The Fishing Coach

I just received this picture by email - just goes to show what you can do with a digital camera and some editing software! Tempted? Me? Nah.

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On Saturday I was out on my travels locally and I spotted a new sign saying The Bait Warehouse in a local garden centre. It was late afternoon and the shop was shut, so I was unable to visit until this morning. It is situated in the Bugle Nurseries, Upper Halliford Road, Near Sunbury, Middlesex. YW17 8SN and has only opened this week. They sell boilies, pellets, particles, groundbait mixes and additives and will be of particular interest to any local carp or barbel fishermen.

The prices seem reasonable, certainly cheaper than the local tackle shops and they soon hope to be selling maggots and terminal tackle such as hooks, rigs and leads. It will also be possible to sell your unwanted tackle here, with them acting as agents for you rather than buying the stuff from you. I will definately be back for some pellets.

Typical prices are £80 for 10kg of Mainline boilies and £39 for 25kg of 4-8mm halibut pellets with betaine. Dried hemp comes in 20 kg bags and costs £18.30 or £23.50 ready prepared. Their telphone number is 01932 788478.

I also visited The Tackle Exchange in Walton, a place to which I have contributed more than my share of their profits and spoke to the owner, another Martin. He told me about some deals he was offering on some end of line Fox barbel rods but I managed to resist this time as I am not in the market for any more barbel rods. Should you want a Fox Barbel twin tip that normally retails at £100 he is selling the last few at £59.99 or two for £100 or for the same price you can have the Barbel Float rod or two.

He also has some Shakeapeare Odessa Avon twin tips which should be £66 for £28.99 and some Valour match rods-which I use for coaching, excellent rods- for £29.99. All seem very good deals if you haven’t got to have the very latest , this years models. His telephone number is 01932 242377, he also has an excellent selection of centrepin reels and as usual tried to sell me another one. Not his time Martin, anyone would think I’m a “tackle tart”!

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I had a busy day yesterday and spent the afternoon an evening in my beloved Kennet valley without even wetting a line. The Wasing Estate syndicate had their AGM in the evening, more about that later, and I wanted to look at a fishery in Kingsclere in the afternoon. I have been asked by Connexions e2e to provide four days coaching in May for a group of young people and as they are based in the Reading/Newbury area, Twynersh is to far to travel.

I found Frobury Farm S.C. in a free fisheries guide I got from Improve Your Coarse Angling magazine. I had a bit of trouble finding the place but then I am not familliar with the area. It used to be a farm but it has now taken on the appearence of a rural industrial eatate with a rather nice house in the middle. It is owned and run by Paul ‘Alfie’ Oldring, British Champion and ‘British Mini- Commonwealth’ Gold medallist clay pigeon shooter. He has represented England for 26 years, competing in European and World Championships for Great Britain for 15 years. No shooting is done on the site and it comprises seven ponds, the largest being about one acre.

Mr Oldring was out when I arrived so I had a walk round and completed my risk assessment. It is not a pretty place and I would not normally fish it myself, but it fitted the bill perfectly for my proposed purpose. It has plenty of space for coaching, lots of fish of several species and easy car parking. Several carp were caught during my visit.

Speaking to several anglers and to Mr Oldring I heard that large quantities of roach, rudd and small tench are also present. Just what I need for the young people.

In the evening I made my way to the Liberty Ballroom in New Greenham Park for the AGM. This place used to be the base for the american cruise missile in the eighties and I have memories of being bussed down from London to assist the local police to “control” the “peace women” who were camped here in apparent squalour as a protest. All this has changed and our american cousins have gone home and all that is left is a large sprawling industrial estate.

I have one fond memory of this place from my time in the police force. When we were sent away from our usual station, the regulations required that we were given a meal to prevent us from claiming expenses. Since the quality of this meal could vary from average to dreadful and was not something you looked forward to, these meals were refered to as “force feeding”, i.e. being fed by the police force. Often the more obvious meaning was closer to the truth.

