derwent after work, the river has good perch form and has previously produced a number of fish over 3lb's for me. Having joined a new club this season I now have access to maybe eight or ten miles of this lovely river, any section of which could throw up the stamp of fish that I am after.
I picked a swim that allowed me to lay on with a float close in which was a nice change after the methods I had been using on the big river but within minutes I found a problem, leaves. Leaves drifting, leaves on the bottom, newly fallen leaves, partly rotten leaves, but leaves everywhere, loads and loads of the flaming things that made fishing the spot a nightmare. I persevered for half an hour, kept reducing depth until I was just tripping the bottom and recast every few minutes but the underwater scene must have resembled a kaleidoscope of russet and gold, it was impossible.
I moved upstream by a couple of swims and started again, this area wasn't suitable for float fishing so I concentrated on the tip rod after depositing a good helping of maggot and worm into position via the dropper first. Two hours later one half hearted pull was all the sign of fish that I had seen and my times was up.
This perching lark is getting quite wearing now, I do find it quite full on constantly rushing to get to the river just to snatch a couple of hours bankside when the round trip takes the best part of an hour. When I'm there I am always very aware that the clock is ticking and that I have to keep on the ball to maximise my chances, relaxing it isn't but the rewards are there. I need to step back a little and take a deep breath, tell myself to slow down a bit and to remember that this should be fun.
I was Trent bound again by mid afternoon after seeing more than enough of work for one day, we are well into the period when the gardens never really become dry and scrambling about on hands and knees in the muck and damp takes some motivation I can tell you, motivation that seems to diminish each year.
Ten minutes of dodging cowpats found me back in the area of my previous success but I had my eye on a new swim this time, once again an near bank tree gave plenty of cover and was hopefully home to some stripey sargeants. The feeder fished on the tip rod was going to be the approach but there was room to sneak out a second rod to be fished on the bobbin and Delkim too.
I whiled away a couple of biteless hours by recasting the feeders on a regular basis and swearing at the cormorants that seemed to be almost constantly in transit up and down the Trent valley, sticking two wings up at us anglers down below. I was just contemplating how many fish the birds had bagged from the river during the day compared to the anglers present when I was shaken from my depression by a bite on the alarm rod. It was only a little fish of not much more than a pound but it was one that the black plague had missed, as I felt compelled to inform the next passing pterodactyl.
I had not long slipped the fish back and settled down when the tip gave a couple of taps, almost always the preliminary to a good positive pull but it didn't happen. I left the bait static for another five minutes before recasting, no signs of damage were visible on the lobworm hookbait so it could have been a small fish. A couple of minutes later another couple of taps on the tip and then whack, round it went and up went the rod in my right hand. Have you ever noticed that when you are really in tune with a method that you act on auto pilot when a bite comes and quite often can't remember what happened before you struck? I've taken friends new to quiver tipping fishing before and tried to explain to them when to strike and when not to and I find it incredibly difficult it just becomes an in built instinct. That instinct had obviously worked its magic anyway as I was attached to something doing it's best to get stuck in a dead reedbed in front of me. A bit of pressure from directly above did the trick and up popped a lovely big perch that I soon scooped up. It turned out in fact to be the biggest perch that I had caught for some years at 3lb 8oz's and was in great condition.
.JPG)
That was my last bite of the session but who cares eh!
Thursday the 25th of October
I felt like a change of scenery after spending so much time on the Trent recently and so headed to the river Derwent after work, the river has good perch form and has previously produced a number of fish over 3lb's for me. Having joined a new club this season I now have access to maybe eight or ten miles of this lovely river, any section of which could throw up the stamp of fish that I am after.
I picked a swim that allowed me to lay on with a float close in which was a nice change after the methods I had been using on the big river but within minutes I found a problem, leaves. Leaves drifting, leaves on the bottom, newly fallen leaves, partly rotten leaves, but leaves everywhere, loads and loads of the flaming things that made fishing the spot a nightmare. I persevered for half an hour, kept reducing depth until I was just tripping the bottom and recast every few minutes but the underwater scene must have resembled a kaleidoscope of russet and gold, it was impossible.
I moved upstream by a couple of swims and started again, this area wasn't suitable for float fishing so I concentrated on the tip rod after depositing a good helping of maggot and worm into position via the dropper first. Two hours later one half hearted pull was all the sign of fish that I had seen and my times was up.
This perching lark is getting quite wearing now, I do find it quite full on constantly rushing to get to the river just to snatch a couple of hours bankside when the round trip takes the best part of an hour. When I'm there I am always very aware that the clock is ticking and that I have to keep on the ball to maximise my chances, relaxing it isn't but the rewards are there. I need to step back a little and take a deep breath, tell myself to slow down a bit and to remember that this should be fun.
