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| X marks the spot |
Showing posts with label reservoir. Show all posts
Showing posts with label reservoir. Show all posts
Tuesday, 30 December 2014
Underwater barbel and the realities of big bream fishing
Sunday, 17 February 2013
Chew valley reservoir pike fishing - The only way is Essox
Just after New Year the phone lines were opened at Woodford lodge to accept bookings for pike fishing at Chew reservoir. This is the first year that this system has been used and it was obvious that those telephones were going to be on fire with hundreds of hopeful anglers attempting to book some fishing. There has been plenty of criticism of the old system where you had to email or write in to request dates which were dished out lottery style but the new system must surely have caused all involved more headaches and I think ideally somewhere between the two would make a happy medium. I was lucky in that I got through on the phone quickly and as my plans for the rest of the river season were already laid out I just booked a couple of bank days in November and left it at that. Later in the day I got a call from Phil Smith asking if I fancied a two day boat trip in February. I was in two minds to be honest, I've done very little boat angling but I do know that a day out on the water in the worst that February can throw at you wouldn't be pleasant especially as my back was still a tad iffy after the motor accident late last year. However you've got to be in it to win it so after checking with 'er indoors that it wouldn't clash with our holiday plans I rang Phil back and the trip was on.
Looking at the weather forecast a few days before the trip one thing stuck out like a sore thumb, wind and plenty of it. Cold weather we would just have to cope with but wind could well mean no boats were allowed onto the water and I didn't much fancy a 150 mile drive to be told that we couldn't fish, what I didn't realise is that if the boats didn't go out you were welcome to bank fish. Phil rang the lodge the day before we were due on and their assessment was that it was looking unlikely boat wise and if we wanted to bank fish that was our choice so I packed the van with the extra kit needed and set the alarm for far too early before turning in for the night. As I have come to expect I was awake before the alarm went off, in fact if I was awake much earlier I wouldn't have been to sleep at all. I had considered not bothering and driving straight down the evening before and kipping in the van but thought better of it, some sleep is better than none when you've got a long drive in front of you.
The rods were cast out into the half light of dawn, both with a sardine attached that I had collected on a mad dash around the supermarkets of Leicestershire the previous afternoon. I fell lucky at the fourth shop, on any other day the flaming things would have been falling out of the doors but no, when I'm in a rush they'll be like gold dust. The wind was howling over our shoulders with a vengeance and neither of us expected the boats to be seen so we were happy that we'd made the right move. I stuck my shelter up and sat back for a long wait only to get disturbed not long afterwards by the sight of Phil picking up one of his rods and striking into a fish. That was a brilliant sign so early in the day, a definite confidence booster in the shape of a snapper just shy of 16lb's.
Not long after we'd sorted that fish out and returned it I was standing behind my rods when the right hand drop off hit the ground and line very slowly started to slip from the spool. I picked the rod up and let the line tighten to the tip before whacking into the fish. From the fight it didn't feel a bad fish but I soon had it close in over the shallow water where Phil scooped it up with the net. First impressions when peering into the mesh were that it was going to be twenty pounds plus but I hadn't allowed for just how deep these trout water fish are for their length and once it was on the mat it was obviously going to be well into the mid twenties. In fact it went 26lb 4oz on the scales and was the biggest pike I'd had by a few pounds, you can't get a better start to a session than that.
I was chuffed to bits at that result and would quite happily have blanked for the rest of the two days without complaint but fate threw me a very lucky hand less than two hours later when the same rod showed another take. I was a bit fortunate as I bent into the fish a bit further back into the strike than I would have liked but the hooks were set nevertheless and this pike was a lot livelier than the first. Almost straight away the fish shot off to the right at speed and I had to be quick off the mark to stop the line catching in a small bush submerged in front of the swim before legging it into Phil's swim where we had to do the old under and over dance to untangle my line from his. I ended up in a small gap to the right of the swim and I thought I'd pretty much got the fish under control as it came in under the rod tip but it then did an about turn and shot off towards the far bank turbo style, throwing half of its length clear of the water as it did so, I won't forget that for a while, absolutely brilliant! That little trick must have worn the pike out and I'm not sure that my ticker could cope with a repeat performance anyway so it's probably a good thing that it was soon in the net. After seeing the previous fish I now had a good idea of what I was looking at and the reading of 27lb 10oz on the scales wasn't as much a surprise as the whole experience was mind blowing, talk about a bit of luck eh, stunned probably best sums it up. I certainly can't claim that there was much skill on my part involved in the captures but that's fishing isn't it, as someone said to me last week sometimes most of the hard work is in actually making the effort to get to the water and he was right. A small jack came to the rods a little while later but that was the end of the day's action, you won't hear me complaining though.
Not long after I had returned the 27lb fish news started to filter through about the very sad passing of Terry Lampard. The huge number of tributes posted on the internet speaks volumes, most of us didn't know or even meet the man but his impact on the angling world was huge, a truly great angler. It certainly put the day's events into perspective, no matter what you catch at the end of the day it's just a bit of fishing isn't it.
Though we had a boat booked and paid for it didn't take much thinking about to decide to stick with the bank fishing for another day and a phone call to the lodge confirmed that it would be ok to do so. I spent my first night kipping in my new luxury fishing accommodation i.e. the van, and despite having my doubts I slept like a baby which was probably something to do with only having three hours the night before. Dropping back into the same swims we again had the baits out for first light and settled back to see what the day would bring. There was a very sharp frost that lasted well into mid morning and though the wind had dropped to just a light breeze it was still from the north and was far from warm. Phil had a take early on that produced a fish of just under twenty pounds and the trout were much more active with a good few twitches and pulls that resulted in mashed up baits but other than that the day was quiet. I did have a fish pull the line from the clip right on last knockings but the strike met fresh air and I suspect that another trout was responsible, like I said to Phil if that had been my only decent indication of the trip I would have been left wondering what might have been.