The first time we were sent as “aid to Thames Valley” as it was called, we were surprised to be taken to Newbury Race Course at lunch time. Here our hosts, unfamilliar with feeding large numbers of visiting police officers, had laid on private caterers. In their inexperience they had presumably booked the caterers usually used by the race course and we were fed like kings. I remember in particular one meal of braised steak casserole with onions and vegetables. The steak was so tender you could eat it with a spoon and the taste stays with me to this day.

As you can imagine, everyone volunteered to go back again next time but after about a week the finance department must have received the bills and, surprise, surprise, the Metropolitan Police started to supply their own caterers. All good things come to an end.

Anyway, last night’s Wasing AGM was held in a ballroom built during the American era and the toilets were still marked “GI Joes” and “GI Janes”. After an introduction and reports, presentations were made for specimen fish caught in the previous season. Next followed a talk and slide show by the current British barbel record holder, Tony Gibson.

This guy is not just a barbel fisherman and some of the slides he showed of the other fish he has caught were almost as impressive as the one above. This fish weighed twenty pounds six ounces, that’s huge when you think that fifteen years ago the record was fourteen pounds six ounces and that had stood for a hundred years.

After an excellent buffet another talk and slide show was given by Martin James who I know from the Barbel Society. As well as being a highly respected author and broadcaster, he is also a great raconteur. Crownmead Angling Centre from Thatcham were also in attendance and managed to get me to part with some money for blood worm hook pellets which I will try for the tench next week, if it warms up a bit.

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About ten months ago I was contacted by a man who said he was from IWTV (International Web Television) and asked me if I would be interested in making some coaching video clips. Well, anyone who knows me will tell you how fond I am of a good “wind up”, you can have a guess at the conversation that ensued.

Me  Yes of course, who is this?
Him  I’m from IWTV.
Me  Look I know this is a wind up, who is this, is it you Roy?
Him   No it’s real. I’m from International Web Television we’re starting a new web site for sports coaches and I am offering you the chance to broadcast your coaching techinques worldwide and share information with other coaches.
Me  Meincken, this is not going to work, I’ve seen through your game!
Him  No this is a genuine offer, you will be paid when people view your clips!

Give the bloke his due, he didn’t get flustered, but he must have wondered if he was dealing with someone with a tin foil lining to his hat. (It prevents the aliens from monitoring your brain waves.) (Did I say that out loud?)

Eventually he managed to explain and even sent me a confirmation email. All I had to do was to make ten short video clips showing how to do the tasks that I would normally teach my students and send them in. They would load them onto the website and take care of all the publicity before the launch. When the site went live and people started viewing them I would get a small fee each time. He then dropped the bombshell, they were going live in six weeks.

I tried to find someone who had a video camera I could borrow and was getting desperate when I mentioned it to Les Weller (late of the Yard), I soon found that I had not only a camera but a cameraman, producer, director and soundman. I then had a couple of frantic weeks writing my scripts, drawing up the story boards and collecting the props. Its surprising how you fall in with the jargon when you’re in the movie business, but I still don’t know why Ken Morse is the only one with a “rostrum camera” and I’m not sure I want to know what a “best boy” is.

The day came for the shoot and I was disapointed to find that Les had not booked Shepperton Studios, which happens to be just round the corner from where I live but that we were “on location” in his conservatory. I was sat behind a table facing Les with the camera and his large television next to him was serving as a monitor. I can’t tell you how disconcerting it is to watch yourself trying to do something totally alien like talking to an inanimate object and keeping to a script while watching yourself, twice life size, on television.

Needless to say it took a lot longer than we had imagined and we eventually abandoned the script having completed only ten clips, instead of the intended twenty I had written. Les was a pillar of patience and self control, as always, but I am still in therapy and watching It’ll Be Alright On The Night with some trepidation.

Almost at the deadline the clips were sent off and we waited nervously to hear of the launch date. I sent a few emails, received reassuring telephone calls but to be honest I’d almost forgotten all about it. Then yesterday I got an email out of the blue announcing that the site would be launched today.

