The Fishing Coach

On Sunday whilst on my way to a local game fair I received a telephone call from a very excited former student of mine who I haven’t seen for a couple of years. As I was driving at the time, although on “hands free”, I wasn’t able to give him the attention that he deserved but he phoned me again later that evening and told me the full story, his excitement unabated.

Russell on one of my courses in 2002

Russell was one of my first students, he did his basic course in July 2000 and was always ready for one of my days out but college and, I suspect girls, soon got in the way and he let his fishing take a back seat. He has recently returned to the sport and on Sunday morning caught a new personal best. He phoned to tell me as he claimed that “I’d taught him him all he knew”. Below is an excerpt of an email he sent me later, complete with a photo.

Hi Martin.

I was fishing the new Abbey Lake only 10 mins from my house. It was only the second time I’ve been there. I hadn’t been fishing and caught a fish since about 2006.

On the 1st trip I only got either a line bite or a nibble I couldn’t tell. After that trip I thought about how I could improve. So on the 2nd trip I took a rod with a marker float and I also used a feeder with carp pellet inside to lure the carp in.

I had 2 rods, 1 with a boilie and the other a lobworm and I got there at 7:00 a.m.. The bait was in the water by 7:30 and I sat patiently enjoying geting back to fishing. It was only 8:10 when when I was looking at my rods when I saw the rod start to bend and I was just thinking no way it is going to happen. After a second the indicator went up and it was taking line out and I was ready so I stuck and knew I’d hooked into something big.

It bent the rod right over 90 degrees, just like I got told, they fight like mad it took line and stopped and kept taking line then holding the tension for 3-4 mins. I didn’t dare reel in because it was still tugging like a rocket. As it eased up a bit I started to reel it in a little bit at a time and now had it half way in when it went all the way to the left of me for the trees. I used everything I learnt and just about kept it of the trees. I then had it rocketing back out again when it did a masive arc went all the way from the left now all the way to the right, under my other line round the tree to the edge of the swim and into reeds I was thinking no way am I going to lose it now. I just took the other rod off the stand and put it the other side while holding masive pressure on the fish as it was going deeper into reeds.

Now I had a new dilemma as I had a fish round the other side of a tree and into big reeds so I thought i don’t care I worked hard for this and went into the water only about a foot deep for the 1st 10 foot from the bank. I tugged and held pressure so tight for about 10 - 15 second thinking its going to snap then wow the fish comes out and finally its worn out a bit as I saw a big fish I knew it was a mirror now only making me more determind to get it. I reeled it right up 1 foot from my net then oh my god he went like mad when he saw the net and took more line out for 5 foot and that was its last fight and as I got it closer and netted it.

Weighed the mirror at 14lb 5oz - my biggest fish ever, also 1st fish I caught in 2 years only my 2nd mirror carp and 1st fish to break the 10lb mark.

I added the photo for you I hope you like it.

Russell

This type of feedback is just one of the rewards of my work with young people.

Well done Russell, I hope we can fish together again soon.

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Spring arrived in the second week of May and as most of the passes were open at last, Jan and I decided to harness up the dogs and make a trip to the Vale of York.

The dog team.

I had volunteered to help my old friend, fellow PAA coach and more importantly, my accountant, Graham Walker to run a charity match in aid of the Alzheimer’s Society. Graham, his wife Anne and her sisters have already raised over £5000 for the charity and Anne is planning to do a sponsored walk on the Great Wall of China. See here for more details of Anne’s trek.

We arrived in Graham’s delightful village, Newton upon Derwent at midday and I was whisked off to see the fishery and visit a couple of tackle dealers. The shops were very generous with their donations, particularly Thompsons in Murton who told us to help ourselves to £100 worth of tackle from their shelves and then added two rods to our haul.

Here is a list from Graham of all who supported us:

Pool Bridge Farm let us use two lakes
Martech (UK) gave us the prize money
The Environment Agency provided a rod & reel for every novice
Cormoran provided a keep net for everyone plus a few good prizes and some Muckboots
Dynamite - loads of bait etc
Roy Marlow gave us a day for two at the Glebe
Thompsons in Murton let Martin Porter and me do a trolley dash for prizes and then gave us two rods
York tackle gave bait, a rod and other stuff
Joe Traves provided the meat for a barbecue for 80 people
Bruno, Derek North and Martin Porter came to support the event - I’d have struggled without them
The thirty five contestants, some of whom had to go to the pub every night to sign up new sponsors

and finally, when his mates had gone home, the winner of the £200 first prize in the “proper” match came around to donate his winnings - Chris Kendall, what a gent!

The matches, one for experienced anglers and one for beginners, were held at Pool Bridge Farm and my job was to help the beginners by providing coaching and tackle if needed. There were lots of prizes and a raffle so all the beginners went home with something.

The weather was very kind to us, if a little too hot and everyone caught fish.

This lad went on to win the beginners match

Not all the beginners were youngsters and Bernard caught this fine tench and the first still water barbel I have seen.

He certainly had a wonderful day, taking second prize and we all finished the day with a wonderful barbeque.

Graham and Anne are bird lovers and they have a barn owl that has been rescued but can never be returned to the wild since she would be very unlikely to survive. She lives in a special cage with room to fly and the privacy of an enclosed box in which to sleep. She’s very much still a wild animal and in no way tame. It was a great moment, sat in the darkness of Graham’s conservatory, to wait for the owl to make an appearance each evening at about 9 p.m.

You can see a larger version of the picture here.

We left late Sunday morning intending to return home in a leisurely fashion but made a diversion through Chesterfield to look at my old stamping ground. We had lunch just outside on the road to Matlock in a pub called The Three Horseshoes in Spitewinter - the food was better than we had dared hope considering that we stopped at the first place we liked the look of. It was probably the best Sunday lunch I have ever eaten and I would recommend it to anyone both for the quality of food and the excellent, friendly service.

A wonderful weekend with many thanks to Graham and Anne for their hospitality.

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Last week I visited one of my local tackle shops, Thatcham Angling, and the first thing I saw when I entered the shop was a new centrepin reel on display. It was not a type I recognised so I picked it up and began examining it. I am very enthusiastic about centrepins and one of my many failings is I tend to fish swims that are suitable for ‘pins rather than those that hold fish. Guilt prevents me from actually counting the number I own but those of you who have met me know that I am a bit of a tackle tart and the shop owner obviously knew as well. He asked me what I thought the price was and surprise, surprise, that was the exact thought that had been preoccupying me.

My reputation at stake, I considered for a while, thinking that the reel was similar to the Lewtham Engineering Leeds reel which can be picked up on Ebay for about £60 in mint condition. The reel was quite free running, certainly free enough to trot all but the slowest rivers, much better than the reels that Shakespeare used to produce, which I always thought to be too expensive.

The reel is called Shadowlanda and is a ball bearing type centrepin, six inches in diameter which makes it larger than most, and seems to be made of some kind of pressed alloy, making it very lightweight for its size and more suitable for trotting a float on rivers for medium sized fish than margin fishing for carp.

On the back are two knobs, the black one at the top switches the ratchet on and off but the silver lever type applies an anti-reverse mechanism similar to a fixed spool reel. The reel also has another innovation - the two handles seem quite small and while this is an advantage when “batting” the reel with the fingers on the rim to achieve a fast retrieve they might be difficult to grip with cold hands when playing a fish. However, on closer examination they are telescopic in construction and when pulled out they double in size. Now that is clever and something I have never seen before!

My estimate of the price proved to be way out… I bought the reel and got change from a ten pound note. Yes, a large diameter centrepin reel for the price of three pints of casters. It is not the same high quality engineering as the Youngs reels but it does the job.