Monday, 18 June 2012
Angling from the start - take kids fishing
Saturday the 2nd 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.
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!
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.
 | ||
| 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"!
Wednesday, 22 February 2012
River Dove - trotting for grayling
Tuesday the 21st of February
For a few years now I have said that I ought to have a go at catching a grayling but I've said the same about zander and catfish and I've yet to get around to those species either. The sight of a couple of stunning fish in Ian Firkins's blog Ordinary Angler put the thought in my mind once again and then quite by coincidence a friend, Patrick, contacted me at the weekend to ask if I fancied a trip to the Dove with grayling in mind, yes please!
Having never fished the River Dove before made the prospect even more interesting, I've walked various stretches in the past when out with the wife and dog but had never really considered fishing it and had never been anywhere near the area we headed for. Parking at the downstream end of the length we started walking up the river eyeing up likely areas on the way with the intention of starting at the top and roving back towards the carpark, what we didn't actually realise was that the river was in a big horseshoe and we could have cut across the field and saved some footwork but never mind!
Last winter I bought myself a centrepin, nothing flash just one of the Marco Cortesi ones that were bandied about in the papers at a bargain price and that actually look incredibly good for the money. Looking good was as far as it got and it had sat in my tackle room for over twelve months without even seeing a spool of line, this seemed to be an ideal opportunity to give it a try so I had spooled it up with line the previous evening. The trouble was it was quite windy and on the walk along the river it occured to me that I might be pushing my luck choosing today as my first ever attempt at pin fishing, so I bottled it and out came the trusty closed face Abu. The river was certainly pacey and I plumped for a 4AAA avon float to allow a bulk of shot to get the bait straight down to where I wanted it to be and also to give me a bit of a helping hand with line control in the blustery conditions.
The first swim I tried proved to be impossible to fish, it looked the part but the wind just wouldn't allow me to keep the float on line and it was constantly dragged into the near margin and so I was soon off downstream to catch up with Pat who it turned out had suffered the same problem and so we both headed off in search of somewhere more suitable. We both plumped for the inside of a big sweeping bend, me on the upstream and Pat maybe fifty yard further along but by the nature of the curve virtually behind me. I had some quite turbulent water but a good long run through was possible and I thought it had potential. After three runs through I heard a tractor approaching and looking over my shoulder saw it was dragging a bowser, it turned directly between the two of us and I just knew what was coming next, yep, a nice dose of liquid crap spraying out directly behind me and directly upwind, christ did it stink, we just looked across at each other and laughed. I moved pretty quickly and got on the upwind side of the crap trail, I found a nice looking run coming off a small piece of protruding bank and started flicking a few maggots in before sending the float down after them. On the fourth trot through the float sank and I was into a fish but was it what I'd come for, it wasn't very big whatever it was and when I saw it in the water I thought it was a little trout but on swinging it to hand it was indeed a grayling, job done. I persevered in that spot for a while longer but it seemed that I had timed it right on arrival as the gusting wind made most runs through totally useless, the float being dragged off line time after time which was no good whatsoever, in hindsight a waggler would have been a better option and I had actually thought I would pack a few, but forgot.
I decided at that point that my swim choice was now going to revolve around finding somewhere where the wind would allow me to present a bait effectively and I would then try to build the spot up by staying put for a while. I left Patrick to try a run just below a weir that looked good and first tried an area not much further downstream, two casts proved that one to be impossible so I carried on for quite a distance until I came to another area where I was on the inside of a bend and which was relatively sheltered, perfect. Swinging the float out by a rod length or so put it on an ideal line and I started flicking out a dozen or so maggots a cast in the hope of getting the swim going. Not long after starting I was into another small grayling which was a good sign, keep the bait goin in, keep it consistent and hopefully more would follow. Another half dozen trots and the float disappeared again and this felt a better fish, no monster but a proper sized one that just made it to the pound.
Patrick came wandering down and we stood chatting as I hit into another bite and this one started to pull back a bit, thoughts of trout came to mind but then we saw the fish turn and it was a grayling and a good one too, a lovely looking fish weighing in at 1lb 14oz which left me really chuffed as I hadn't expected anything of that size, they really are very impressive creatures with that great big sail of a dorsal fin.
