I am about to change both the format and the subject content of this blog so I think what I need is a mission statement. One of our transatlantic cousins once said, “Without a mission statement it is difficult to remember,when you’re up to your arse in alligators, that the purpose of the exercise was to drain the swamp.”

To be honest, the aim of this blog is to generate publicity for my coaching and guiding business. I am not arrogant enough to think that my musings are important enough to publish without an ulterior motive but hopefully some people may find them informative or amusing. Existing anglers who wish to teach their own children may also find some of my comments useful, since a secondary aim of my blog is to popularise the sport of angling and encourage more young people to fish. Writing a regular journal will also help me marshal my thoughts and monitor my own exploits. I have kept a private fishing log in the past but abandoned it after it became monotonous and felt a little like “navel gazing”. Hopefully, my writings here will generate some comments from anyone unfortunate enough to stumble across it and prevent this journal from becoming too self absorbed. Sometimes I will be deliberately controversial - but I will never write anything I don’t believe in principle.

Presumably you are reading this for reasons of your own. Please let me know you are out there and feel free to make comments or ask questions. It is not just up to me to shape this blog I am relying on some input to help me. If you are an angler who has young children and you are keen to share your hobby with them, let me start this new format with a warning!

I have two grown up sons, both of whom I wished to encourage to take up angling when they were children. Neither of them now fish and this is because I made certain mistakes. These errors have enabled me to formulate a coaching programme to prevent other potential anglers missing out on this wonderful sport. The major mistake I made was to take my boys fishing with me, and as I became more involved in my own sport I tended to pay less attention to them. I now never fish when I am out with students, this way I am able to give them my full attention - as they are entitled to expect.

Teaching a group of youngsters at Twynersh fishery, Chertsey
Teaching a group of youngsters at Twynersh fishery (Chertsey) in the summer of 1999

The basis of all my coaching and guiding is that fishing is fun and when dealing with young beginners this is an especially important concept. The younger the student, as a rule, the shorter their attention span, I can sit and watch a motionless float for eight hours but a five years old is liable to be bored to distraction after forty minutes. Keep the lessons as short as is practical and as interesting as possible.

I will only take a maximum of four students on my courses so that I can give each one as much of my time as possible and provide stimulation when the sport is slow and their attention begins to wane. Can you imagine how discouraging would it be for a student to see the coach catching fish after fish while they are struggling to get a bite? To prevent this happening I even remove the bait when I am demonstrating techniques with the tackle in the water.

This point was brought home to me in my first year of coaching when I was teaching a student how to trot a float on a river for barbel. He had just spent an hour running a float down a stretch of river under my close supervision with appropriate encouragement and with me feeding the swim for him on a regular basis. The critical skill in this type of fishing is to control the speed at which the float travels so that the bait is presented in a natural manner and I was sure that the reason he had not had a bite was that he was not holding the float back enough. Despite me telling him to slow the float down he seemed reluctant to really hold the float back and so I took the rod from him explaining that I would show him what I meant. Yes, you have already guessed what happened, half way down the swim just as I was explaining that the float had to be held back like so, it disappeared and I found myself playing a barbel that turned out to be about seven pounds. I turned to hand him the rod so that he could play the fish only to see him walking up the bank in a dispirited manner.

He admitted afterwards that me hooking the fish after he had tried so hard had nearly convinced him he was never going to master that method.

I’m glad to say that he did.

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