I have since discovered that that a five inch version is also available. Thatcham Angling is now out of stock but the owner assures me he will be getting some more in.

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My trip to Londonderry last month gave me a renewed enthusiasm for fly fishing but river fishing for trout in my area is ridiculously expensive and having paid a few visits to some still water fisheries in the area, I just couldn’t summon up the enthusiasm to fish one of them.

Rigorous enquiries, both in local tackle shops, amongst colleagues and on the net suggested there might be a short stretch of the river Itchen in Winchester that was free fishing and so I went on an exploration one afternoon and although I was unable to locate the stretch I had been looking for I found one length of river near the town centre where I saw another angler fly fishing. On speaking to him he told me that the river was indeed free fishing at this point and there were a couple of other stretches in the town that were free also, it turned out that he too was a qualified coach and he offered to show me where I could fish. His name was Keith Dipper and we met as arranged last Monday at his house. His front door opens onto the banks of the river and I spent a very pleasant day in his company with him acting as my gillie.

It was such a joy to be fly fishing a river again, I soon shook off the cobwebs from my casting techniques and was able to present a nymph in all but the most difficult swims. This is not an easy bit of river to fish, there is rarely room for a back cast and much of it is fast and turbulent. Add to this the fact that it is in an urban setting and I can see that it might not suit everyone. The wind was still coming from the East and was blowing predominately up stream, along with the cold spell the night before this made dry fly fishing unsuitable and any form of an insect hatch unlikely.

Keith assures me that under the right conditions it is possible to catch on the dry fly but we both chose to fish gold head nymphs. I chose a very soft actioned five weight Shakespeare fly rod that has become like an old friend over the years (nearly twenty!), it allows me to fish with a very fine point, three pounds breaking strain in this case and to use a small hook. The fly I chose was a size eighteen may fly nymph with a gold bead head fished on an nine foot tapered leader.

My guide caught the first two fish, small brown trout, before I hooked my first fish. Unfortunately it was a grayling that was out of season and the second and third fish were salmon parr and I don’t have a salmon licence. Not a good start, but my fourth fish was a small brown trout and I was as pleased as punch.

Keith showed me several stretches of the river on which there was no restriction to fishing some of which will be very suitable for winter fishing for roach and grayling, it seemed strange to be walking through shopping streets carrying a fly rod with a landing net hanging from my belt but the shoppers paid us no heed, too busy with their retail therapy.

After the tour we returned to the river near Keith’s house and I caught the best fish of the day, a brown trout of nearly two pounds that tested my light tackle to the limit aided by the very fast current. It seemed to spend as much time in the air as it did in the water and took me a few very enjoyable minutes to subdue.

A great day out - not the best day’s trout fishing but certainly the cheapest.

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Last weekend I went to Londonderry with the PAA as guests of the Loughs Agency on their two day Angling Fair. The idea was to show them our style of coaching as they are in the process of establishing their own coaching network. Unfortunately there was no water available on the site so all the physical activities such as casting had to be done on grass and various other activities were carried out in a marquee. Derek North had asked me to teach basic fly casting ( a subject I was a little rusty in). Waggler and feeder casting were also covered outside.

Coaching a young fly fisherman

Coaching waggler casting

Coaching feeder casting

Inside the tent tables had been arranged around the walls and pike, pole, carp and general coarse fishing as well as sea fishing and fly tying, demonstrations were given.

Teaching how to tie sea fishing rigs

Pole fishing instruction

Fly tying instruction

Flytying student

Carp rig clinic

Youngsters being shown insects and crustaceans

The Loughs Agency complex in Londonderry is very impressive and we were all very jealous of their facilities, especially the displays under a domed roof concerning the salmon, its life style and environment. We were made very welcome by everyone we met and apparently our contribution was well received by the public who seemed to flock to the site despite the showers. The Broomhill hotel we stayed in was very comfortable, the food excellent and the service superb. The picture below shows what they had to put up with but it gives no indication of the weird senses of humour that the hotel staff will probably tell their grandchildren about.

The team

The only letdown in the whole experience was the travelling. I left home at 3.15 a.m. on Friday morning and drove to Pershore near Worcester with Lee Blundell. Here we met Derek North who had organised the whole thing. With several other coaches we piled into a mini bus and a van and drove to near Preston where we picked up some more coaches. Then on to Scotland where near Lockerbie we picked up two more of the team and on to Stranraer for the ferry. A very fast crossing on the Seacat took us to Belfast with only the drive right across Ulster to Londonderry to complete.

We set up the stands for the next day at the Loughs Agency and finally reached the hotel at 9.30pm where they offered us a full dinner menu without batting an eye. After two days of coaching we were worried about the return journey, as the weather forecast was full of gale warnings and we were convinced that the ferry would be cancelled. The gales failed to materialise and the return journey went without a hitch… but still took nearly fourteen hours.

Great fun, a great welcome, wonderful people and good company! What more could you want?

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In the middle of last week Aidan and I returned to the river Thames, the scene of his recent triumphs and found the river flowing a little stronger but still in perfect condition. The method was the same as on his first visit but this time he was equipped with a more powerful rod, the Shimano Specialist that I had used on my last visit. After the usual half a dozen casts with maggots in the feeder and no hook length just to get some feed into the swim I fitted the same short, five and a half pound hook length and baited the size fourteen hook with three maggots.

I cast the feeder into the usual spot and we sat back and waited. Nothing happened for about an hour, despite about six recasts with the feeder refilled and I began to wonder if the fish had become wary of the short hook length. I then lengthened the hook length to four feet to place the baited hook well away from the feeder in what the fish may well consider to be a safer area, the next cast resulted in a sharp pull on the tip and the usual drop back bite.

Aidan lifted the rod and bullied the fish away from the far bank roots as I had shown him. The fish weighed four pounds ten ounces.

The next fish was a monster at six pounds five ounces and took all of Aidan’s newly learned skills to keep it out of the many snags on the far bank. This is a huge fish for a fifteen year old lad and only an ounce below my best chub.

The last fish of the day was five pound fourteen ounces, making his two day total of chub up to six, four of which were over five pounds.

I don’t think he yet realises how lucky he has been!

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For the last couple of months I have been working with a young lad called Aidan who is becoming a very keen angler. In order to broaden his experience I have been teaching him to trot a float on the tiny river Bourne at Twynersh. He has caught some small roach, perch and dace but whilst I was demonstrating the technique I hooked a small chub of about a pound which particularly interested him as it was the biggest fish we had caught from the river. When I explained that this was in fact quite a tiny chub he became even more intrigued and I decided it was time for a session on a bigger river in search of some more challenging chub fishing.

He is not quite ready for the problems involved in fishing small rivers like the Kennet where when even a medium chub is hooked the angler must be very quick and decisive in his response to prevent the fish reaching the snags it will be all too familiar with. This is the sort of intimate river fishing I have preferred for many years and so my repertoire of suitable venues to suit his requirements was some what limited. There was one place on the Thames I fished about fifteen years ago that gave me my first Chub over five pounds and I knew that the river had fined down from the recent floods and would be in perfect condition.

Last Tuesday I took Aidan, with some trepidation, to the river Thames just below Windsor to see if the chub were still there. The method I had chosen was ledgering with a maggot filled block end feeder, the method I had always used in the past but this time the main line on the reel was ten pound Fireline braid instead of ordinary monofilament that I would have used in the past. The reason for the braid was better bite indication due to the lack of stretch and less resistance to the current due to the fine diameter which would enable us to use less weight on the feeder to hold the bottom.