I kept at it in that swim and ended up with nine fish in total by the end of the day, the swim died after a while and I couldn't buy a bite for love nor money, we did carry on downstream on the lookout for other areas but nowhere else looked appealing and so we decided to call it a day and head for home. I really enjoyed myself and can see a day or two's grayling fishing becoming a regular thing in future winter, now about those zander and cats...
For a few years now I have said that I ought to have a go at catching a grayling but I've said the same about zander and catfish and I've yet to get around to those species either. The sight of a couple of stunning fish in Ian Firkins's blog Ordinary Angler put the thought in my mind once again and then quite by coincidence a friend, Patrick, contacted me at the weekend to ask if I fancied a trip to the Dove with grayling in mind, yes please!
Having never fished the River Dove before made the prospect even more interesting, I've walked various stretches in the past when out with the wife and dog but had never really considered fishing it and had never been anywhere near the area we headed for. Parking at the downstream end of the length we started walking up the river eyeing up likely areas on the way with the intention of starting at the top and roving back towards the carpark, what we didn't actually realise was that the river was in a big horseshoe and we could have cut across the field and saved some footwork but never mind!
Last winter I bought myself a centrepin, nothing flash just one of the Marco Cortesi ones that were bandied about in the papers at a bargain price and that actually look incredibly good for the money. Looking good was as far as it got and it had sat in my tackle room for over twelve months without even seeing a spool of line, this seemed to be an ideal opportunity to give it a try so I had spooled it up with line the previous evening. The trouble was it was quite windy and on the walk along the river it occured to me that I might be pushing my luck choosing today as my first ever attempt at pin fishing, so I bottled it and out came the trusty closed face Abu. The river was certainly pacey and I plumped for a 4AAA avon float to allow a bulk of shot to get the bait straight down to where I wanted it to be and also to give me a bit of a helping hand with line control in the blustery conditions.
The first swim I tried proved to be impossible to fish, it looked the part but the wind just wouldn't allow me to keep the float on line and it was constantly dragged into the near margin and so I was soon off downstream to catch up with Pat who it turned out had suffered the same problem and so we both headed off in search of somewhere more suitable. We both plumped for the inside of a big sweeping bend, me on the upstream and Pat maybe fifty yard further along but by the nature of the curve virtually behind me. I had some quite turbulent water but a good long run through was possible and I thought it had potential. After three runs through I heard a tractor approaching and looking over my shoulder saw it was dragging a bowser, it turned directly between the two of us and I just knew what was coming next, yep, a nice dose of liquid crap spraying out directly behind me and directly upwind, christ did it stink, we just looked across at each other and laughed. I moved pretty quickly and got on the upwind side of the crap trail, I found a nice looking run coming off a small piece of protruding bank and started flicking a few maggots in before sending the float down after them. On the fourth trot through the float sank and I was into a fish but was it what I'd come for, it wasn't very big whatever it was and when I saw it in the water I thought it was a little trout but on swinging it to hand it was indeed a grayling, job done. I persevered in that spot for a while longer but it seemed that I had timed it right on arrival as the gusting wind made most runs through totally useless, the float being dragged off line time after time which was no good whatsoever, in hindsight a waggler would have been a better option and I had actually thought I would pack a few, but forgot.
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| My first grayling |
I decided at that point that my swim choice was now going to revolve around finding somewhere where the wind would allow me to present a bait effectively and I would then try to build the spot up by staying put for a while. I left Patrick to try a run just below a weir that looked good and first tried an area not much further downstream, two casts proved that one to be impossible so I carried on for quite a distance until I came to another area where I was on the inside of a bend and which was relatively sheltered, perfect. Swinging the float out by a rod length or so put it on an ideal line and I started flicking out a dozen or so maggots a cast in the hope of getting the swim going. Not long after starting I was into another small grayling which was a good sign, keep the bait goin in, keep it consistent and hopefully more would follow. Another half dozen trots and the float disappeared again and this felt a better fish, no monster but a proper sized one that just made it to the pound.
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| Getting bigger |
Patrick came wandering down and we stood chatting as I hit into another bite and this one started to pull back a bit, thoughts of trout came to mind but then we saw the fish turn and it was a grayling and a good one too, a lovely looking fish weighing in at 1lb 14oz which left me really chuffed as I hadn't expected anything of that size, they really are very impressive creatures with that great big sail of a dorsal fin.
I kept at it in that swim and ended up with nine fish in total by the end of the day, the swim died after a while and I couldn't buy a bite for love nor money, we did carry on downstream on the lookout for other areas but nowhere else looked appealing and so we decided to call it a day and head for home. I really enjoyed myself and can see a day or two's grayling fishing becoming a regular thing in future winter, now about those zander and cats...
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