Apologies if I have subconciously pinched the "only way is essox" bit from someone, it came to me in a state of sleep deprivation and made me chuckle so if you thought of it first, nice one!
Looking at the weather forecast a few days before the trip one thing stuck out like a sore thumb, wind and plenty of it. Cold weather we would just have to cope with but wind could well mean no boats were allowed onto the water and I didn't much fancy a 150 mile drive to be told that we couldn't fish, what I didn't realise is that if the boats didn't go out you were welcome to bank fish. Phil rang the lodge the day before we were due on and their assessment was that it was looking unlikely boat wise and if we wanted to bank fish that was our choice so I packed the van with the extra kit needed and set the alarm for far too early before turning in for the night. As I have come to expect I was awake before the alarm went off, in fact if I was awake much earlier I wouldn't have been to sleep at all. I had considered not bothering and driving straight down the evening before and kipping in the van but thought better of it, some sleep is better than none when you've got a long drive in front of you.
The rods were cast out into the half light of dawn, both with a sardine attached that I had collected on a mad dash around the supermarkets of Leicestershire the previous afternoon. I fell lucky at the fourth shop, on any other day the flaming things would have been falling out of the doors but no, when I'm in a rush they'll be like gold dust. The wind was howling over our shoulders with a vengeance and neither of us expected the boats to be seen so we were happy that we'd made the right move. I stuck my shelter up and sat back for a long wait only to get disturbed not long afterwards by the sight of Phil picking up one of his rods and striking into a fish. That was a brilliant sign so early in the day, a definite confidence booster in the shape of a snapper just shy of 16lb's.
Not long after we'd sorted that fish out and returned it I was standing behind my rods when the right hand drop off hit the ground and line very slowly started to slip from the spool. I picked the rod up and let the line tighten to the tip before whacking into the fish. From the fight it didn't feel a bad fish but I soon had it close in over the shallow water where Phil scooped it up with the net. First impressions when peering into the mesh were that it was going to be twenty pounds plus but I hadn't allowed for just how deep these trout water fish are for their length and once it was on the mat it was obviously going to be well into the mid twenties. In fact it went 26lb 4oz on the scales and was the biggest pike I'd had by a few pounds, you can't get a better start to a session than that.
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| 26lb 4oz |
I was chuffed to bits at that result and would quite happily have blanked for the rest of the two days without complaint but fate threw me a very lucky hand less than two hours later when the same rod showed another take. I was a bit fortunate as I bent into the fish a bit further back into the strike than I would have liked but the hooks were set nevertheless and this pike was a lot livelier than the first. Almost straight away the fish shot off to the right at speed and I had to be quick off the mark to stop the line catching in a small bush submerged in front of the swim before legging it into Phil's swim where we had to do the old under and over dance to untangle my line from his. I ended up in a small gap to the right of the swim and I thought I'd pretty much got the fish under control as it came in under the rod tip but it then did an about turn and shot off towards the far bank turbo style, throwing half of its length clear of the water as it did so, I won't forget that for a while, absolutely brilliant! That little trick must have worn the pike out and I'm not sure that my ticker could cope with a repeat performance anyway so it's probably a good thing that it was soon in the net. After seeing the previous fish I now had a good idea of what I was looking at and the reading of 27lb 10oz on the scales wasn't as much a surprise as the whole experience was mind blowing, talk about a bit of luck eh, stunned probably best sums it up. I certainly can't claim that there was much skill on my part involved in the captures but that's fishing isn't it, as someone said to me last week sometimes most of the hard work is in actually making the effort to get to the water and he was right. A small jack came to the rods a little while later but that was the end of the day's action, you won't hear me complaining though.
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| 27lb 10oz |
Not long after I had returned the 27lb fish news started to filter through about the very sad passing of Terry Lampard. The huge number of tributes posted on the internet speaks volumes, most of us didn't know or even meet the man but his impact on the angling world was huge, a truly great angler. It certainly put the day's events into perspective, no matter what you catch at the end of the day it's just a bit of fishing isn't it.
Though we had a boat booked and paid for it didn't take much thinking about to decide to stick with the bank fishing for another day and a phone call to the lodge confirmed that it would be ok to do so. I spent my first night kipping in my new luxury fishing accommodation i.e. the van, and despite having my doubts I slept like a baby which was probably something to do with only having three hours the night before. Dropping back into the same swims we again had the baits out for first light and settled back to see what the day would bring. There was a very sharp frost that lasted well into mid morning and though the wind had dropped to just a light breeze it was still from the north and was far from warm. Phil had a take early on that produced a fish of just under twenty pounds and the trout were much more active with a good few twitches and pulls that resulted in mashed up baits but other than that the day was quiet. I did have a fish pull the line from the clip right on last knockings but the strike met fresh air and I suspect that another trout was responsible, like I said to Phil if that had been my only decent indication of the trip I would have been left wondering what might have been.
Apologies if I have subconciously pinched the "only way is essox" bit from someone, it came to me in a state of sleep deprivation and made me chuckle so if you thought of it first, nice one!
Wednesday, 5 December 2012
Chew Valley reservoir pike fishing
In December of last year I along with many other anglers sent a letter off to Woodford lodge at Chew Valley reservoir asking to be added to the lottery for pike fishing dates. After a couple of months I had heard nothing which is a familiar feeling to many that apply and I put the matter to bed as just bad luck.
Sometime early in September I was perched rather precariously on my stepladders while cutting back ivy from a house wall when the phone rang. Normally in such situations I ignore the call but on this occasion I pulled the handset from my pocket and looked at the screen, Woodford Lodge calling, eh? Well I wasn't going to ignore that ring was I and a good job I didn't too as it was the fishery enquiring as to wether I would be paying for my allotted days, eh? It seems that the letter that I should have received at the start of the year had gone astray and I had been sitting on a two day permit for two anglers on the pike mecca for nine months without knowing it! Leo had also applied and the agreement was that it if either of us was successful then the other would go on the trip too.