The feeder is mounted on the main line on a low resistance ring by means of a link clip so that it runs between two knots within a loop, the next two diagrams will, I hope, explain this. First thread the ring onto the main line and tie a loop with a double overhand knot so that the ring is inside the loop.

The next stage is to tie another double overhand knot to form a second loop, to attach the hook length, trapping the sliding ring between the two knots.

For the purposes of the diagram I have used sixty pound red monofilament as a main line - I would not fish this heavy for chub! The clip between the ring and the feeder would be covered with a piece of suitable diameter silicone tubing to prevent tangles.

The hook length is attached to the left hand loop by mean of a loop to loop connection. This is often fished very short perhaps only four inches. The way this rig works is the fish takes the bait and moves away with little or no resistance while the ring slides along the loop but when it hits the right hand knot the weight of the feeder hooks the fish.

The rod I chose to set up for Aidan was a twelve foot Shakespeare medium feeder rod well suited to the four pound hook lengths that were needed to get bites the last time I had fished the swim and sufficiently powerful for the fish around the four pound mark I expected. Two red maggots were put on the size fourteen hook on a three feet long hook length of four pound line and the two and a half ounce oval Drennen block end feeder was filled with red maggots also. (Never try and do this the other way round or your feeder will empty while you are putting your hook bait on!)

The swim requires a fifty yard cast (hence the ten pound main line) so I made several casts with no hook bait just a full swim feeder to prime the swim, there is quite a lot of accuracy needed so I did the casting for him all day.

The river was still flowing quite strongly and so I cast slightly upstream and as soon as the feeder hit the water I let out about thirty feet of line before closing the bail arm. This forms a large bow of line below the feeder and prevents it being dragged across the current by the pressure of the flow on the main line and if the feeder moves at all then it remains in a path parallel to the current and the maggots escaping from it continue along the same line. This is a very important thing when fishing any sort of feeder on a river, the idea is to create a trail of bait samples down the current along the same line and this will not happen if the feeder is dragged by the current or cast off line.

He sat behind the rod which was placed almost vertically to keep as much line out of the water as possible and waited for his first bite. The rod was fitted with a three ounce carbon quiver tip rather than a fibre glass one as with this method the bites show as a quick,short pull and then the tip straightens and this is shown better by a springy carbon tip than a softer glass one.

The tip twitched and then straightened showing the typical “drop back” bite and he lifted in to his first fish, much to my relief. I had told him not to strike as the fish would have already hooked itself against the weight of the feeder and he was playing his first big chub. He did well to keep the chub out of the far bank snags and bring it across the fast section in the middle of the river to the waiting net. The fish weighed four pounds six ounces, not bad for his first chub!

A couple of casts later he started getting false bites and I suspected the chub were picking up the feeder and shaking it to get the maggots out and ignoring the hook bait down stream, so I shortened the hook length to four inches and the next cast resulted in him hooking a very powerful fish which took him straight into the far bank tree roots despite his best efforts. I replaced the end tackle and stepped the hook length up to six pounds the heaviest I had with me, but I was now worrying about the rod not being designed for the hook and hold tactics we were being required to use.

Aidan also lost his next fish the same way due to his lack of experience, as much as the lack of power in the rod, so I made the next cast a little short to give him more time before the fish reached the snags. This resulted in fewer bites but he landed his next fish which weighed five pounds one ounce, a huge fish for one so young.

He then lost one more fish, much more powerful than the previous one, the hook pulling out but finally landed a real trophy of five and a half pounds.

A great day’s fishing for him and an eye opener for me.

I, of course, had to have some of this so I returned to Windsor on my own on Friday armed with a Shimano Technium Specialist rod with a one and a quarter pound test curve. My first fish made the journey worth while, it weighed five pounds eleven ounces and was easily beaten by the more powerful rod although I was using a lighter hook length, five and a half pounds but only four inches long. Alas no-one was handy to take the photograph.

The second fish was bigger but my digital scales had some sort of malfunction and told me it was seven pounds five ounces and I went into a state of total euphoria until common sense reasserted itself some time later. I weighed it again to be told it was in fact six pounds six, much more the size I would have thought. I have since tested the scales and they read accurately every time. This time the photo was taken by a chap out walking with his family, very kind of him considering I terrified him with my panting, wide eyed approach (I still thought it weighed 7lb 5ozs) which he mistook for some kind of psychopathic illness and almost fled (see eyes in photo).

I caught four more fish for a total of six and an overall weight of thirty three pounds.

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I have just got home from a great day’s coaching at Royal Berkshire Fishery near Windsor and even though I am dead on my feet I felt I should share our success with you.

The day started for me when I left home at 7.30 a.m. to drive to Slough to pick up one of my regular students, Aidan. The drive can be done in forty five minutes, traffic allowing. This morning it did no such thing, and it took me one hour and forty five minutes so I was knackered before I started. I picked up Aidan from his home on time, nevertheless, as I always leave plenty of time for such contingencies rather than let my students down and drove him to Royal Berkshire Fishery. There was a South West wind that was blowing onto the far bank of the main lake and we had no option but to fish into the face of it in order to be sure of catching fish but even this wind had a cold edge to it and the days fishing was far from comfortable.

Whist Aidan set up a twelve foot match rod with a waggler I chopped some worms and casters and added a little hemp and some very small pellets, I introduced this to our chosen swim with a small cup fitted to the end of an old six metre telescopic pole that I adapted for this purpose and then added half a cup of red maggots our chosen hook bait. I baited two areas of the swim, one straight in front of us, where I expected to catch lots of roach and one to our left very close in to the bank, which I intended to leave until the last hour or so.

I set up the waggler to fish just on the bottom with just two number eights below the float, a size sixteen hook with two red maggots completed the rig and Aidan’s first cast was rewarded with an instant bite which he unfortunately missed. The second cast had the same result but this time the fish was hooked and landed, a small roach which would prove to be the first of many. Encouraged by this I stepped up the feed and he got a bite every cast.

The shoal soon responded to the angling pressure and the bites slowed down but by the end of the session he had caught about twenty to just under a pound. Through out the day I continued to feed the margin swim with chopped worm and red maggot and finally in the last hour I set up a slightly more powerful rod with a four pound hook length and a size twelve hook. This rig consisted of a small waggler fished well over depth with an AAA shot fished on the bottom four inches from the hook which was baited with a small lob worm.

During the last hour we had several tentative tugs but no bites developed until I was putting the other rod away prior to packing up altogether, the float shot away and the strike was met with no resistance but he worm was still intact. I instructed Aidan to cast back to the same place and the float almost immediately slid away, he was rewarded with a spirited fight of a fine perch which weighed two pounds fourteen ounces.

A very fine fish and a personal best for Aidan, a very fitting end to a good day.

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I have and have always had a healthy distrust of salesmen and my recent dealings with a double glazing company of some repute who shall remain nameless, has done nothing to change that.

Shortly after the move to paradise I traded in my diesel-guzzling Toyota Hi Lux 4x4 for a three year old Volvo CV70 diesel, four wheel drive estate car, which I purchased from Fawcetts of Newbury, a local Volvo dealership.

This seems to be the ideal fishing/coaching car as there is room for four passengers and all the tackle I always take (those who have fished with me are now imagining something the size of an articulated lorry). The great plus is that in three months motoring it is averaging about forty miles to the gallon.

However last week it started losing lots of brake fluid and wary of the warranty I took it back to the dealer for investigation, only to be told that the clutch slave cylinder was leaking and because it is situated inside the bell housing and therefore part of the gearbox it was not covered by the warranty. As the leaking fluid was likely to have damaged the clutch mechanism the bill could be as high as £2500, this caused me a great deal of concern .

