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.
Richard with his first 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.

Pendulum excercise

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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