The Fishing Coach

On Monday I found myself in need of some fish and as the weather forecast promised a cooler day I decided that tench would “do nicely”. I set off early to Marsh Farm where I had such success with the crucians in order to concentrate on the tench.

What an excellent complex this is and I am sure that Godalming Angling Society
are justifiably proud of what they have achieved.

I fished Richardsons lake for the first time, opting for the furthest peg from the car park, always a good bet. I put in some hemp and pellets mixed with a little liquidised bread at about seven meters, just over the first drop off, in about a meter of water. I fished with the Harrison 15ft GTI match rod of which I am so fond and of course a centrepin loaded with four pound line. I started off with a pole float but the wind soon picked up and the surface drift made this method difficult.

A switch to a small crystal waggler improved my presentation and I was soon getting very quick bites on both pellets and paste. I moved my tell tale shot about and adjusted the depth at which I was fishing and soon hooked the culprit, a four ounce crucian carp. This was followed by a succession of small tench up to about two pounds and a couple more small crucians. A switch to bread flake on a larger hook saw me hook and lose a much bigger crucian and the swim went dead.

I had made up some expander pellets the night before with an extra flavour but they were too soft and whilst they were getting me plenty of bites, they would not stay on the hook properly. “New fangled methods, must put in more practice.”

I put some more hemp amd small pellets into the swim and went for a walk to have a look at the new tackle shop that had opened up on site since my last visit. I bought some ready prepared 6mm soft pellets and visited the toilets. Now I don’t normally catalogue my calls of nature in my jottings but I mention this episode to congratulate Godalming Angling Society on the toilet facilities and the cleanliness of the same. On site toilet facilities are a relatively new experince for anglers of my age and have only become common since the advent of the commercial fishery. Many are not a pleasant experience and often it is more necessary to wipe your wellies on the way out, than on the way in, if you catch my drift?

On my return the swim was doing a credible impersonation of a washing up bowl and after adding a few of the new pellets, I put one on the hook and hit the first bite. A six and a half pound tench tested my three pound hook link almost to breaking point before it donned a blindfold of weed and rolled into the net. This is what I was looking for.

I ended the day with about seven or eight tench, four crucians and the cutest little common carp, all from right under the rod tip.

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On Friday Les Weller and I decided to have an evening session on the river Kennet and to fish a couple of hours into dark for the barbel. Les is now a member of the Wasing syndicate and so we decided on the Dalston beat.

We met there at 3pm as arranged and I started to put some feed into my chosen swim, only to realise I had forgotten my bait dropper rod. I then decided to use a Bob James stepped up specimen rod I had bought last summer only to find that the screw reel fitting was too small for the foot of the Relum centre pin I was going to use. This is obviously why this normark rod was reduced from £250 to about £80, I ended up using this rod for the bait dropper with a fixed spool reel. I put in about four pints of hemp and small pellets and went for a walk. I have never really explored this beat before and I discovered some really attractive swims which I will try in the near future.

I started to fish at about 5pm with my favourite hexagraph rod and centrepin reel, I legered a medium pellet on a lead core leader under the far bank bushes. The lead core leader prevents fish around the bait swimming into tight lines and getting spooked, it does this by pinning all the line above the leger weight on the bottom and I have a one ounce flat lead sliding on the main line above it.

Les caught one barbel early in the evening and a small chub a little later but I was plagued by crayfish and was never certain if my bait was still on. We fished until about midnight and I ended up fishless but the company was pleasant.

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Yesterday I had another student at Twynersh Fishery for a re-introduction to angling course. Nigel had fished when he was a lad and was now returning to angling, he had recently done some fishing on his own and had made a comment to a previous post of mine and I wrote a seperate post in answer to this. As this lead me to expect Nigel was a keen and enquiring student and was already aware of some of his faults, he learned quickly and was always ready with a question. I wish more students were like this, for some reason some are reluctant to ask questions and I always try to explain that questions from the students only make the instructor’s job easier!

Nigel caught five or six carp to eight pounds and several tench as well as some nice rudd and roach, we managed to improve on his personal best carp three or four times in the session as well as catching his biggest tench. I demonstrated the lift method in conjunction with my post and he soon mastered the technique, he also caught on a method feeder and sliding waggler.

He is well on his way to becomming a good angler and has expressed an interest in river fishing for our next outing.

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Anyone who knows me or has read this blog will know that my favourite part of this sport is river fishing and Lee Blundell who ably assists me told me sometime ago that he had done very little trotting (allowing a float to run down with the current). A couple of weeks ago when we were at the Urban Escapes weekend Dave higham had a Okuma Aventa deluxe centre pin for sale and I persuaded Lee to buy it on the condition I taught him how to use it.

