The Fishing Coach

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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