If you want to witness my humiliation have a laugh, go to IWTV. On the left hand side of the front page click on Country and then on Angling. Select my name - Martin Porter - from the All Coaches drop down menu and then it’s up to you.

In the beginning I was told it would be free for the public to view and that advertising would cover all the costs but this has not worked out. So unfortunately you will be asked to pay a small fee to view. It’s currently £1.95 to watch 25 clips from across the entire catalogue of videos. This can be paid via PayPal or “SMS” (some new-fangled mobile phone technology I believe). Please don’t feel obliged to do so, but I hope somebody does, as us artistes need some recognition.

BAFTAs here I come!

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On Tuesday, BBC Radio 4 broadcast the second in an excellent two-part series, The Scars of Evolution, the like of which make them worth the entire licence fee on their own. Part 2 is still available on “Listen Again” on the BBC’s listen again page.

The two programs explore the theory that at some time in man’s development we went through a semi-aquatic stage. This is better explained in the article Aquatic Ape Theory (AAT), summarising Elaine Morgan’s theory and you might want to read that before listening to the programme.

AAT points out that most of the “enigmatic” features of human physiology, though rare or even unique among land mammals, are common in aquatic ones. If we postulate that our earliest ancestors had found themselves living for a prolonged period in a flooded, semi-aquatic habitat, most of the unsolved problems become much easier to unravel. There is powerful geological evidence to support this hypothesis, and nothing in the fossil record that is inconsistent with it.

Perhaps this explains our fascination with the water in general and angling in particular?

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Welcome to visitors from the Carp Anglers Group Forum!

A couple of years ago I took Robert Green out for a day’s float fishing for barbel on the river Kennet and taught him to use a centrepin reel to trot a float. Great fun was had by all and a few fish were caught as well.

If you think carp fight, wait until you hook one of these in fast flowing water!

As I have mentioned most of my fishing for pleasure is done on rivers with the exception of some early season tench fishing, so when I started coaching young people, the first question my students asked was “what’s your biggest carp?”.

At the time it was a twelve pound common from the river Thames caught on chub tackle, an achievement in itself, but this did not impress these lads . They had been brought up on a diet of “big fat twenties” in the angling press and although their ability to guess the size of a fish later proved flawed, were convined that many of them had achieved that magic figure. Desperate times require desperate measures, so I went and sought advice from Ian Welch of RMC who suggested trying Split Lake on their Yateley complex. The result was a twenty two pound grass carp on a floating dog biscuit and a twenty one pound mirror from a real ” bird cage” of a swim on float fished boilies. Even on the fifteen pound line that I was using I would never have landed a barbel of the same size from that swim.

These fish gained me a little more “street cred”. I was very fortunate to have such fishing on my door step.

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I am writing this post in answer to a comment kindly left by Nigel Punter and I will need more space than is available on the comments page. Nigel asked about fishing for tench using the lift method. Firstly I will explain why the method was developed, then how to implement the method and how it solves the problem.

Often when float fishing for tench you will experience lots of little lifts and dips of the float and sometimes the float will move sideways without either dipping or even tilting. It would be a mistake to try and strike at these small indications and to do so would be likely to frighten any fish in your swim. Often these ditherings of the float are accompanied by strings of tench bubbles and are therefore unlikely to be caused by small fish mouthing the bait.

Many anglers assume that the tench are being finicky and are playing with the bait, perhaps frightened by the weight of the tell-tale shot. So they reduce the size of the tell-tale shot or use a smaller hook and bait and the problem gets worse. The reason for this is that the tench are not being finicky or playing with the bait, but are in fact feeding confidently. To understand what is happening we must look at how the tench feeds. Its mouth is not totally underslung like so many bottom feeding fish and to take food off the bottom the tench must tilt its body into a head down position. To do this the fish fans its pectoral fins to hold it in position and the wash from these fins can blow the baited hook away from the tench’s mouth. The fish will sometimes follow the bait in an attempt to take it and cause the float to move across the surface without tilting or dipping. Eventually if it fails to catch it, the fish will go and find something else to eat.