We were all set to go and looking forward to it when I had my motor accident just over a week before the date which was the last thing I needed. With a hire van soon arranged all was looking well again but then I started to suffer some side effects of the bump with back and neck trouble on and off, nothing severe but the worst part of it was that I was struggling to sleep comfortably and I am not good at all without sleep. Within a few days of the trip I felt lousy and in all honesty wasn't looking forward to it at all, to arrive in Somerset at dawn would mean leaving Leicestershire somewhere around 4am and that was the last thing I needed but I couldn't cancel the trip, that would mean letting Leo down and missing out on an opportunity that we might not get again so we were going and that was that.
The journey was mercifully pretty straightforward until we got within a few miles of our destination but three hours of sitting had caused havoc with my back and I really needed to get out and move. Our problem started when we were trying to find specific areas of the reservoir as the access roads are poorly, well actually not at all, marked. We went back and forth for the best part of an hour before deciding that we need to ask someone and so headed to the lodge where thankfully were directed to some entry points. By this stage I just needed to get myself sorted and we decided to forget our original plan to fish Wick point and to fish the Nunnery bank instead.
The Nunnery bank had four anglers already set up but thankfully there was room for the two of us in between with room to spare and the rods were soon out and fishing on a variety of dead baits. The shelters were up soon after as it started to drizzle and I collapsed onto my bedchair feeling like the living dead, but at least we were fishing. The day passed in a kind of groggy haze with a distinct lack of activity on the part of old snaggle tooth. The lads down to our left caught a fish of 14lb's odd and had a couple of dropped trout takes but our swim was dead until Leo decided to send a sprat out which prompted several trout attacks, none of which were landed. The drizzle had given way to thick fog by early afternoon and I was pretty happy to be sitting on terra firma rather than testing my slightly dubious boat handling skills in that lot.
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| Leo surveys the murk |
We found our Bed and Breakfast after another tortuous trip around in circles down the narrow Somerset lanes not helped one bit by the fog and dumped down our kit before heading off for a meal. We ended up at a curry house in Bishop Sutton called Sutton Spice and I can definitely recommend it, the best curry I've had apart from at my local for years and we aren't short of good Indian restaurants in Leicestershire. After that it was time to crash and get soem very much needed sleep, we had been advised to get on the bank early to secure a swim but that wasn't going to happen, 6am would be quite early enough.
On Saturday we headed straight for Wick point, this time knowing exactly where to go although it did mean driving through a rather large puddle, in fact it could have been classed as a small pond. We had been told that we would hate fishing this bank as it was boggy and they weren't wrong on that description though it was certainly nothing to stop us fishing.
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| A waterlogged Wick point |
As we were setting up the lads to our left seemed to be getting take after take which boosted our confidence though we later found out that all bar one or two were dropped trout pick up, something we were about to find out about ourselves. My first indication came within a half hour of casting out, as I held the rod line wasn't being taken but on tightening up I could feel a tap tap and hit into a fish. Whatever it was it wasn't heavy and when it surfaced some distance out from the bank we both said trout straightaway. It turned out that we were wrong though and I had a Chew pike on, all 3lb odd of it complete with a nasty flying treble just waiting to get stuck into someone's finger, luckily that someone was Leo and not me!
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| Looking up the reservoir towards Woodford lodge on the left and Denny island on the right |
We then had a spell with quite a few little bangs and knocks where the trout were having a go at the baits though only one was hooked and Leo managed that one, quite a spectacular fight on heavy gear it was too from a fish just short of 6lbs. The middle of the day was very quiet before the trout turned up for another go towards evening, again none were hooked and they started to become a bit of a nuisance to be honest but let's face it we wouldn't be pike fishing the place if it wasn't full of trout would we!
So that was our Chew trip, hard work but just sitting there considering what swam in front of us was an experience in itself, quite frightening even. As a send of we were treated to a spectacular sunset, with a bit of luck maybe we'll be back to see it again.
A week after our return Chew Stoke made the national news for all of the wrong reasons when torrential rain left the area severely flooded and one poor bloke drowned in his car. Sometimes you have to step back and forget your few minor troubles and think yourself lucky.
Sunday, 25 November 2012
Rutland zander fishing - jigging the day away
Sunday the 11th of November
Andy Lewis of Piscatorial Pastimes contacted me at the start of the week to ask if I fancied joining him afloat on Rutland water for a day as his intended boat partner was ill and I jumped at the chance. Up until a couple of weeks ago I had never fished a trout water and with two days booked on Chew reservoir also coming up and now this I was suddenly in overload. I was really looking forward to the trip and then on the Wednesday, as mentioned in my previous blog, all hell broke loose when I had an accident in my van.
Thursday dawned with the realisation that my van was never likely to roll again, I had sent Andy a message to let him know what had happened late the previous night and it seemed that the trip was off. I made the necessary phone call to my insurance company and from the short conversation it seemed that things would be sorted out without too much bother and that I would have a hire van delivered the next day. I didn't want to let Andy down if I could help it and still wanted to go myself so the trip was back on.
The journey from my town across to Rutland is one of meandering country roads rollercoasting through farmland and rural villages and giving a great view of the wakening day. The mist hung heavy along the Wreake valley and my thoughts turned to monster roach as I passed the lane leading to where Guff (here) caught his two pounder many years before. I would dearly love to have a go for a big Wreake roach but I fear that I would most likely be chasing ghosts, this lovely little river has been hit hard by the cormorants and being so small a watercourse there is little room to hide, very sad.
I met Andy just before opening time and was very glad to get out of the van, sitting still for an hour had done my back no good at all. After a quick natter we got the boat loaded up and headed out into the vastness of Rutland water.