The Service Manager said he would see what he could do and finally arranged for Volvo to pay 40% of the bill and the warranty company and Fawcetts themselves each to pay 20%. I got a new clutch, flywheel and slave cylinder fitted for a little over £500 and during the work they discovered that the four wheel drive system was not supplying power to the rear wheels. Happily this was covered by the warranty and was fixed at the same time. The lack of four wheel drive would explain my problem in the previous post.

I am therefore extremely pleased with the service I have had from Fawcetts of Newbury and pass on my recommendation to you.

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Sometimes I think that anglers should be born with webbed feet (apologies to any readers that were), it has been so wet this month that my beloved river Kennet has been in the fields and most of the Wasing Estate has been inaccessible due to flooded tracks.

My thanks go to John Butler, the head bailiff on the estate, who had to winch my car out of a very muddy track last week due to a failure of my four wheel drive (more about this in a later post

).

I have managed one day barbel fishing since Christmas but my choice of swims was limited by access problems. I ended up in the car park swim above Brimpton bridge with the intention of field testing one of my two new flood rods. I found a pair of two pound test curve Harrison Torrix rods on Ebay and couldn’t resist them, they were less than half the price of new rods and were in mint condition.

I fished one in conjunction with a Relum centrepin (very similar to the Arnold Kingpin and the old Swallow centrepin). I have had this reel for about ten years but have hardly used it because it has been loaded with eighteen pound mono for carp margin snag fishing and the gap between the drum and the back plate discourages the use of light line. With the Kennet in flood I knew I would need to cast a lot of weight so I went to my reel drawer only to find that the line on the Relum was well past it’s sell by date. I replaced the line with a bonded braid made by Spider wire called Ultracast in thirty pound breaking strain, I dislike using ordinary braid on a centrepin because the coarseness of the braid makes Wallace casting difficult and this braid has a smooth coating.

I fully expect some criticism over the use of such a heavy main line but in my mind it was justified due to the strength of the current and the debris that was being washed down, the hook link was a soft twelve pound braid. There is no credit in leaving fish tethered to a bunch of weed and other debris because your end tackle became so heavy during the fight that the main line couldn’t take the strain.

I fished a large open-ended swim feeder weighing six ounces loaded with fishmeal ground bait and mixed pellets with a fifteen millimetre crab flavoured pellet on the hook. These pellets are really strong smelling and just the job for really coloured water. I managed to get the rig to hold the bottom in a small slack on the far bank by holding the rod up high to keep as much line out of the water as possible.

Martin James was fishing up in the weir pool, he came down for a visit and by some amazing coincidence he too was using a Relum centrepin (the only other one I have ever seen), which he praised highly. He had caught one barbel just short of ten pounds from the weir pool and we had quite a long chat.

I tried several other sizes of flavoured marine pellets without success and eventually switched to a ten millimetre Dynamite Source boilie, hair rigged to a size ten hook. This produce a couple of tentative taps and finally in mid afternoon a barbel of just over five pounds (small baits in flood water, haven’t they read the books?). Dusk produced one more bite but the hook hold failed.

The rest of the month has been devoted to tackle repairs and replacements ready for the spring coaching sessions which are programmed to start half way through February. I did start a day’s chub fishing on the river Embourne (a tributary of the river Kennet) but it was spoilt by getting the car stuck and ended fishless.

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Earlier this month I ran my first Pike Handling course of 2008 with two very enthusiastic young lads. Elliott had been given a day out with me for Christmas by his father Clay and due to computer and other logistical problems I had to deliver the card (my partner Jan makes special handmade gift cards for such occasions) to their home address to ensure it was in time for the festive season.

This should have been a piece of cake given modern sat nav technology but unfortunately my TomTom seems to get confused when it hasn’t passed a street light for a couple of hundred yards and as my new student lived in the wilds of darkest Hertfordshire, a simple delivery turned into a major expedition second only to Stanley’s search for Dr. Livingstone. The point the TomTom took me to given the postcode was about three miles driving from the actual house and none of the locals I spoke to had ever heard of the house name.

At one stage (bearing in mind I was in very rural Hertfordshire) I was driving in desperation along a secluded country road when I spotted a woman walking towards me, I put on my best disarming smile so as not to frighten her and stopped to ask for directions. My smile was returned with some enthusiasm but my request for directions wiped it smartly from her face and replaced it with a look of confusion, she was from somewhere in Eastern Europe, at least that’s my guess, as she spoke nor understood a word of English.

I eventually got directions from Clay by phone and delivered the card safely.

As I left home on the day of the proposed course (not as early as I used to have to do when I lived in Shepperton) I was greeted by a howling East wind that took away the feeling in my ears before I got to the car. I met Clay and his son Elliot at Max’s Café at Padworth and was introduced to Elliott’s friend Jack who was to fish with him. Both lads were already keen anglers and asked lots of questions as I explained my plans for the day over a hearty breakfast.

We drove to the Predator lake on the Wasing Estate where Clay left the boys with me and we were faced with a landscape that the East wind had given the appearance of an arctic tundra, all the vegetation or what was left of it, was leaning sharply westwards in the fierce wind and the surface of the lake was being whipped almost to a foam. My heart sank for the lads’ sake as I realised it was going to be a difficult day and any shelter I tried to erect against that wind for warmth, would be blown away by it.

I set up four rods with the usual dead bait legering rigs, a snap tackle attached to an uptrace with a couple of swan shot pinched on to it and the boys remarked on the simplicity of it. I explained that this would do the job and there was no need to make it more complicated, they had been reading too many magazine articles designed to sell tackle rather than inform. The baits were to be frozen coarse fish as I have had hardly any runs on sea baits all season and a couple of years ago I was so confident using frozen sardines that I rarely brought anything else. I also set up one heavy and one light spinning rods and gave the lads a lesson on lure fishing as we waited for the deadbait rigs to catch the fish I desperately hoped would feed. I didn’t expect the lures to catch fish in these conditions and despite the lads’ best efforts I was proved right. I explained that most of the pike would be laid on the bottom and that any fish we did catch would be carrying leeches because of this.

When the two students had lost the feeling in their fingers due to their gloves being taken off to work the lure rods, we huddled together like penguins against the wind and talked some more about pike fishing and the associated tackle. About mid day one of the bite alarms sounded briefly but no run materialised, my hopes raised a little as I desperately did not want these lads to go home disappointed.

About twenty minutes later the same alarm sounded and a firm strike by Elliot resulted in him playing a small, rather dour pike which soon came to my eager landing net and sure enough had four or five leeches clinging to its body.

The fish weighed between four and five pounds but could not have been more welcome had it weighed twenty.

A little while later about mid afternoon the same alarm sounded again and this time Jack hooked and landed a slightly larger fish, again with it’s compliment of leeches.

I would have been more than happy with one pike between them given the conditions and would have cheerfully settled for just that at the beginning of the day,but both of them deserved their first pike and I’m only sorry they were not bigger.

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It’s been a long time since I posted anything here, for which I apologise, but the house move I mentioned at the end of my post in May proved much more fraught than either Jan or I could have imagined. Having sold our house in March we finally moved on the 18th September, only being 100% sure that the move was actually going to happen with less than 24 hours notice. We were very lucky to have a very flexible removal team who put up with two last minute cancellations* and still turned up at silly o’clock on the actual moving day with big smiles and a cheerful attitude. If you need a recommendation for a removal team in the south east of England, let me know.

