The Fishing Coach

I have just got home after a morning on Teddington weir with Chris Clark in his new inflatable boat. I was a bit dubious about lure fishing from a blown up plastic boat but the fabric on Chris’s boat is very thick and is inflated in panels. This means that if an accident happened and a treble hook did penetrate the fabric only part of the boat would lose bouyancy. We only took two rods and a small box of lures, this meant a very stressful evening yesterday as I went through my massive collection of lures trying to decide what to leave behind.

We arrived at the weir at 6.45am and were fishing by just after 7. The boat is blown up by a small hair dryer like device and is just big enough for two anglers. I had my biggest Thames pike on the second or third cast, it was about fourteen pounds and took a silver Shakespeare big S plug. Not a very big pike but my best from the Thames after hundreds of pike up to about twelve pounds from this river.

I caught one more about four pounds and had two more takes one on a large silver spoon fished deep and Chris had one about five pounds on a large pike coloured Creek Chub Pikey plug. All fish were not weighed but unhooked outside the boat for the safety of both ourselves and the fish.

A very pleasant morning’s fishing and home by lunchtime.

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Yesterday I went back to the tench lake beside the M3 to try my hand for another big tench I had arranged to meet a friend of mine Chris Clark there who I fish with often.

I got there at 6am and chose a familliar swim, I put some ground bait in and set up a maggot feeder rod and a seventeen foot float road. Chris arrived about 9am and joined me in the same swim. It was oppresively hot and I didn’t get a bite all day but Chris foul hooked an eel that went straight into the weed. I showed him a little trick to dislodge fish from weed beds that has worked for me on occasions, I told him to tighten down on the fish and apply as much pressure as he dared. When he had done that and the fish was still immobile, I started to tap quite hard on his rod butt. After a few seconds the fish moved out of the weeds, this seems to work more often than not as I think the vibrations caused by banging on the butt irritate the fish into moving.

The eel was hooked in the tail and was returned to the water with due contempt but unharmed. I am a true conservationist but I still don’t like eels.
The rewards available from this water are worth the many blanks I seem to suffer.

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On Friday 24th june I had the pleasure of the company of Mark Gilbert who is reurning to our wonderful sport in order to fish with his two young sons as they grow older. This is a great way of establishing a strong bond between father and sons and enables them to spend real quality time together. Mark contacted me a couple of months ago and I decided that as he hadn’t fished since he was a lad our first outing should be partly an assessment to see what he remembered.

Much has changed since he last fished and a lot of what I showed him was strange to him. As can be expected of a successful businessman he soon picked things up and started catching roach dace and tench on a waggler. He later caught some more tench on a method feeder as well as a small carp. The day was spolied by heavy showers and the fish stopped feeding at about 3pm.

He wants to buy some tackle to teach his boys and I look forward to helping him to increase his own skills.

Welcome back Mark!

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Thursday 20th June was the first chance I had to fish my beloved river this season but I found her far from well. A few years ago after the dry spell we had been through at the beginning of June the river would have been crystal clear but the water was very coloured. This was an unhealthy colour not the natural, nutrient rich brown of flood water but a greyish brown. This is, I believe a result of the increase in boat traffic on the Kennet and Avon canal and is made worse by the low levels in both the river and the canal. The canal is not so deep due to low river levels and the propellers of the barges are closer to the bottom and are stirring up more silt, as the river and canal flow in the same course for part of their length this silt ends up in the river.

Let us not forget that the river Kennet is a chalk stream and that is why it is such a wonderful environment for all nature. If you take the clear water away from this equation then the environment suffers. Something must be done to stop a small minority who want to spend their time boating from ruining a whole ecosystem.

On the plus side there seems to be more streamer weed than in previous years apparently due to some planting this winter but how long will this last in such coloured water. Plants need light to prosper, insects need plants, fish need insects, the whole ecosystem hinges on photosynthesis and the canal boats are stealing the light from our river.

I started the day trotting with hemp on the hook to sharpen my rusty reflexes and was soon catching average sized dace. The Bait Warehouse I mentioned previously sold me some giant hemp, this stuff is as big as tares and makes ideal hook bait. I later switched to casters and caught more dace and some roach to half a pound, no barbel though.

It was wonderful to be back on the river but that discolouration is worrying.

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This weekend I have been up in North London in the Lee Valley Country Park near Waltham Abbey at a show organised by Urban Escapes. The PAA were asked to provide some “taster” coaching courses and it was given to my good friend and fellow TryAngling coach Lee Blundell to organise. Even though it was the first week end of the river season I was more than pleased to help him out.

We were more than ably assisted by Dave and Annie Higham from Oham Lakes. I stayed up there for the full three days, Friday to Sunday sharing his caravan with Lee. Annie did a great job of mothering us all and we were protected (it’s a rough area) by their attack dog Charlie.

After three visits and a lot of negotiating by Lee we were given a length of the Lee Navigation Canal to use for our coaching sessions, far from ideal being just below a lock but better than the alternatives. The original venue was to be the Lee Relief Channel but the banks were either suitable only for HM Marines or were underneath some overhead power lines.

We were promised by British Waterways that the canal would be closed but no chance and to top it all it was covered with floating weed and nearly unfishable on Friday morning. We set up our enclosure and a gazebo provided by Lee and then set up our teaching tackle and waited for the public to turn up.