I've visited the place plenty of times in the past with the mrs but when you are out on the water somehow it suddenly seems so much bigger. We had been told in advance about a few areas to try and initially headed up into the south arm for a few drifts out from the sailing club. The only thing that was hooked in that area was a manky old coil of rope that I managed to haul up from the depths and after a couple of hours or so we moved across to the area of an old trout cage. That area was sheltered by the headland seperating the north and south arms and we made quite a few drifts out from a small bay past the cage into the reservoir before Andy hooked into a fish. The little Drennan spinning rod that he was using bent double as something bored away under the boat and we both soon decided that it wasn't a zander and pike came to mind, after a bit more of a tussle we decided that it might be a nice pike and were peering into the depths looking for a glimpse when up popped a trout foulhooked near the gill, no wonder it scrapped.
The next stop was a mark in the north arm and we set up for a long drift parallel to the peninsula. The wind had by now picked up considerably though I guess on dry land it would have just been a breeze, it was rocking us about quite a bit and I switched the drogue from coming off mid boat to being fixed from the bow which settled the boat nose into the wind and helped a lot. My back was starting to give me a bit of grief by that point and I don't think I could have stood that rocking and rolling for much longer. Without the wind hitting us side on the boat was also slowed down considerably and I was quite happy with how the lure was being presented, too fast a drift and it just gets lifted off bottom which is no good whatsoever. I'd spooled up a reel with 6lb bs braid for this trip, the low diameter really helped with lure control especially when used with a heavy jig head. I found 30 grams to be about right on the day and could easily feel the jig touching bottom when I lowered it down several times a minute to make sure that it remained in the bite zone.
I certainly felt that I was using the method more efficiently than on my first attempt on Grafham water a couple of weeks previously. I was just starting to think that we should perhaps motor back up wind when the rod went over and I was in, I'm not sure if it was a heavy take or if I instinctively struck at a tap, these things happen on auto pilot don't they, but a fish was on and in no time at all was on the surface and netted. The Rutland zander are generally quite small, certainly compared to the Grafham fish, and this one wouldn't have been much more than two pounds in weight, a quick snap and I dropped it back from a height to shock it into diving back into the depths.
My back was really aching now and I was getting occasional tingling shooting down my arms into my fingers so I can't say that I was disapointed when Andy suggested that we move back into the south arm which seemed calmer. We finished the day back at the sailing club after dodging through the sailing boats to get there, I thought we were in the race at one stage!
The wind dropped off almost completely as dusk approached and the drogue was stowed away. Lure control was as good as it ever could be with the braid cutting through the surface film almost vertivally from the rod top. A few small knocks indicated that fish were in the area and then I hooked into another which unfortunately came off after a few seconds, the last chance of the day.
The sun falling to the horizon made a lovely end to the day as we motored back to the jetty. The other boats had all found the fishing to be slower than expected though some had taken up to a dozen zander after finding them in very deep water around the 70ft mark. I'd had an enjoyable day though and Andy was good company, thanks for the invite mate. It was only when I looked at the picture later that I noticed how the zander's eyes were bulging, obviously from coming up from the deep water. It concerns me a bit to be honest as I don't go fishing to harm what I catch and I had some worries about wether or not the effect was reversible, I hope so and the fish did appear to swim off strongly.
Andy Lewis of Piscatorial Pastimes contacted me at the start of the week to ask if I fancied joining him afloat on Rutland water for a day as his intended boat partner was ill and I jumped at the chance. Up until a couple of weeks ago I had never fished a trout water and with two days booked on Chew reservoir also coming up and now this I was suddenly in overload. I was really looking forward to the trip and then on the Wednesday, as mentioned in my previous blog, all hell broke loose when I had an accident in my van.
Thursday dawned with the realisation that my van was never likely to roll again, I had sent Andy a message to let him know what had happened late the previous night and it seemed that the trip was off. I made the necessary phone call to my insurance company and from the short conversation it seemed that things would be sorted out without too much bother and that I would have a hire van delivered the next day. I didn't want to let Andy down if I could help it and still wanted to go myself so the trip was back on.
The journey from my town across to Rutland is one of meandering country roads rollercoasting through farmland and rural villages and giving a great view of the wakening day. The mist hung heavy along the Wreake valley and my thoughts turned to monster roach as I passed the lane leading to where Guff (here) caught his two pounder many years before. I would dearly love to have a go for a big Wreake roach but I fear that I would most likely be chasing ghosts, this lovely little river has been hit hard by the cormorants and being so small a watercourse there is little room to hide, very sad.
I met Andy just before opening time and was very glad to get out of the van, sitting still for an hour had done my back no good at all. After a quick natter we got the boat loaded up and headed out into the vastness of Rutland water.
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| The captain at the helm |
The next stop was a mark in the north arm and we set up for a long drift parallel to the peninsula. The wind had by now picked up considerably though I guess on dry land it would have just been a breeze, it was rocking us about quite a bit and I switched the drogue from coming off mid boat to being fixed from the bow which settled the boat nose into the wind and helped a lot. My back was starting to give me a bit of grief by that point and I don't think I could have stood that rocking and rolling for much longer. Without the wind hitting us side on the boat was also slowed down considerably and I was quite happy with how the lure was being presented, too fast a drift and it just gets lifted off bottom which is no good whatsoever. I'd spooled up a reel with 6lb bs braid for this trip, the low diameter really helped with lure control especially when used with a heavy jig head. I found 30 grams to be about right on the day and could easily feel the jig touching bottom when I lowered it down several times a minute to make sure that it remained in the bite zone.
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| My weapon of choice |
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| A small selection, the yellow shad top left produced the bites |
I certainly felt that I was using the method more efficiently than on my first attempt on Grafham water a couple of weeks previously. I was just starting to think that we should perhaps motor back up wind when the rod went over and I was in, I'm not sure if it was a heavy take or if I instinctively struck at a tap, these things happen on auto pilot don't they, but a fish was on and in no time at all was on the surface and netted. The Rutland zander are generally quite small, certainly compared to the Grafham fish, and this one wouldn't have been much more than two pounds in weight, a quick snap and I dropped it back from a height to shock it into diving back into the depths.