* Apparently caused by (a) a land registry problem on my vendor’s property, a 300 year old cottage and (b) the fact that said vendors had chosen Northern Rock for their mortgage and our exchange date fell during that week. Quite. I’ll tell you more about this when my therapist says I’m strong enough…

As if that weren’t enough, despite careful planning on our part and repeated phone calls and promises, BT decided to end our broadband service and install it in the new house… weeks before the actual date. Have you ever spent hours on a mobile phone trying to get BT to reconnect a landline? I should have started a swear box that first morning, I’m sure we’d have had enough to buy a second house by the time I was done with them!

I was also spending a lot of time packing and getting rid of furniture, books and various items that I knew we wouldn’t have room for given that we were downsizing in our very own episode of Escape to the Country. Jan listed some furniture on the recycling site reuze.co.uk but I was kept busy delivering furniture and multitudes of boxes to the local charity shops. There were very pleased to receive the first batch. And the second. But by week four I swear they had a permanent lookout on the corner and as soon as my box laden 4x4 turned into Shepperton High Street all 4 charity shops boarded up their doors and windows and refused to take any more stock!

Add to this the fact that I was quite busy coaching both for Slough Council and the NFA/Environment Agency, I just have not had time nor the facility to write some posts.

Anyway, I’m hoping that once this catch-up post is out of the way I’ll be able to write much more regularly in 2008. I’ve set the bureau up in a little corner of the dining room where I can chew the end of a pencil slave over the laptop to produce more regular posts.

Enough of my excuses, let me tell you about the summer’s coaching. As ever, my coaching activities are divided into three areas - council work with disadvantaged young people, private courses for young people and for adults who wish to return to fishing, often after a long break. Each of these areas provides their own very different rewards but when you look at the next photos you will guess why I enjoy the former.

(more…)

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Many thanks to those of you who have emailed to ask if the blog is still active - it is indeed, it’s just that I’m in the middle of a house move (yes, still!) but hope to be back up and running shortly with news of all the summer courses and some tips for the winter.

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As a result of my first visit to the river Kennet this season I felt I had learned some lessons and could not wait to return to put them to the test. On my last visit few of the other anglers I spoke to had caught more than one fish and none as big as the two I caught.

I thought that the larger baits that they were using, such as large pellets and boilies and chunks of luncheon meat did not work as well as the smaller baits I had had such success with. Was the way I was presenting the bait the secret or was it the size of the bait?

I decided to return to the river on Thursday afternoon to try a more traditional method of Barbel fishing but with small baits. I fished one of my favourite swims on the Dalston beat of the Wasing Estate, just upstream of the Rowbarge public house near Midgham station, Woolhampton. Here the river was flowing fast with lots of overhanging trees on the far bank. Definitely not the swim for five and a half pound hook lengths, so I tackled up with my Hexagraph No. 2 with a Purist centrepin and twelve pound line. I chose this rod because it is powerful enough for the twelve pound line, despite it being listed as only one and a quarter pound test curve, and yet soft enough not to pull out the small hooks the bait size would dictate.

The method I chose consisted of a heavy open ended swimfeeder on a sliding paternoster link, a short ten pound flourocarbon hook length with a size twelve heavy forged hook tied with a knotless knot. On the hair I had mounted a small bait band to enable me to fish a banded pellet or a boilie. Perhaps I had better explain this a little further - if you thread your boilie onto a baiting needle (the type with the sharp point and the small barb) and then pull the bait band into the boilie the bait band will reduce in diameter as it stretches and expand again inside the boilie when released, the boilie will stay on the end of the hair. This enables you to fish most small pellets or any size of boilie.

I filled the feeder with small pellets and a few 10mm Dynamite Baits Source boilies with a plug of Halibut Pellet groundbait at each end. After seven or eight casts into a gap in the far bank trees with no bait on the hook I rested the swim for about an hour.

My first cast with an 8mm pellet resulted in a nice roach a few ounces short of a pound and when I rebaited, this time with a 10mm Source boilie, the rod tip started to bounce as the feeder was towed down stream. After a short but vigorous fight I netted this fine barbel of about four pounds.

I rested the swim for another half an hour after feeding a little more and then caught two more roach, followed by this barbel, a little bigger than the last.

The chap in the next swim who had remained fishless using larger pellets and who had acted as my photographer then went home and shortly before dark I caught this last fish about the same size as the first.

I decided to compose this picture in the John Wilson style but it was too dark to find any flowers.

It would seem that small baits will bear some experimentation. I will report back.

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Well the river season has finally started and as I promised in my previous post, my first outing was yesterday on my beloved river Kennet. The river was carrying a lot of extra water due to the recent rain and was nicely coloured, not the usual grey/brown (caused I believe by boats on the canal) but a more healthy, earthy brown due to soil being washed in by the rain.

My enthusiasm soared as I drove from stretch to stretch but all my favourite swims were taken. I have rarely seen the Wasing Estate so busy. I had anticipated this however and my Toyota 4x4 was fully loaded with enough tackle to cover most eventualities (some people will ask “What’s new, isn’t it always?”). I have long had the ambition to fish the Kennet with a pole and maybe catch a barbel on one and so the new pole gear I had bought from Les was also in the back of my “truck”.

It may have been fate but the swim I had always considered most suitable for fishing for barbel on the pole was vacant. This is the swim in the car park just above Brimpton bridge where there is a bit of slack water on the opposite bank on the inside of a bend, here the river narrows to about nine metres, a comfortable length to fish a pole. This part of the river is virtually snag free and provides plenty of room to play a fish. The decision, it seems, had been made for me.

I set up a Browning pole with a power top three fitted with what Les had informed me was a number fourteen elastic, the main line was 6.6lb (.18mm) and the hook lenth 5.5lb (.16mm) both Silstar Match Team. The hook was a size twelve Mustad with a small bait band on a hair tied with a knotless knot. The float was a new experience for me, it was a lollipop type, Desque made by Sensas and carrying 6gms.

I had experimented with this type of float when I used to fish the river Thames from a boat, it is designed to enable you to hold the float still in flowing water presenting the bait stationary and I learned that they have to be over shotted to prevent them riding up in the current, so much so that only the pressure of the current is holding the float on the surface. This is how I set up the float with a large olivette and a string of shot about a foot from the hook with the last six inches of line pinned to the bottom with two number six shot.

I was able to introduce hemp, maggots, casters and small mixed pellets with a bait dropper on this powerful pole set up and I did this regularly over the next hour. Meanwhile I set up another pole with 8-10 elastic and trotted an ordinary river pole float along the crease near the far bank, this provided a lot of fun with the small chub, dace, bleak and gudgeon which readily took my maggot and caster hook baits.

Martin James, who I know from years ago, turned up and checked my ticket and we had a little chat. He expressed the opinion that barbel should not be caught on the pole as landing them takes so long they are exhausted when returned. This caused me some concern as he is a very knowledgeable angler and I respect his opinion, so I resolved to be extra careful when returning any barbel I caught. I am no stranger to nursing barbel in the shallows for up to twenty minutes when caught on normal tackle, particularly in warm weather with low oxygen levels.

Shortly after Martin left I caught a couple of slightly larger chub, still under a pound and this is often the sign that the bigger fish are moving in. I put some more feed into the slack water on the far bank and put an 8mm halibut pellet into the bait band on the Browning pole. I shipped out the rig so that it settled just off the main current and put the pole in the rest.

I was just enjoying not having to hold a heavy pole while trotting and had just lit a cigarette (yes, I know it’s bad for you but you’ve got to die of something!) when the float tore away, the tip of the pole bent alarmingly and metres of elastic shot out. I found myself playing a very powerful fish. It felt much bigger than the three or four pound fish I had hoped for.

