The Fishing Coach

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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