My back was really aching now and I was getting occasional tingling shooting down my arms into my fingers so I can't say that I was disapointed when Andy suggested that we move back into the south arm which seemed calmer. We finished the day back at the sailing club after dodging through the sailing boats to get there, I thought we were in the race at one stage!
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| A bit close for comfort |
The sun falling to the horizon made a lovely end to the day as we motored back to the jetty. The other boats had all found the fishing to be slower than expected though some had taken up to a dozen zander after finding them in very deep water around the 70ft mark. I'd had an enjoyable day though and Andy was good company, thanks for the invite mate. It was only when I looked at the picture later that I noticed how the zander's eyes were bulging, obviously from coming up from the deep water. It concerns me a bit to be honest as I don't go fishing to harm what I catch and I had some worries about wether or not the effect was reversible, I hope so and the fish did appear to swim off strongly.
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| Like a different day |
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.
Friday, 12 October 2012
Swithland perch fishing - towing the line
Tuesday the 25th of September
On Monday Steve had suggested a session on the reservoir the next day but I wasn't sure if I would finish work early enough to make it worthwhile. As Tuesday progressed the work situation was looking good but the weather wasn't, a strong southerly wind was piling into the dam end and from past experience I knew that spelt trouble, a big undertow was inevitable and bite indication would be a nightmare. I had told Steve that I would be able to make it but in all honesty I didn't fancy it at all though I soon changed my mind when I got a text mid afternoon saying that he had caught a perch, a 4oz perch but a perch. Now bearing in mind that between us we had only caught three perch last season you can understand that I found this quite a significant event and got myself down there pretty sharpish.
I pulled the van up on the dam wall and jumped out to have a word with Steve before I got set up, as soon as I poked my head over the wall I knew that the wind was going to cause problems and Steve confirmed that, in fact he had resorted to trying drop off indicators as bobbins were dragged up to the rod by the undertow within seconds, but he had aslo caught another small perch.
I really didn't know how I could effectively fish in the given conditions but I was there and so I would give it a go. The kit was balanced on the five foot high wall, ladder lifted over and leant on the far side and I followed it with the help of a boot on the van's bumper. It seemed that I had chosen a particularly awkward spot with regards to getting banksticks between the rocks and combined with the gusting wind the rods were bound to be rocking about all over the place. With rain forecast I also needed to set up some kind of shelter and I'd picked up my Korum day shelter thinking that with it's multiple pegging points at least a few of them would coincide with cracks in the stonework. I was right a few did but open cracks aren't the most secure and in the strong wind it was more a balancing act than anything else.
I got the rods out with the usual maggot feeders and lobworm hookbaits and then attempted to get the bobbins set correctly without a hope in hell, I gave up after adding five swan shot to each cord and each time watching the indicator shoot straight up to the rod. I sat there thinking what an idiot I was to even bother trying to fish and then the day got worse as a tooth that had been playing me up for a while started to quickly get much worse probably due to been blasted by the wind, how delightful. I seriously considered packing up and making a run for it but convinced myself that the wind might drop in time for dusk. A packet of painkillers rattling about in the van helped somewhat and I tucked myself under the precarious shelter to sit it out.
The occaisional single bleep rang out but in such conditions could hardly be put down to a fish though I did wind in to find the hookbait missing several times, possibly lost on the cast? It was very difficult to say but by the time we started to pack up neither of us had anything else positive to show for our efforts.
Thursday the 27th of September
The wind had swung to a westerly which was much more promising and so I found myself back on the dam wall late in the afternoon with a single swan shot hold each bobbin just where I wanted it to be. After considering the situation over the last couple of days I had made the decision to add a second hook to each rod, set up short helicopter rig style a couple of feet above the feeder and baited with a few maggots it gave me two bites at the cherry and also made it slightly more feasable to fish in the extreme undertow that so often occurs on this water.
Withing half an hour of casting out one of the bobbins crept up and I struck, I thought I had missed the bite but in fact wound in a micro perch about three inches long which had taken the maggot hook. A little while later I was just setting the bobbin after a recast when it was pulled out of my fingers and cracked into the rod, another small fish was responsible though this one was slightly bigger at a huge four ounces, again the bolt rig had done the trick which was very encouraging. So I had now equaled in numbers my entire seasons perch catch from last year, wether these small fish have just arrived this season or if they had slowed down when I started fishing in late November last year is yet to be seen but I was starting to get a bit concerned as to what effect they might have on my chances of a big fish although of course it is a very good sign for the future.
It turned out to be a lovely evening with a big moon rising over the trees in the distance and only a light ripple disturbing the surface on occaision. A surprising number of small fish were showing, in fact it was the first time that I have seen more than one or two on a session as the place normally seems dead, I also saw something much more substantial splash right on the edge of the marginal weed and had a suspicion that it might just have been a perch.
Another fish of about four ounces took the lobworm hook just before dusk and despite sticking it out well into dark proper that was my last indication.
On Monday Steve had suggested a session on the reservoir the next day but I wasn't sure if I would finish work early enough to make it worthwhile. As Tuesday progressed the work situation was looking good but the weather wasn't, a strong southerly wind was piling into the dam end and from past experience I knew that spelt trouble, a big undertow was inevitable and bite indication would be a nightmare. I had told Steve that I would be able to make it but in all honesty I didn't fancy it at all though I soon changed my mind when I got a text mid afternoon saying that he had caught a perch, a 4oz perch but a perch. Now bearing in mind that between us we had only caught three perch last season you can understand that I found this quite a significant event and got myself down there pretty sharpish.