To say it was quiet would be an understatement, it turned out that the show had been poorly advertised and we only coached twelve people on the first day. This had some advantages in that we were able to spend much more time with the visitors we did have and I even had time for some much needed pole practice under the expert tuition of Dave, Annie and Lee. One middle aged couple made the whole thing worthwhile for me. They had always been slightly interested in angling and now they were nearing retirement they decided to look for a new hobby. Jim spent a long time with me and I found him an enthusiastic student and his wife was just the same with Dave and Annie.

After a while Jim said he just wanted to watch me fish because he had been using muscles not used to that kind of exercise and he was tired. He sat with me and continued to ply me with questions while I started to fish a pole line at ten meters that I had been feeding all day. Using sweetcorn on a size 14 hook to 3lb hook length I explained to Jim how to handle the longer pole and how I had been feeding two lines all day. The float dipped and I found myself playing a very large fish that was soon testing my number eight elastic to its limit, there’s nothing better than playing a big fish with an audience. Soon the fish was beaten and a six and a half pound male tench was in the net, the biggest male tench I had ever seen.

The next day was just as quiet and inside the show ground feelings amongst the other exhibitors was running high. We were able to continue to provide a very good service as we could spend much more time with people than usual. Jim and his wife returned to say they had both bought rod licences.

On Sunday some of the exhibitors had left and the weather remained very hot which had probably contributed to the lack of visitors. We continued to coach anyone who turned up but at the end of the weekend we had only seen sixty eight people. Lots of them had caught their first fish and we all felt that we had started a few anglers on their journey into our sport. The sad thing was that most of the really good photos that had been taken including my tench were lost because of technical difficulties with Dave’s camera.

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Over the last month I have taken three more courses with the young people from Littledown School in Slough.

These courses start with me picking up two pupils and a staff member from the school at 10am and taking them to Twynersh Fisheries. They are only ten or eleven years old and are usually better behaved than some of the other young people I deal with. Their behavior is nevertheless challenging to say the least and it is amazing to see how the staff deal with them. The day ends with me returning the day’s pupils to school by about 2.30pm.

A short day but very rewarding, hopefully the kids enjoyed it too.

As usual Twynersh provided lots of fish including a couple of nice bream caught by one lad.

Littledown pupil very proud of his 2lb bream

More importantly the weather was kind. This is particularly important when dealing with small children as they have a small body mass and are very susceptible to cold wet conditions.

I only get to teach the older pupils but I would really like to try my hand with the eight and nine year olds at this school.

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On Saturday 4th June I went to Bury Hill with an adult client of mine, Rob Blake. Rob is returning to coarse angling after a long break and has been out with me twice already and is turning into a capable angler. I found a rod for him last summer but due to his work commitments I have been unable to deliver it to him until now. So to make the occasion even more special I booked a boat for us both on the main lake in the hope of catching some tench.

We met at seven thirty am. after Rob had experienced some trouble finding the place and we were soon out on the water. All the other boats were already at the far end of the lake in the area known as the jungle, so we took the last boat left and paddled out to the down wind end of the lake to join them.

The trouble with getting the last boat is that the paddles left were broken and the fixtures for the anchors needed some serious maintenance. Once out in the lake the wind picked up and the mud weights provided would not hold the bottom and the boat was blown off station several times during the day. These boats must create a lot of income for the owner through out the year, its a shame they are not equipped or maintained better.

The tench were not feeding and the other boats only caught two fish all day, Rob caught three bream and was very pleased to christen his new rod. At Rob’s insistence I did some fishing because the sport was so slow and I lost one tench and landed a very fit eight pound common carp after it had towed the boat around for a while.

I really enjoy the company of this bloke, he is so keen and ready to learn, an ideal pupil. It is so rewarding to see him developing as an angler. It was a shame that more fish were not caught but this area of the lake gets a lot of pressure and the weather had not been ideal in the previous few days. The bream took float fished sweetcorn but the carp took blood worm paste, a thing I have been experimenting with this year. Watch this space!

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Last week it was the school holidays and I had two days coaching with Connexions PAYP, once again we fished at Twynersh Fisheries. I was ably assisted by Les Weller as eight students were booked for each day.

On Wednesday 1st June only three turned up and were difficult to find in the seventeen seater council mini bus I was driving.
Two were relative beginners and one had fished with me quite often and had been on the Wales trip. He was a little bit shy of me at first due to his behavior when we had last met but soon settled in under the expert guidance of Les. Lots of rudd, perch and roach were caught on red maggot fished just below the surface on five meter whips and Les showed his student how to fish deeper with a waggler on a rod and reel. After a little while Les’s expert feeding enabled the young lad to catch some bigger roach and everything was forgotten. Even the key worker Richard caught fish.

On Friday 3rd June we had seven older students and once again there were three that had not fished before, as on Wednesday I taught them the pendulum exercise and soon their arms were aching from using unfamilliar muscles.

Once again Twynesrsh lived up to our expectations and plenty of fish were caught including a nice bream caught by one of the more experienced young people under the expert tuition of Les. One of the boys caught a rudd and it was taken by a large pike on the way in. The pike seemed to have been hooked in the corner of its jaws and was unable to bite the line as usual. An exciting fight followed before the line finally parted. The fish came to the surface once and was too big for Les to get it in the net, it seemed to be about fourteen or fifteen pounds.
Perhaps we will meet again during my winter pike handling courses.

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