The Fishing Coach

On Thursday 26th I drove back to Wales to pick up the group from Rhos y Gwaliau but I had apparently fallen out of favour with whatever gods control our motor ways, the traffic was dreadful and by the time I got there I knew I would be too late to have dinner with the group. On my arrival I found that the last couple of days had been spoiled by bad behavior of the group in general, initiated by one particular individual.
This is not the place to go into more detail but it is enough to say that the next few hours left me feeling very disappointed that the group had failed to get the full benefit from what should have been a wonderful adventure.

I was forced to have very harsh words with the group and was able to re establish a little order enough to enable every one to get a decent night’s sleep before the long journey home. My experience in the police has shown me the type of home that some of these young people come from but I also know the direction they are going and this really saddens me. So much so that the feeling of despair has not yet left me and I really don’t know how the wonderful people who work with these children full time,cope.

The journey home was a constant battle for order in the bus and as I was driving I was unable to do more than maintain a safe progress. What with the heat and the traffic it was not a journey I was sorry to finish.

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Over the past three years I have been working with Littledown Schoool in Slough. This school provides education for children with special needs and many of the pupils have behavioral problems. I have great respect for the staff at this school and the work they do with what are often very difficult children. The boys from this school are the youngest I coach and I feel that perhaps, it is here that I do the most good. This year I have four days with them and Wednesday 25th was the first of these.

As always I took them to Twynersh Fisheries Complex and we started the lesson with my pendulum exercise. This involves a four meter whip and a plastic casting weight attached to the end with line, just short of the length of the whip. Students are shown how to hold the whip and how to lock the butt of the whip under their forearm to gain maximum control. They are then asked to swing the weight backwards and forwards in front of them, keeping the weight under the whip in a controlled fashion. This teaches them how to hold a fishing rod and how little movement of the arm it needs to manipulate the swinging weight. It helps to develop the fine motor skills they will need for casting and swinging in any fish they catch.

Both boys caught fish during the fishing practice that followed including some nice roach, but their casting will need some work. I expect to meet these boys again over the next couple of years as they progress through the school system.

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I do quite a lot of coaching with Slough Council and a couple of years ago I passed a course to drive their mini-buses to make transporting my students easier. This has been very convenient for both myself and my customers and has enabled me to get to know the students better.

The other day I was asked if I could help out when a friend of mine tore his achillies tendon and was unable to drive the youngsters on their annual trip to Wales. They were going to Rhos y Gwaliau near lake Bala. This is an outdoor pursuit centre catering especially for school children, they stay for a week and are taken out each day to do things like kyaking, gorge walking etc. I know most of these young people from the fishing courses I run, have an idea of some of their backgrounds and I could tell this was going to be a very special week for them.

I drove them to Wales on Sunday afternoon and watched their excitement as they moved into their accomodation, they then were issued with wet weather clothing and we had to take them for a walk up the mountain in the pouring rain to try it out. To see their joy at being outdoors in such a beautiful place was worth the long drive. I said goodbye to them on Monday morning but they were too excited about their pending trip to Black Rock Sands to take much notice, and drove back to Surrey. I’m due to pick them up again on Friday morning to bring them home and I anticipate seeing some very changed children. I wish there had been some way I could have stayed to share the experience with them.

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Last week I ran the four day beginners course at Frobury Fishery and the venue lived up to its expectations.
The group was from Connexions e2e and were a pleasure to teach. All fished with an enthusiasm that was a joy to share and all caught plenty of fish, including the caseworker Kym Nielsen who caught her first ever fish. Most of the fish were small carp up to about two pounds but some tench and rudd were also caught. The fish seemed to prefer sweet corn despite being offered red maggots and soft pellets, we fed heavilly with red maggots, hemp and pellets and most of the fish were caught on five metre whips. On the last day one of the girls, who already had some experience of angling with her boyfriend, used a rod and reel and caught some carp with a float fished worm.The students and the caseworker have already put some very kind comments on the initial post about this fishery.

This is an ideal venue on which to teach beginners and I wish it was closer to me. Some of the other lakes produce bigger carp and I will be running courses for the more experienced anglers there in the near future.

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On Tuesday 10th May I decided to go back to Marsh Farm on my own in the hope of being able to fish a really sensitive rig for the crucian carp. It couldn’t be as windy as last time, so I arrived at 7.30am after a good breakfast at the Little Chef on the A3. The lakes were like glass and I chose the swim that Bob the Navigator had fished last week as it was facing the direction I was expecting the wind to come from.

I set up my 15ft match rod with a centrepin loaded with four pound line and fished a small sensitive pole float right under the rod tip in about four feet of water. With a soft expander pellet on the hook I caught a crucian carp on the first cast and thought I was off to a good start.

A strong wind suddenly started blowing from my right, bite detection became impossible and to add insult to injury a passing bird unloaded the contents of its bowels onto the brim of my hat and down the sleeve of my jacket. This is why I wear the broad brimmed hats everyone takes the mickey out of - otherwise that lot would have gone down my neck. It reminded me that tonight was our monthly curry night and as I fumbled through my fishing waistcoat for a tissue (yes I know the bird would have been miles away by then). I wondered what sort of bird could have made a mess like that? “Why didn’t I just look up and try to identify it?” I hear you ask. They tend to fly in flocks, don’t they? And as they all tend to eat at the same time, wake up at the same time and…?