I pulled the van up on the dam wall and jumped out to have a word with Steve before I got set up, as soon as I poked my head over the wall I knew that the wind was going to cause problems and Steve confirmed that, in fact he had resorted to trying drop off indicators as bobbins were dragged up to the rod by the undertow within seconds, but he had aslo caught another small perch.
I really didn't know how I could effectively fish in the given conditions but I was there and so I would give it a go. The kit was balanced on the five foot high wall, ladder lifted over and leant on the far side and I followed it with the help of a boot on the van's bumper. It seemed that I had chosen a particularly awkward spot with regards to getting banksticks between the rocks and combined with the gusting wind the rods were bound to be rocking about all over the place. With rain forecast I also needed to set up some kind of shelter and I'd picked up my Korum day shelter thinking that with it's multiple pegging points at least a few of them would coincide with cracks in the stonework. I was right a few did but open cracks aren't the most secure and in the strong wind it was more a balancing act than anything else.
 |
| My wobbly house |
The occaisional single bleep rang out but in such conditions could hardly be put down to a fish though I did wind in to find the hookbait missing several times, possibly lost on the cast? It was very difficult to say but by the time we started to pack up neither of us had anything else positive to show for our efforts.
Thursday the 27th of September
The wind had swung to a westerly which was much more promising and so I found myself back on the dam wall late in the afternoon with a single swan shot hold each bobbin just where I wanted it to be. After considering the situation over the last couple of days I had made the decision to add a second hook to each rod, set up short helicopter rig style a couple of feet above the feeder and baited with a few maggots it gave me two bites at the cherry and also made it slightly more feasable to fish in the extreme undertow that so often occurs on this water.
Withing half an hour of casting out one of the bobbins crept up and I struck, I thought I had missed the bite but in fact wound in a micro perch about three inches long which had taken the maggot hook. A little while later I was just setting the bobbin after a recast when it was pulled out of my fingers and cracked into the rod, another small fish was responsible though this one was slightly bigger at a huge four ounces, again the bolt rig had done the trick which was very encouraging. So I had now equaled in numbers my entire seasons perch catch from last year, wether these small fish have just arrived this season or if they had slowed down when I started fishing in late November last year is yet to be seen but I was starting to get a bit concerned as to what effect they might have on my chances of a big fish although of course it is a very good sign for the future.
 |
| Not what I had in mind |
 |
| First negotiate the wall and then perch on the slope, not the most comfortable place to fish |
Another fish of about four ounces took the lobworm hook just before dusk and despite sticking it out well into dark proper that was my last indication.
 |
| The moon rises and the little uns top |
Friday, 21 September 2012
The Creation of a Monster - My first carp
A conversation I had today took me back to when I first started carp fishing and reminded me of this piece that I wrote for a thousand word essay competition in the magazine of the English Carp Heritage Organization a few years ago.
The Creation of a Monster
The Creation of a Monster
It had been a long, long, three months. The end of the
season had come around all too quickly and as was normally the way back then a
handful of gudgeon was about the sum of the winters fishing but I loved every
icy minute none the less. By start of April the tackle box had taken up
residence in the living room once again as bits got repaired, made, and bought,
in preparation for the magical 16th. The weeks dragged by as if wading through a sea of mud, the
days gradually got longer and warmer and the excitement grew until it was
almost unbearable, what was it to be, maybe legering a lump of meat for a chub
down on the river or tucked in between the reed beds in my favourite weir pool
floatfishing for roach? We would wait until a day or two before to decide my dad
said, after all, too much rain could spoil our plans in an instant.
Friday June the 16th 1989 was quite possibly the
longest day ever, staring blankly out of the classroom windows at the sun
beaten countryside or doodling on the page with my mind a million miles away in
a world that seemed so near but yet so far away. Evening came and Dad walked in
with a bag slung over his shoulder. With
the usual eagerness I craned to see what he’d got as he pleaded to be allowed
through the door first. He’d been for a walk around the local reservoir on his
lunch hour and seen a chap catch a carp off of the surface on dog biscuits of
all things, we’d never heard of that before and I’d certainly never even
considered the possibility of catching a carp. My dad had called into Roddy’s
tackle shop on his way back to site and hence the bag was filled with the
latest in carp catching technology, a bag of bubble floats, size six Drennan
Specimen hooks, superglue and Chum Mixer’s. Rod’s was a proper old tackle shop,
always full of blokes propping up the counter supping tea with fags hanging
from the corner of their mouths, the air thick with smoke, a block of flats
sits on the site nowadays.
So that was it then, three months of build up and now blown
off the scale, bloody hell, we were going carp fishing! Christmas eve had got
nothing on that night, it took hours to get to sleep and no sooner had we than
it seemed Dad was shaking me awake at four a.m. but I wasn’t a bit tired, I was
what I would later come to learn was called buzzing! Every bit of tackle we owned was rammed in to the car
at breakneck speed and off we went, hoping every second of the way there that
we would get a good spot. Into the car park we pulled and yes we were alright,
not too many people there at all. It was a glorious morning, the surface was
flat calm and the sun was just peaking over the rabbit dotted hill beside the
water, that lovely fresh smell that you only get on that kind of dawn was in
the air and the odd large ripple broke the steely surface of the lake just to
add more fuel to the fire.
We headed up onto the dam wall well away from most of the
other anglers and I set to on the mountain of gear piled at my feet, out came
the Abu match rod, probably an inch and a half thick at the butt and weighing
more than three of today’s rods but it was the best I’d got, on with the
Silstar FX40 loaded with a hundred yards of six pound Platil line, thread it up
through the rings with fingers shaking from a combination of the early start,
lack of sleep and sheer excitement. Dad showed us what to do with the bubble
float, threading it up the line a few feet and fixing it with a split shot
below before tying on the size six and half filling the float with water, a
slit was cut into a dog biscuit with a hacksaw blade and a dab of glue fixed
the hook in. When all three of us were set up dad started firing out a few
loose mixers with the catapult and out the floats went, it seemed like a huge
distance at the time but it was twenty yards at the most.