As you will probably have worked out for yourself by now the solution is not to reduce the weight near the hook but to increase it, to anchor the bait so the fish can catch it. This is what the lift method is designed to do and the way it achieves this will seem a little brutal to some people.

The float I use is a short piece of peacock quill and for those of you learning the method it is best to use an unpainted piece. Attach it to the line by means of a single shot length of silicone tube slipped over the bottom of the quill only so it is fixed waggler fashion. Next, pinch on a swan shot or an AAA shot about three inches from the hook (told you it was brutal didn’t I?) Now, using scissors, trim the top of the quill until it is just sunk by the shot. Then adjust the float so that it is about twenty percent over depth. In five feet it would be set at six feet deep.

Put on your required bait –big baits work best at this time of year– and cast beyond where you want to fish. Put the rod into two rod rests, so that the butt is close to your chair and can be easily reached when you are sitting down. With the tip of the rod just under water, the float should now be laying flat beyond the baited area. Now you gently wind in the line until the float cocks over the area you want to fish and the tip can just be seen.

If the fish is feeding really confidently, it will pick up the bait and tilt its body back to the horizontal to eat it. The fish will not feel very much of the weight of that great big swan shot as most of it is being supported by the buoyancy of the peacock quill but it will cause the quill to rise and often lay flat.Some times the float will just sail away Either indication should be met with a firm strike.

Note that those sail away bites are not caused by a confidently feeding fish but by one in a panic. The confident fish just picks up the bait and eats it, causing very little movement of the float in many cases.

To test this theory, throw some breadcrumbs on your lawn and sit back and watch the birds. The first sparrow will arrive and after making sure it is safe to do so, will fly down and grab a piece of bread and fly away immediately with it. When it has returned a couple of times and done the same thing, it will decide it is safe and will sit on the lawn to eat the bread where it finds it.

The big shot near the hook will have the effect of amplifying the small movements but if you have the float set properly then the fish will never have to lift the full weight of it.

I hope that this is clear, don’t hesitate to leave a comment if you have any questions.

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It looks like Spring has finally arrived and the sun is beginning to warm my back, the days are getting longer and there is more daylight for fishing. This time of year means one thing to me, tench fishing. This fish has always had a certain magic to me. Back in the sixties when coarse angling was very different than it is now, us kids who used to fish the many gravel pits in the Thames valley caught perch and roach but the “experts” caught tench. The tench had a certain mystery, it fed at night and was much bigger than the roach and perch we caught. Sometimes we would hook one but it usually broke even the heavy tackle we used. Looking back on this tackle I now realise that we used the wrong rods with line that was too heavy for them and it was usually the knots we used that let us down.

The tench has retained this mystery for me and I hope will always have a special place in my memories, even when for a few years I was totally captivated by barbel, I still found time for a couple of tench fishing sessions in the spring.

I think big tench are more difficult to catch than big carp on a regular basis, partly because they have been displaced by carp on so many waters as they do not compete so well for food. I much prefer to catch them on a float in what I consider to be the traditional way, but on some waters angling pressure has driven them out of the margins and I have to resort to a feeder. This was true of my biggest ever tench which I caught last season.

In the last week or so I have been running some courses for young people and I saw my first tench of the season caught, are your local lakes producing tench yet?

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Picture courtesy BBC Sport

I have always been a great fan of rugby and can remember going to games with my Dad when I was about seven or eight. He played for Staines Rugby Club and was quite a gifted wing forward. He had played for a team representing the Army in Northern Ireland during the war. When I went to grammar school a new chemistry teacher arrived and started a ruby club. His name was John Dawes and he later captained Wales and the British Lions in the late sixties and early seventies. Under his tuition I developed the ability to tackle well but never had the speed to follow my father and become a good flanker. I had a few games in the army where I spoilt games for a few opposing centres, but the ability to tackle without fear came in more useful in later years.

Nevertheless I never lost my love of the game and have followed it throughout all its changes, I was at Twickenham when Hancock scored his try against the Scots and only got three points for it because that’s all a try was worth in those days (1966?). I also remember when all the measurements were in yards and instead of refering to the twenty two meter line, it was the twenty five yard line.