There are people who will tell you that playing fish on elastic is easy and that you are nothing more than a counter weight on the other end of the pole but I found that I needed all my skill to keep in touch with this fish and was soon grateful for my stillwater experience with big fish on the pole and for all the advice I have had from good pole anglers of my aquaintance (you know who you are).

I will admit that it seemed to take longer to get some sort of control over this fish than it would have done on my normal barbel float tackle but then the centrepins that I favour are very effective fish playing tools. When I saw the fish for the first time I was amazed at the size and then disaster struck.

Instead of my normal landing net with the heavy Conoflex duty telescopic pole I had a take-apart match landing net pole on which the last foot before the net can be removed after netting to facilitate unhooking the fish over the keepnet. When I put the net into the fast water at my feet in preparation for netting the fish the current removed this last foot, along with my net and swept it down stream. I was then grateful that the beat was so crowded and I was able to call to the chap upstream of me to lend me his net. Thanks Gordon!

The fish weighed 9lb 5ozs and was in beautiful condition if a little slim, certainly she will be double figures in the winter.

I rested her in the landing net in the current prior to weighing her and taking this photograph, mindful of what Martin had said and then quickly carried her in a weighing sling to a shallow stretch just up stream where I expected to have to nurse her back to strength in the current. I had no sooner removed her from the sling in the water and turned her upright and into the current when she tore herself free of my hands and powered upstream and away from me, not what I expected at all. I kept a close watch for a few minutes in case she reappeared, belly up, but saw no more sign of her.

Gordon kept an eye on my tackle while I drove to the nearest tackle shop and bought a new landing net, I had my usual pole in my rod bag. Before I went I put some more bait in with a bait dropper and did the same on my return.

After lunch I had a bit more fun with the other, lighter, pole rig and caught some more small fish and then went back to the slack on the bend with the heavy rig and another halibut pellet. I had fulfilled my ambition to catch a barbel on the pole and did not expect much more from what had already become a “red letter day”. Once again shortly after placing the rig, the elastic was steaming from the arched pole tip and I was into another big fish. This time I had the lessons learned from the last fish in my armoury and was able to make a better job of handling the tackle and the fish was in the net a little sooner. She weighed 9lb 3ozs but was cetainly a different fish as some marks around her anal fin (presumably caused by recent spawning) proved.

I fished on afterwards but pulled the hook out of a fish just before dark but was more than happy with my first day back on the river.

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Since my last post I have been working two or three days a week and have done three outings with my fellow coaches from the NFA. One was an open day for Farnham Angling Society at their excellent coaching lake at Badshot Lea. I coached at this venue last year and really enjoyed it and it was just as good this year. This is a very forward thinking angling club who look after their juniors and manage their waters well. The other outings were at Judges Lake, Winchester run by Eastleigh and District Angling Club and at South Hill Park, Bracknell and run by Bracknell Herons. Two more forward thinking angling clubs. Well done, lads!

Meanwhile Long Moor Farm fishery is still providing the goods for my students with small tench and carp.

Any float fishing method works and almost any bait will catch, I have even caught carp on floating bread on a pole as a demonstration. Usually sweetcorn does the trick and the carp have a tendency to take it on the drop, but maggots or soft hooker pellets will also work. Hemp and trout pellets are banned but I feed the swim with carp pellets and maggots at first and then loose feed with corn. Everyone catches plenty of fish and as you can see from the pictures, this little lad is really pleased with himself.

These fish are usually caught on a five metre whip with no elastic and a three pound hook length and you can see from the next pictures how much joy they bring.

Many of these students have never caught fish before or nothing as big as these and I get as much pleasure from it as they do.

Twynersh is still featuring in a big way on my coaching programme, particularly when I have larger groups. I have been using Lake Three again after a few years now that the landscaping work is finished and it is once again the site of many students first sucesses.

An Asian familly had a great day on one of my beginners courses, lots of fish were caught by everyone, both roach and perch, from this tiny specimen, his first fish.

To this slightly larger perch.

Roach were showing as well

Then this monster perch which weighed two pounds twelve ounces.

A great family day out and this little fellow will remember this fish for the rest of his life.

Lake Three at Twynersh has also been producing some nice bream which can be caught over a bed of ground bait, pellets, sweetcorn and hemp and these fish took sweetcorn and maggot cocktail.

As I write this the river season has started but the amount of rain we have had recently promises to make things difficult. I am waiting until Monday to make my start so that I have a better chance of getting my beloved river Kennet to myself. I’ll let you know how I get on.

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This month has been taken up with more visits to Longmoor Farm with various students. The venue never fails to produce lots of small tench and carp and has proved to be a real find. Many thanks to my mate Clive Williams who is a leading light in Taywood Angling Society for putting me on to it.

On 11th May I went up to Yorkshire to help out at the Pickering Game Fair. Graham Walker and his wife Anne extended their kind hospitality to me for the weekend and I had a great time and was made to feel really welcome. The weather forecast had been terrible and I was prepared for a two day soaking but the rain held off except for Friday night, until just after we had packed up on the Sunday. Derek North and I were suposed to be giving demonstrations on a tiny, fish free pond but most of the time it was full of spaniels and labradors doing gun dog trials. I had intended to give a demonstration of Wallace casting and lure fishing but can you imagine the result of me fishing a surface jerk bait with all those gun dogs about?As a dog lover myself I daren’t even think about it.

As you can see from the picture we were not exactly overworked, being sited well away from the main arena.

I had two what I call returners courses this month, these are run for anglers who fished when they were young and then often discovered girls, a career or had a familly. They try to return to the sport, often twenty or so years later only to find everything has changed. I try to reintroduce these anglers back to the sport by showing them that very little has really changed, just some of the tackle and the associated terminology. It is often just a matter of confidence - a thing that sometimes plays a greater part in our sport than is realised.

The pictures above show one such angler, Adam, who was able to catch a number of these roach from Lake one at Twynersh. It was a shame that a cold snap the night before had put the carp and tench down. The weather has been very changeable all month and so for the second course I abandoned my usual venue and the hope of bonus carp. I took Andrew to the match lake at Twynersh in the hope of some bream. After a period of reckless ground baiting with my favourite mix as we set up and then more careful feeding as he fished, he ended the day with fifteen bream to four pounds.

I have fished Marsh Farm three times but due to the changeable weather conditions I was unable to time my visits with the feeding times of the big crucian carp but I did catch some smaller ones and some tench.

My good mate Les, known here as Weller of the yard, has finally moved to Northumberland where he tells me there is very little coarse fishing and so he has sold me two of his match poles and his Boss box. Another steep learning curve for me and Les will have to learn to “chuck fluff”.

My move to the Kennet valley seems to be going ahead, my house is under offer and the offer we have made on a house in the village of Kingsclere has been accepted, I found this delightful village a few years ago whilst looking for a fishery close to Newbury for coaching with E2E and over the last couple of years I have revisited Frobury Farm quite a few times. This will place me within fifteen minutes drive of the Wasing Estate. Roll on!

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One of my previous students, Joe Perdoni, has asked the following question and I feel that it deseves more attention than a quick reply under the comments section.

Martin,
What is a good set up when ledger fishing for carp near a large patch of lily pads (line strength etc..) Should you always fish around the outside edge or (and excuse me if this is a bit of stupid question to ask) is their a set up you can you to cast right in amongst the lilies without getting snagged up?
Thanks
Joe

This will depend on the size of the carp you are expecting to hook but I would be reluctant to go below twelve pound main line, preferably fifteen and beware of these fine braided hook lengths as they are not as abrasion resistant as the manufacturers would have us believe.