Yesterday I took him for a day on the river Kennet to fulfill that promise, we went to the same stretch that I fished last monday and I put him in the same swim that I fished. As I would have expected of such a capable angler he soon picked up the basic techniques and by the end of the day he was well on his way to becoming a good float fisherman.

He caught fish all day almost every trot down, roach, dace, small chub and lots of gudgeon and says he really enjoyed himself and learned a lot. He lost one fish that broke the three pound hook length as it tried to get him into the roots, I think it was probably a chub. He is really hooked on river fishing with a float and I am sure this will be the first of many such days.

After he left I stayed on an hour or so into dark and caught a barbel of nearly seven pounds on legered halbut pellet. A Good fish to end a really enjoyable day.

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Yesterday I went to the river Kennet for the second time this season, it is nearly an hour’s drive and so I don’t go as often as I should. I fished the beat just upstream of the Row Barge pub on the Wasing Estate, the weather forcast promised heavy showers and I wanted to be near the car. My favourite swim on this beat involves standing in the water and trotting a float along the edge of the far bank bushes and although I have caught lots of roach and dace from this swim I have never had a barbel from it. I set up a light match rod with my light weight J.W. Youngs Purist in order to try for the roach and dace. During my last clear out of the bait freezer I found a tub of frozen ready cooked tares (some of my pupils are younger than these tares) and I decided to start with them as hook bait. I fed some hemp with a few tares mixed in and continued to loose feed whilst I set up the heavy float rod, which also doubles a a bait dropper rod. With the bait dropper I put some of the hemp and tares mixture on the bottom about half way down the swim and added some casters for good measure.

On the light rig I put on a wire stemmed avon float as light as I could control in the current with a 2 gram olivette about 18 inches from the size 16 Drennan carbon Chub hook, nine inches above the hook I placed a no. 6 shot as a “tell tale”. I plumbed the depth roughly and then had three or four trots through without bait to find the various depths in the rest of the swim. I had difficulty in finding a tare firm enough for a hook bait and I can’t remember if I cooked this batch to long or perhaps the freezing process had softened them, but this was to plague me for the rest of the morning. On the first trot down the float buried and I swung in a small gudgeon, a good sign that my bait was near the bottom and the next three or four trots were spoilt by small fish breaking up the hook bait on the drop .

I replaced the no. 6 tell tale with a no. 4 shot a little closer to the hook and I stared catching roach and dace, four of these roach were over a pound and were young fish with plenty of growth potential. Let me explain what I mean by that last statement.

Some roach when they reach about a pound have started to become thick set in the body and already have that stocky appearence of big roach, giving them a different body shape from their smaller bretheren. These Kennet fish were just a larger version of their of their two and three ounce cousins I was catching from the same swim and had the look of freshly minted coins, they have a lot of growing ahead of them. After a couple of hours I was running short of hookable tares and switched to casters. Lots and lots of tiny chub, small roach and dace followed but often the casters were being shelled before they got a foot below the surface. I rested the swim for an hour after putting in some hemp, casters and assorted pellets with the bait dropper and started trotting a banded pellet on the heavy rod. This produced a further one pound roach but they are not much fun on an 8 pound hook length so I don’t count them.

As evening came I put in a lot more hemp and pellet with the bait dropper and set up for barbel. Whilst this part of the Kennet is not as heavilly fished as the Reading And District stretches, the barbel are still wary of big baits even this early in the season, especially if they bump into a tightly stretched line nearby. To avoid this I use a three foot lead core leader with a one ounce coffin weight to pin down the top end, the rod is set up in the rests parallel to the bank and pointing at the bait, with one of my trusty centrepins as a bite alarm. This pins as much line to the bottom as possible to keep it out of the way.
At this point the Kennet is only thirty feet wide and I am fishing very close to the bushes on the far bank, there is a possibility of a large double figured barbel here and I wouldn’t want such a fish to get into the roots and may be become tethered there. I use twelve pound reel line and a ten pound hook length coupled with a very powerful but through action rod.

The bait was a hair rigged halibut pellet with some bloodworm pellet paste moulded round it to give an improved flavour leakage. I also put a PVA mesh tube, about the size of a tangerene, full of assorted pellets on the hook for added attraction. The first real bite, after lots of little tugs and jerks, resulted in the biggest chub I have ever seen shedding the hook just at the net. Yes I know we anglers are notorious for our “one that got away” stories but I am sure that this fish was nearer seven pounds than six and a half, I just stood there in amazement as it shook free of the hook and swum away. Bolt (or self hooking rigs) never work well on chub especially big ones. I shall be targeting this fish in the winter.

Just before dark I hooked my first barbel of the season, it was about six pounds( I only weigh exceptional fish as I like to get them back in the water ASAP). Two more fish followed the best being about eight pounds and I went home a happy man. I always forget after not catching barbel for a while just how hard they fight and why I like catching them so much.

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