In those days the Five Nations Championship was played for second place, Wales usually won the Championship and often the Grand Slam. The Triple Crown was a matter of formality. There were times when I must admit I played up my Welsh ancestry (Dad was Welsh) but there was never any doubt who I was suporting when England was playing.

Over the last couple of decades or so I have seen a golden age for English rugby, with names like Bill Beaumont, Paul Ackford and Wayne Dooley and the up and comming Martin Johnson in the English pack. My eyes were always on the back row and to see Neil Back, Richard Hill and Lawrence Dallaglio packing down together always made me proud to be an England supporter. After so many close calls finally in 2003 England reached the pinnacle and won the world cup.

Despite the coverage given to the final drop kick by Jonny Wilkinson, this tournament was really won by two people - Clive Woodward, who gave English rugby the platform to build a winning team and Martin Johnson who led that team so well.

Once again Clive Woodward is in the spotlight as the manager of the British and Irish Lions who are about to climb the biggest mountain in world rugby and tour New Zealand. I was so pleased to see that old English back three in the touring party. Hill, Dallaglio and Back may no longer be at their peak but they have had that vital experience of the big game. This will be of immense value to the rest of the team and may explain why some of the better players from the rest of the UK and Ireland have not been picked. Hopefully Woodward is picking his party to give as many options as possible in the game plan of each game.

O’Driscoll, a centre, has been chosen as captain and I am worried he will not be able to carry that great big stuffed toy the Lions captain always runs on to the pitch with. That’s why a forward is usually chosen as captain - besides would you have dared to take the mickey out of Martin Johnson for cuddling a big fluffy toy?

Best of luck to the lads, I will be following the tour closely and I hope they vary their game to keep the Kiwis on their toes.

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Les Weller called this morning to ask where everyone was last night - it seems that he didn’t receive the email I sent everyone cancelling last night’s meal and to make things worse he brought a couple of friends. I had to apologise, just because I check my emails every couple of hours not everyone else does, but in this case his got lost in the system. Not so clever these computers are they? I saw a documentry on Sky tv a couple of weeks ago that said in a few years all the weapons systems in the world would be controlled by computers, does this mean we can expect an outbreak of world peace when the damn things all crash?

I told Chris Clark about my success at Twynersh yesterday and he decided to have a day on the next lake to try and get some roach from there. I gave him advice on where to fish it and what method to use but didn’t go with him as rain was forecast and I had some errands to run. He phoned me at lunch time to tell me he had just caught a two pound roach. I could learn to hate that bloke!

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I have had to cancel the Molesey Anglers Curry Club night out tonight as every one will be watching the Chelsea match (don’t know what all the fuss is about, they used to have to pay me to go to matches at Stamford Bridge, ball’s the wrong shape anyway).

A day all to myself with decent weather forecast so I decided to go fishing, just for myself. During the courses in the Easter Holiday I had been looking at a swim at Twynersh on lake three that I fancied should be the home of some of the big roach I know the lake holds. I went to see Vince at Davies Angling in Staines yesterday and he sold me a lot of cheap casters that were just past their best. Most have gone in the freezer but I took a couple of pints with me today, a large tub of Dynamite Frenzied Hemp, some liquidised bread, a couple of slices for hook bait and some lobworms.

The swim I wanted to fish is right in a corner, underneath an overhanging bush on the adjacent bank, the water shelved from twelve or so feet upto seven and a half feet. To achieve accurate and precise float presentation I decided to use a recent aquisition, a twelve meter pole that I am still trying to master.

With the pole fished at ten meters I was able to present a small pole float with a size twenty hook to one and a half pound hook length right under the bush in the shade, which big roach are so fond of.

During the next three hours I fed hemp and caster at first then mixed some chopped worm with liquidised bread, hemp and caster. The hook bait was nearly always caster but both worm and bread were tried on a different rig with a bigger hook. One bite was all I had all day but it confimed my suspicions as the result was a fin perfect one pound nine ounce roach.