I would advise that you tackle this type of swim with a heavy float rod so that as soon as the bite develops you are in contact with the fish and can begin steering the fish out of the lilly patch, straightaway, before it realises it is hooked. This is particularly effective at short ranges where you can lift the fish’s head to stop it diving into the roots.

The roots of a lilly patch are your main problem, the lilly pads and stalks are quite fragile and will not give you much trouble on fifteen pound line but deep underneath them are the rhizomes which link bunches of pads and these can be as thick as your arm. If a decent carp gets your line under one of these then you will be lucky to get it out.

If you must leger then use a line clip on the rod to stop the fish taking line and fish with the line very tight, even with the rod tip bent, but sit close to your rod or you will lose it. Fish the out skirts of the patch when possible and try to draw the fish out by loose feeding or groundbait prior to fishing.

If the fish will not leave the sanctuary of the lillies at any cost then putting your lead and baited hook into a pva bag will prevent snagging the pads on the cast but I would resort to the following set up.

Pick a patch of lillies less than two rod lenghts from the bank adjacent to plenty of bankside cover to conceal your presence. Prior to fishing, carefully remove a pad or two just in from the edge of the patch, to give a hole for your float to sit in and to enable your baited hook to get to the bottom, then prebait for a couple of days with bait samples.

The rod I would use is a Harrison “Stepped up, Stepped up” float rod which will handle twelve pound line comfotably and is twelve feet long with a through action, coupled with a robust centrepin loaded with twelve pound line. Use a strong forged hook no smaller than size six under a small pole float, fix enough weight to sink it six inches from the hook and set the float so that the tip is just under the surface. When and only when, the float rises above the surface, strike quickly(ignore any dips or sideways movement of the float) and hold. .Once hooked try to lift the fish whilst steering it out of the lillies. The centrepin will allow you, if you are brave enough, to take a couple of turns of line from the fish while you are lifting it and this will sometimes make the difference.

This fish was taken from a frightfully snaggy swim in the corner of Split Lakes on the Cemex complex at Yateley using similar tactics, it weighed twenty one pounds.

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On Wednesday I took a young lad from Slough back to Longmoor Farm with the promise to try and catch him some bigger carp. I decided to try fishing up in the water instead of on the bottom and fed quite heavilly and often with maggot and low oil carp pellets. We started with a little revision on the short, elasticated pole and he was soon playing a three pound carp which had taken his bait on the drop.

He continued to catch smaller carp and lots of tench and because of the way I was feeding most of them were caught up in the water, taking the bait on the drop. We then switched to rod and line, a waggler rod, four pound main line and three pound hook length. The result was the same but a different experience for him and a slightly better carp.

This was a pretty Common Carp at five pounds and his biggest fish of the day.

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Last week in between coaching sessions I decided that I needed some tench fishing away from my usual coaching haunts. I chose to visit Bury Hill Fisheries and fish the main lake as a result of an email from Bury Hill full of glowing reports of feeding tench. The first of May found me on the long bank of the old lake just after seven thirty armed with two light carp rods and a steeped up float rod, intending to fish any combination in pairs. The day ticket for two rods was £17, which I thought a little steep but the old lake is a very pleasant environment in which to fish and I have had some nice tench in the past.

One of the legering rods was set up with a semi fixed heavy open ended feeder with a short hook length, bolt rig style and the bait was a hair rigged 10mm. Source boilie from Dynamite Baits on a size 10 hook. The feeder was filled with the same small boilies and ground bait. The second leger rod had a much lighter open ended feeder on a paternoster link, with a three feet hook length and a size fourteen hook. This rig was fished in conjunction with maggots.

I fished the float rod with a waggler and a bunch of maggots on the bottom about two rod lengths out next to some lillies. I put a bed of groundbait next to the lillies first thing, intending to leave the float fishing for later and filled the feeder on the first rod with boilies and groundbait. I made eight or ten casts with this rod to the tip of a patch of lillies about twenty five yards away, filling the feeder each time, to put down a bed of bait.

The groundbait was a mix of two parts Expo to one part Marine Pellet Groundbait and two parts brown crumb. Hemp, pellets, sweetcorn and dead maggots were added to the mix.

I cast out the first rod with the semi fixed rig and as I was filling the lighter feeder on the other rod the bobbin shot to the first ring and I was playing a bream about two pounds with the boilie, still on its hair hanging from the side of it’s mouth. As bream were not my target I decided to rest this side of the swim and try the maggot feeded on the other side. No bites were forthcoming here, so I decided to float fish.

Bream nearly every cast both on the float and on the legered boiles, I must have had twenty five up to about four pounds but no tench. I was able to unhook most of them in the water from the edge of the fishing platform to cause them the least possible stress and avoid coating myself, my landing net and unhooking mat in bream slime. I have never been a fan of stillwater bream but I suppose it is better than blanking!

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You may have noticed that I have not written anything here since the beginning of March but I have been quite busy with coaching. To cap it all the hard drive on my computer packed up and had to be replaced. Fortunately my partner’s friend was able to recover most of my data but some pictures I was intending to publish here were lost.

We have also finally put our house on the market with a view to making the move to the Kennet valley I have long promised myself. This involved a bit of decorating at home and a lot of travelling to view potential new homes. Much has been achieved but there is still a lot to be done.

I have, as mentioned earlier, still been coaching with some great results and have started using two new fisheries. The Royal Berkshire Fisheries that provided me with a two pound roach this winter is the first to be included in my coaching stable. It is located much closer to Slough, where many of my students live and has a good head of small to medium sized roach, ideal for the less experienced anglers to develop their techniques on. These fish are rarely troubled by anglers, as most who frequent the fishery are only interested in the carp and are fairly easy to catch.

That is not to say that I have abandoned my old favourite venue Twynersh although its depth makes for difficult waggler fishing it has been producing some nice bream for my students.

I am not a fan of still water bream myself but they are great fish for my students to catch in that they are not likely to break lighter hook lengths and embarass anyone - also they look massive with a young lad stood behind them.

David caught this fish with an six meter take apart pole with a number eight elastic and a two and a half pound hook length. It weighed an ounce or so over seven pounds. Well done David!

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As part of the preparations for selling my house my tackle store and workshop needed to be tidied out and I asked my longest serving student Tayler Clark to help me. He has done so before and is a pleasure to work with and he left with a lot of tackle, the sort of stuff you don’t want to throw out due to sentimental reasons but never use anymore. I also promised him a day’s carp fishing, so a few days later I took him to Royal Berkshire Fisheries and whilst I float fished for some more big roach, he ledgered pellets for the carp. His casting is now so accurate that he was able to fish right up against an island and was catching fish all day.

I have also had a couple of days at Marsh Farm. The first day produced a couple of crucian carp to about two and a half pounds and three tench, the biggest being over six pounds.

The second day was a disaster, one decent bite from a good crucian which shed the hook and a few small rudd. That’s why we call it “fishing” and not “catching”.

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I mentioned that I was now using two new fisheries for coaching - the second is near Arborfield Garrison near Wokingham. The garrison has many memories for me as at the tender age of sixteen years I left home and joined the Army to start an engineering apprenticeship at the Apprentice College there. This monstrosity has since been torn down but the scars are still in my memory. I completed my training next door at the School of Electronic Engineering and revisited there on two more postings for courses during my thirteen years service. It was during one of these courses that I first fished my beloved river Kennet.

The new fishery is called Longmoor Farm and is located on the Nine Mile Ride. It is a small lake set in a woodland setting and is stocked with small tench and carp and when I say stocked I mean STOCKED! It’s fish soup.

Everyone I have taken there has caught lots of fish and they take almost anything you put on the hook. One of the lads even caught a tench with no bait, just a bare hook!