For probably two hours or so the odd carp would swirl at the
biscuits and on occasions one would even have a go at the hookbait, god I’d
never seen anything like it, it was a truly heart stopping sight, almost too
much to bear. And then it happened. A great big swirl, a shout from my dad and
a sweep of the trusty Abu back over my shoulder quickly followed by me being
pulled forward down the steep bank towards the water completely off balance.
Jesus, what the hell had I hooked, I hadn’t figured out what a drag was for by
then and more than once the reel handle was pulled from my shaking fingers as
the fish shot off into the depths. Gradually I got the better of it and we all
peered for a first glimpse of this monster when all of a sudden up it came and
with a jab of the net Dad scooped it up.
And so a carp angler was born, seven and a half pounds it
weighed but to me at that time it could have been a record, I don’t suppose for
a minute I realised at the time but the fish wasn’t everything, the build up,
the anticipation, the surroundings and the excitement and so much more go to
make the sport we love what it is, never let it become a numbers game because
you’ll miss out on so much.
I ended up with three carp that day and my Dad and brother had one apiece too, from then on my river dabblings started to get less frequent and within a couple of years I was a fully fledged matching rod carper. The water in question was the reservoir that featured in the "Winter on the Reservoir" five part series that I posted back in April and which ended up being more or less home from home for a lot of years, here's part one
I ended up with three carp that day and my Dad and brother had one apiece too, from then on my river dabblings started to get less frequent and within a couple of years I was a fully fledged matching rod carper. The water in question was the reservoir that featured in the "Winter on the Reservoir" five part series that I posted back in April and which ended up being more or less home from home for a lot of years, here's part one
Tuesday, 1 May 2012
My angling plans for the year ahead
I think quite a few people spoke about plans for their fishing at the start of the year at the same time as reviewing the previous twelve months and most years I guess I think along similiar lines but this time around my mind was fully focussed on my roach fishing down at Linch Hill and I was just getting on with the moment so to speak. My time spent bankside in the last six weeks has been very limited compared to normal, as near to a mini close season as I'm likely to get even though I've wet a line at least once most weeks, nothing has really fired me up to get out there and I have been quite happy just having a little dabble here and there but I'm now feeling the urge to pull my finger out get stuck in once again.
It's good to have some idea of what you want to do with your time when you are an all round angler else I find that you can try to do everything and in effect do nothing, spreading yourself thin doesn't work, trying to fish too many waters doesn't work. concentrate on one species and water at a time with the odd interlude elsewhere and things tend to fall into place so much more easily, you get in tune with whats happening, when the fish are feeding, where they are feeding and what methods are working for you, once you are at that stage quite often the hardest part of a session is putting yourself where you want to be on a water before someone else beats you to it, the rest of the work is vitually done. That's the theory and it is true, but that doesn't mean that my sometimes fickle nature doesn't take over and make me drift away, but hey ho, this isn't work and I don't profess to me some super hero, the main thing is to enjoy my fishing and so long as that happens then I'm not doing much wrong. So here's a rough idea of what I fancy doing in the next nine months or so, it will be interesting to see what actually happens in retrospect.
My thoughts at the moment revolve around tench, I have just managed to secure a ticket for a water I fished last year which can produce some cracking sport along with some good sized fish, there is a very slim chance of a double figure fish but there really isn't anywhere that I know within a reasonable distance that gives a better chance, my target in all honesty is to beat my pb of 9lb 4oz's, that fish came from the same water last year and is certainly amongst the biggest hand full of fish in there so we will have to see. Timing will be everything, I stopped fishing the water at the end of May last year, many of the tench had spawned but it was not until later in the year that it became apparent that not all had as some big fish came out after I had left, I will stick it out this time around and combined with this cold spring it might just be that the big girls will still be holding their weight later on, so conceivably we might be looking at tenching until the end of June.
I really want to do a bit more carp fishing this year, each year I renew my syndicate place and each year I spend little time there, mostly due to it being an hour from home and traditionally my carp sessions have tended to be short, maybe twelve hours or so on average and consisting on mid week night sessions between work. With an hours drive at each end of the trip and the ever increasing cost of fuel that just isn't practical and a session really needs to be two nights and a day at least to be viable unless I can manage a full day to spend stalking. However the lakes hold a lot of stunning fish and I have been fortunate enough to meet a few close up and would like to meet a few more.
The stalking thing is something I have in mind for this year, I love it, particularly surface fishing, and it is a very effective way to spend your time if the conditions are right and that could be the deciding factor. If the summer progresses anything like the spring so far then surface fishing is going to be hard going if not a waste of time and I will just have to try and string together what time I can to session fish, though I do find it quite boring at times compared to the more exciting methods. So a bit of carp fishing will be on the agenda as and when throughout the year, I shan't pigeon hole a particular period of time I'll just do it when I can and it seems right, there you go, I'm drifting already!
And then bream. Now bream have never been high on my list of favourite fish, in fact I will be completely honest and say that I have only rarely specifically fished for them, my best are one from Yateley Sandhurst of 11lb 4oz's, and last May at the carp syndicate I mention above I had a brace of 10lb 4oz's and 13lb 8oz's. Double figure bream I can cope with, their age and size makes them a viable target and they don't arrive my the dozen, smaller bream I really can't get excited about I'm afraid, they just don't do anything for me. Even after catching the 13lber last year I still can't say I was really fired up but since then I've gradually come around to the idea and the fact that the lake contains specimens considerably larger than that fish and that they are not targetted due to it being a carp fishery adds to the interest. I also have another bream water to throw into the pot, Swithland reservoir, I've got a ticket anyway with perch in mind but as its local to me and produces bream to around the 16lb mark I might just be tempted to have a go. And so it may be that when I move away from the tench that I switch to bream.