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I am still trying to get over the last hectic week - how I ever managed a full time job I don’t know, must be getting old.

Talking about getting old, what a strange process we are subjected to in our later years. Why can I still remember the telephone number of a girl I only went out with once in 1968 yet I can’t remember where I put my car keys ten minutes ago? Why does the hair stop growing on top of my head and start growing so profusely out of my ears and nose?

Best answer will win my last year’s rod licence…

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I’ve just had an email from Anglers Net about Labour’s new policy on angling.

I’m afraid I find it very difficult to have any interest in anything promised by this government. Even if they meant it now they would change their mind at the drop of a hat if they thought there were a few votes in it.

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I’ve just completed the last of three days coaching with PAYP (Positive Action for Young People) at Twynersh.

Plenty of fish were caught by both young people and staff (the vulnerable children on these courses are always accompanied by a key worker) .

One young lad who is a regular on these courses caught a three pound tench on a whip with a three pound hook length with only a little help from assistant coach Lee Blundell.

These youngsters really enjoy the courses and I have had teachers ask me how I can get them to sit still for a couple of hours while fishing when they won’t sit still for ten minutes in a classroom. I always explain that in school they are being asked to comply with ten thousand years of recent civilisation but I am appealing to the million and a half years of hunter gatherer ape underneath. Not so far underneath sometimes.

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I have just got back from a very tiring weekend at the NEC Go Fishing Show in Birmingham where I was on the PAA stand for the whole three days. The aim of the stand was to raise money to help in the running of the PAA and to pay the coaches who were out on Pendigo lake letting the visitors to the show have a go at catching some rainbow trout that had been stocked for the purpose.

The stand consisted of twenty four “pigeon holes” in the wall behind a front counter, on this counter was a random number generator operating between numbers one and twenty four. The idea was that the public paid two pounds for a number from the machine and got a prize from the appropriate pigeon hole, which was then replenished by the guys in the back. There were even some rods and reels being given away.

My job was at the front collecting the money, operating the machine and handing out the prizes. We had been squirreled away in an obscure corner and in order to attract customers I had to do my fairground barker’s act. This involved engaging the “punters” in suitable banter at the top of my voice to encourage them to pay two pounds and win a prize. The prizes were allocated by the number generator, as I mentioned, and although (as I repeatedly assured them they were all worth more than two pounds) the prizes were not necessarily suitable for their particular branch of the sport. In other words, just because the customer was a coarse fisherman or a game fishing enthusiast, did not mean that they would not end up with a couple of packets of huge sea hooks.

Most people realised that their prize was the result of the “luck of the draw” and were either content with what they got or tried to swap with other winners (although I tried to ensure that the kids got what they wanted). Knowing that the money was being raised for a good cause, some people handed back their unwanted prizes and I soon had a box of assorted gifts under the counter with which to keep the kids happy.

About an hour into the first day my shouting and cajoling had attracted quite a crowd and Andy Walker and I were quite busy. When I handed two packets of large sea hooks to a customer without thinking about it, I was amazed when he threw them back onto the counter saying “These are no bl**dy good, I don’t go sea fishing.” I replied, “Wait until we’re not so busy and I’ll try and sort something out.” He was very upset and said “Why are you giving away that rubbish, we’re miles from the sea, no one goes sea fishing round here” I was tempted to point out that there was in fact a large sea fishing section in the show but he didn’t give me a chance and stormed off muttering something I’m glad I didn’t hear clearly. Some people are not worth the effort and it took me a few minutes to get back into my role. This was helped by comments from other folk in the queue who were very supportive and restored some of my faither in the human race.

The highlight of the weekend was that instead of being put up in a hotel as usual, Graham Walker and I were house guests of Dr. Bruno Broughton and his anecdotes over dinner were well worth all the hard work the weekend entailed.

The show was well attended but I thought there were fewer people than last year. Tackle manufacturers were also thinner on the ground than before. It was good to meet all the other coaches and a chance to do some valuable networking. As a result of a chat with Ian Welch of RMC Angling, I hope to be fishing for catfish on Split Lakes at Yateley this summer.

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