You are not going to trouble the angling press with your specimens from this venue and I don’t expect to bump into Terry Hearn or Chris Yates there any time soon but if you need to catch fish all day then this is the place for you. I usually set my students up with a short pole with a number eight elastic or a five metre whip with no elastic (preferably the latter) and a three pound hook length. They all love it!

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I have also held two courses at my old favourite venue Twynersh, one for a chap who fished as a lad and wanted to return to our beloved sport and one for a father and son duo, both beginners.

Paul Wiseman tried to return to fishing after twenty odd years and found he no longer “spoke the language” everything has changed so much since he last fished. He soon found that he had not forgotten as much as he had thought and I was soon able to bring him up to speed. I showed him most of the basic methods and he caught lots of roach and rudd. Unfortunately the previous night there had been a sharp drop in temperature and the carp and tench were less than enthusiastic about feeding. He did manage a couple of each but only small fish.

Paul Clabburn and his son Tom were both beginners and as usual I started with the pendulum exercise until they had learned about the mechanics of handling a fishing rod and then they fished with short poles with number eight elastics (I used the elsaticated rods rather than the whips in case of the larger bream). Dad was first off the mark.

Tom soon caught up and the element of competition between students that often produces such good results started to develop.

Tom finally topped his Dad with an unexpected pike which he was brave enought to hold for this picture.

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We have certainly been blessed with a mild winter this time round and I wondered if the tench in a local shallow lake would be feeding early this year. All of nature seems to have been put out of phase by the unusual warm winter and it was with some hope that I arranged to visit the private tench lake in Surrey. As only one bank was fishable I opted for my favourite swim, even though it meant fishing into a cold strong wind.

I set up two Harrison stepped up float rods both with centrepins loaded with six pound line. Both rigs were set up to fish wagglers but one had a size fourteen hook for maggot and hooker pellets and the other had a size eight for a special bait. The latter hook was a new pattern I was trying, being lighter in the wire than most size eight hooks commonly sold for the carp hauling market, the Kamasan 983 is a very strong hook but made of finer wire to give lightness and a very sharp point. The barb is very small and easily crushed down.

The special bait was prawns which I knew had been sucessful there in the past but I chose a new twist - I fed chopped “Tesco frozen value prawns” but I was going to fish bits of king prawn on the hook. The size of the hook also gave me an option of fishing a sizeable lump of paste.

I was surprised to see that my favourite lilly patch had not totally died out during the winter and this saved me looking for the sunken remains with a plummet. I fed the chopped prawns with hemp to one side of it and maggots, hemp and small pellets to the other.

Most of the bites came to the pieces of king prawn and although I missed more than my share due to the problems caused by the strong wind, I ended the day with four tench and a bonus bream, the latter took a small hooker pellet. Not bad for the last week in February.

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Yesterday I went back to the swims that Chris Clark had shown me at Royal Berkshire Fisheries but this time I left my pole fishing kit at home. I wanted to catch some more big roach but this time on a rod and centrepin combination as the big roach seem to inhabit the margins on this fishery and this makes it suitable for the centrepin approach that I so love.

I set up the Harrison 15ft GTI match rod with a lightweight Youngs centrepin loaded with two and a half pound Maxima, the float was a Drennan stillwater blue carrying 3BB and a size twenty hook to a two pound hook length completed the set up. I intended to fish single maggot or caster so I began by feeding hemp, maggot and caster a little at a time as I set up and for a half an hour whilst I had a cup of tea and a smoke.

I was fishing about five feet deep two rod lengths out very close to an over hanging bush and I had set the float to fish with about six inches of line on the bottom. The casters had been frozen so very few were suitable for hook bait (the freezing seems to make most of them burst) but they were fine for loose feed and I was catching straight away with maggot or caster on the hook. The small fish showed first but clouds of mud in the shallow water warned me that the weather was mild enough for the carp to feed and sure enough I hooked something that took me straight into the roots, my tackle being too fine to stop it.

I set up my Harrison Interceptor stepped up float rod with a youngs purist centrepin loaded with six pound Maxima and started to feed a little sweetcorn with my loose feed. The result was this common carp which put up an excellent fight in such a confined swim. It took double sweetcorn on a lift rig, a method I use a lot for tench but it works on carp as well.

I switched back to the lighter rig with double bronze maggot and soon started to catch the better roach, the best of which weighed a pound and three quarters.

Just before dusk as I was thinking about packing up I caught a perch that weighed exactly two pounds, good fun on light tackle. I am beginning to like this fishery and hope to be able to include it in my coaching portfolio.

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I have just read this article in my local newspaper, the Staines Guardian.

“An illegal angler has been banned from fishing for two-and-a-half years.

Khan Marshall, 21, of Temple Dene Avenue, Staines, received the fishing ban when he appeared at Woking Magistrates’ Court last Friday.

He was also fined £200 for leaving a rod unattended and a further £200 for fishing with three rods but only holding a single licence and was ordered to pay £70 costs to the Environment Agency for both cases.
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Marshall was banned from fishing by the court from holding a rod licence after magistrates took into account a string of prosecutions dating back to 2002.

The court heard that on July 10 last year Marshall had left his rod unattended at Twynersh Fishing Complex in Chertsey, Surrey, contrary to a national bylaw.

A month later on August 13 Environment Agency enforcement officers discovered Marshall at the same fishery using three rods but with only a single rod licence which contravened the Salmon and Freshwater Fisheries Act 1975.

Fisheries enforcement officer Graham Haynes, said: “Mr Marshall has a long history of floating the laws of fishing in this country.

From his first warning letter in 2002 he has appeared before magistrates three times for failing to hold a £24 rod licence and giving false names and addresses to officers, racking up a total of £650 in fines and costs.

“It is very rare for an angler to be banned from holding a rod licence, but this extreme measure was taken because of Mr Marshall’s persistent offending. If he is caught fishing within those two-and-a-half years he can not only expect his equipment to be confiscated but he will also find himself with another day in court.

“Those who fish without a licence are not only risking hefty fines, they are also cheating their fellow anglers and the future of angling. Fisheries laws are in place to protect the environment, so they must be adhered to.”

The Environment Agency puts all money raised from rod licences straight back into fisheries work, which helps to protect the environment.

Rod licences can be purchased from post offices around the country or for a small charge they can be bought over the phone 0870 166 2662 or from the Environment Agency’s website.”

Well done the Environment Agency for carrying out what must be a difficult and thankless job. I spent half my life in law enforcement as an officer in the Metropolitan Police Force/Service so I speak with some knowledge.

I would, however like to draw my readers’ attention to one particular paragraph.

“Those who fish without a licence are not only risking hefty fines, they are also cheating their fellow anglers and the future of angling. Fisheries laws are in place to protect the environment, so they must be adhered to.”

Angling is a sport and therefore is controlled by a code of rules that enables all anglers to enjoy their pastime on the same level playing field, the use of dynamite (not the bait manufcturers’ product but the explosive) would produce more fish but we operate within these rules to make it fair for other anglers and our quarry. You cannot choose which of these rules to obey, if you wish to be considered an angler and enjoy the benefits provided then you must obey them all.

I also enjoyed the following paragraph.

“Fisheries enforcement officer Graham Haynes, said: “Mr Marshall has a long history of floating the laws of fishing in this country.”

I hope than non anglers will appeciate this inadvertently appropriate typo!

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I have been coaching Tayler Clark off and on for nearly eight years and I have been fortunate to watch him develop into a fine young angler. I had promised him a pike handling course on the Predator Lake on the Wasing Estate over the Christmas holidays but with the loss of my mum this never happened. Last week he called me to tell me he was about to start his half term holiday and would like to go p