So that covers from now until autumn really, I shall fit in a bit of barbel stalking now and then, I find watching them in clear summer conditions fascinating and also extremely convenient in that I need carry only a minimum of kit and can often winkle a fish out in short order so when there isn't time for anything else its perfect.
Come autumn and winter I really have two species in mind, perch and chub. A 4lb perch has been number one on my wish list for quite some time now, the closest to my knowledge that I've been so far is about thirty yards away from my mate Steve when he bagged one last November. I have Swithland reservoir and the River Derwent both within twenty minutes of home and both have the potential to fulfil my dreams, Swithland is, or can be, incredibly tricky, the river is more forthcoming with some stunning fish of a good size to keep the interest up, I shall fish both to my best ability and hope that lady luck smiles on me. The later in the season the greater the chance of achieving what I want as the perch grow fat with spawn and so it may well be that I spend a bit more time after chub earlier on. I would really like to crack a local 6lber this year, the Trent might be my best bet but I do love the Derwent and that river also does give up a fair few good chub. My other option is a trip or two down south to the Stour and without the time and expense that I devoted to roach this winter then that will more than likely be the case, a trip away to pastures new is always special and is especially nice in the dark winter months when a break is appreciated more I think.
So that is my rough plan, all of the waters I am fishing have the potential to beat my personal best for the given species and while that is the ultimate goal it certainly isn't the full story, each venue is also a nice place to spend time and I am already looking forward in anticipation of long summer days following misty dawns right through to icy days on the river with only the robin's for company.
It's good to have some idea of what you want to do with your time when you are an all round angler else I find that you can try to do everything and in effect do nothing, spreading yourself thin doesn't work, trying to fish too many waters doesn't work. concentrate on one species and water at a time with the odd interlude elsewhere and things tend to fall into place so much more easily, you get in tune with whats happening, when the fish are feeding, where they are feeding and what methods are working for you, once you are at that stage quite often the hardest part of a session is putting yourself where you want to be on a water before someone else beats you to it, the rest of the work is vitually done. That's the theory and it is true, but that doesn't mean that my sometimes fickle nature doesn't take over and make me drift away, but hey ho, this isn't work and I don't profess to me some super hero, the main thing is to enjoy my fishing and so long as that happens then I'm not doing much wrong. So here's a rough idea of what I fancy doing in the next nine months or so, it will be interesting to see what actually happens in retrospect.
My thoughts at the moment revolve around tench, I have just managed to secure a ticket for a water I fished last year which can produce some cracking sport along with some good sized fish, there is a very slim chance of a double figure fish but there really isn't anywhere that I know within a reasonable distance that gives a better chance, my target in all honesty is to beat my pb of 9lb 4oz's, that fish came from the same water last year and is certainly amongst the biggest hand full of fish in there so we will have to see. Timing will be everything, I stopped fishing the water at the end of May last year, many of the tench had spawned but it was not until later in the year that it became apparent that not all had as some big fish came out after I had left, I will stick it out this time around and combined with this cold spring it might just be that the big girls will still be holding their weight later on, so conceivably we might be looking at tenching until the end of June.
 |
| More of the same please |
I really want to do a bit more carp fishing this year, each year I renew my syndicate place and each year I spend little time there, mostly due to it being an hour from home and traditionally my carp sessions have tended to be short, maybe twelve hours or so on average and consisting on mid week night sessions between work. With an hours drive at each end of the trip and the ever increasing cost of fuel that just isn't practical and a session really needs to be two nights and a day at least to be viable unless I can manage a full day to spend stalking. However the lakes hold a lot of stunning fish and I have been fortunate enough to meet a few close up and would like to meet a few more.
 |
| One off the surface |
 |
| Stalking opportunity |
And then bream. Now bream have never been high on my list of favourite fish, in fact I will be completely honest and say that I have only rarely specifically fished for them, my best are one from Yateley Sandhurst of 11lb 4oz's, and last May at the carp syndicate I mention above I had a brace of 10lb 4oz's and 13lb 8oz's. Double figure bream I can cope with, their age and size makes them a viable target and they don't arrive my the dozen, smaller bream I really can't get excited about I'm afraid, they just don't do anything for me. Even after catching the 13lber last year I still can't say I was really fired up but since then I've gradually come around to the idea and the fact that the lake contains specimens considerably larger than that fish and that they are not targetted due to it being a carp fishery adds to the interest. I also have another bream water to throw into the pot, Swithland reservoir, I've got a ticket anyway with perch in mind but as its local to me and produces bream to around the 16lb mark I might just be tempted to have a go. And so it may be that when I move away from the tench that I switch to bream.
 |
| A couple from last year |
Come autumn and winter I really have two species in mind, perch and chub. A 4lb perch has been number one on my wish list for quite some time now, the closest to my knowledge that I've been so far is about thirty yards away from my mate Steve when he bagged one last November. I have Swithland reservoir and the River Derwent both within twenty minutes of home and both have the potential to fulfil my dreams, Swithland is, or can be, incredibly tricky, the river is more forthcoming with some stunning fish of a good size to keep the interest up, I shall fish both to my best ability and hope that lady luck smiles on me. The later in the season the greater the chance of achieving what I want as the perch grow fat with spawn and so it may well be that I spend a bit more time after chub earlier on. I would really like to crack a local 6lber this year, the Trent might be my best bet but I do love the Derwent and that river also does give up a fair few good chub. My other option is a trip or two down south to the Stour and without the time and expense that I devoted to roach this winter then that will more than likely be the case, a trip away to pastures new is always special and is especially nice in the dark winter months when a break is appreciated more I think.
So that is my rough plan, all of the waters I am fishing have the potential to beat my personal best for the given species and while that is the ultimate goal it certainly isn't the full story, each venue is also a nice place to spend time and I am already looking forward in anticipation of long summer days following misty dawns right through to icy days on the river with only the robin's for company.
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