It was an omen, for the next twenty minutes it continued to blow a gale and my bait remained untouched. I decided to move down to the swim I fished last week because the wind was blowing into that bay and close in the swim was sheltered slightly. After putting in some hemp, pellets and red maggots I decided to have a smoke of my pipe. Panic stations! I couldn’t find it, it was back on the roof of the car. I walked back to the carpark and met Brian from BB Angling and a friend of his fishing the other lake. Small world. I reminded him about the Molesey Anglers Curry Night and he said he wouldn’ t be coming. On my return to the swim I started the best day of crucian carp fishing I have ever experienced. All fish were taken from under the rod tip on either soft pellet or red maggot.

Towards the end of the afternoon Brian came and joined me in the next swim but shortly afterwards the swim died. At least he hadn’t had an avian critic!

My total catch was sixteen fish, the biggest being three pounds ten ounces and all averaging over three pounds.

That night at the Curry Club I was like a dog with two tails, ten members turned up and a great time was had by all. Bob, Barry and John had decided to go to Marsh Farm the next day but I had to decline their offer to join them, a decision I was to regret when the following morning I received a text message from Bob telling me he had caught an eight and a half pound tench.

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I’ve just had my first and second serious tench fishing sessions of the year, the first didn’t really come off as well as I had hoped. I went to the deep gravel pit near the motorway that produced a huge tench last summer. I chose to fish a swim in the bay that usually produces a few medium sized tench and wanted to try out the new blood worm pellets I had bought at the go fishing show. I set up two 1 1/4lb tc. sportex rods one with an open ended maggot feeder and one with a semi fixed bolt rig and a 12mm. blood worm pellet. Using a marker/plumbing rod I searched for the end of a gravel bar off to my left and then used a spod to put a carpet of hemp and 3mm. blood worm pellets on it.

The maggot feeder rod was fished on the right hand end of the bar. The feeder was filled with hemp, small marine pellets and dead maggots. I never throw away maggots at the end of a session, they always go into a zip sealing plastic bag, often with a drop of flavour and into the freezer. Dead maggots don’t crawl away (a good title for a crime novel!) when they come out of the feeder. I also use them on the hook.

The bream were moving and giving line bites but the tench were not “having it at all”. One hittable bite resulted in a two pound eel. I think the water had not warmed enough, a thought shared by the bailiff when he came round. However time spent with a marker/plumbing rod is never wasted.

On Wednesday 4th May the Molesey Anglers Curry Club had decided to have an outing and after some discussion it was decided to try a new water, just south of Guildford, that no-one had fished before. This water is owned by Godalming Angling Society and is called Marsh Farm. Bob “the navigator” was doing the research and informed me that the lake was full of tench and crucian carp but had only been dug two years ago.

Normally the thought of a fishery as new as that would have resulted in the ficticious funeral of another close relative but I was still doing my penance for the “Itchen incident” so I decided to go along with the majority. The trouble with democracy is that it gives an equal vote to some one who is so foolish as to disagree with me.

I decided to do some research of my own and the advantage of being in the coaching business is that you make lots of contacts. As a result I went to a tackle shop called Apollo Angling near Addlestone in Surrey that is frequented by Godalming Angling Society members and the general opinion was that the water is understocked and unless you are on the fish it is easy to blank. It should be noted that this opinion was from match anglers used to overstocked commercial fisheries.

I thought the idea of blanking in front of the serried ranks of the Curry Club would undermine my credibility as a coach, so I did some more research and found a Society member who fished it regularly. He was a mine of information and drew me a map of which Captain Cook would have been proud showing four or five of the best swims. At seven fifteen in the morning I was waiting for the other club members outside of the Little Chef on the A3 with the map folded securely in my wallet.

We arrived at the fishery in a convoy and all took a walk round the three lakes of the complex together. I seperated myself from the group in a deliberately obvious way and took the map from my wallet. When I saw one of the group was looking in my direction I turned my back on the group, opened the map and held it close to my chest. As I studied it I looked guiltily over my shoulder and back to the map a couple of times, this did the trick and I was soon mobbed by inquisitive anglers. “What’s that you’ve got?” “Nothing” I said and quickly folded the map and clenched it tight in my fist. “Let’s have a look”, “It’s a map”, “Get it off him” came the cries.
I said ” It’s private, nothing to do with you, just a little inside information us coaches are privvy too”. As I had hoped this nearly caused the desired riot and I was threatened with a ducking unless I divulged my secret.

As I had originaly intended I was able to put everyone into a swim with a good chance of fish. The information was first rate and everyone caught fish mostly crucian carp which lived up to their reputation for being shy biters. The wind increased during the day and it became quiet cold which led to most of the lads leaving early.
Bob caught a six and a half pound tench and half a dozen crucians and was more than pleased with his day, as were the others.

I had ten or twelve crucian carp, a five and a half pound tench and this huge rudd that weighed two pounds four ounces. I think we all would have caught more crucians had it not been for the strong wind that made bite indication so difficult. For a first visit to a fishery I was very impressed and the landscaping which was paid for with lottery money is a credit to the club. A much more pleasant experience than I expected and the next time, if the wind allows I will try the long rod and pole float approach.

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