The Fishing Coach

It’s fascinating to occasionally look over the stats for this site and see where people are coming from, both geographically (from Australia to the USA) and what led them here. Sometimes it’s a mention on Steve’s All Things Piscatorial forum, other times it’s an interesting search engine quest. So I thought I’d sit down today and answer some of the questions posed by those arriving here by search engine.

1. Bored kids
I can’t help this particular visitor because he or she came from Plano in Texas but if your kids are bored this summer holidays, what better way to fill their days and give them some experience of their place in the environment than to encourage them to take up fishing.

2. How to hold a fishing reel.

There are three types of fishing reel that I use in coarse fishing and I will explain how to hold each of them. Firstly, the most common type of reel is the fixed spool, spinning or threadline reel. This reel should be held with two fingers wrapped around the rod butt each side of the reel foot. Note the thumb is on top of the rod to help lock the lower part of the butt under the forearm.

This allows the forefinger of the hand to be extended to control the line comming of the spool during casting (as shown below).

The second type of reel and by far my favourite is the centrepin reel. This reel is held extending the forefinger down the back of the reel for stability and by wrapping the remaining three fingers around the rod butt below the reel. The thumb is pressed to the butt just above the foot of the reel and can be lowered to control the speed of revolution of the reel by applying pressure to the rim.

I wind about forty yards of line onto my reels but I wind it on backwards. By this I mean that I reel clockwise to gain line (I’m right handed and reel with my left hand) and the line comes off the top of the spool instead of the bottom. There are two reasons for this, firstly the thumb of the hand holding the rod has immediate control of any loops of line that might be blown off the spool by a cross wind. If the line came off the bottom then any such loop would have caught round a handle before you noticed, with disastrous results if you hooked a fish. Secondly when a fish is taking line under pressure applied by the same thumb to the rim of the spool, then the movement of a clockwise rotating spool will push the thumb up and away from the spool, losing control. In my case a running fish will cause the spool to rotate anti-clockwise and an even pressure can be maintained with the thumb.

More of my thoughts on centrepin use can be seen here at Paul Whiteing’s site.

The fourth type of reel is the multiplier which I use primarily for lure fishing. This reel because of its design is fished on top of the rod to allow the thumb to control the spool during casting. All four fingers are wrapped around the butt below the reel. I prefer to wind with my left hand leaving my right arm, my strongest as I am right handed, for casting. This restricts the number of multipliers available to me as most are made for the US market and they prefer to reel with their right hand, holding the rod with their left hand. They still cast with the rod in the right hand and switch over before reeling in. What’s that all about? Is it anything to do with driving on the wrong side of the road too?

3. Best tench in 2006.

I have written much on this site about tench fishing as they are my favourite still water species. Here are five of the posts I have written about them in reverse chronological order:

• Season’s best tench
• First tench of 2006
• Using the lift method for tench
• June update
• Start of my tench season

4. Kennet syndicate.

What can I say about what is probably my favourite place on this planet? Take a look at their website and read these posts:

• First barbel of the new season
• Silver fish from the Kennet

5. Pike rigs how to.

What rigs to use for pike and how to make the traces etc. will be the subject of a future post, if not two or three posts.

Any more questions?

Finally, I get questions from anglers, both new and experienced on a regular basis. If you have a fishing related question, why not leave a comment and I’ll do my best to give you an answer.

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Friday was the fourth day of tuition I have given Paul, the young lad from Slough and in order to broaden his experience of angling I decided to teach him pole fishing. I have never claimed to be an expert pole fisherman but I have had some coaching from people that are.

I had arranged to pick him up early in order to get the swim we had last week so we were on the lake by 6.30 a.m. Once again his enthusiasm was infectious and despite my lack of sleep the night before I didn’t have to work very hard to enter into the spirit of the day. We got the swim we wanted but a short while after our arrival the swims either side of us were taken and the chances of luring the carp into the margins disapeared.

Paul struggled with the pole at first and had trouble with the handling of it at ten metres length, both physically and technically. He showed great tenacity and had soon mastered the technique of shipping out and unshipping the sections and he ended up fishing at nine metres which he found more comfortable physically.

The day was hot and bright and by spraying pellets I soon had roach and rudd in a feeding frenzy on the surface.
He spent most of the time fishing shallow (about three feet deep) and must have caught over sixty quality roach and rudd using a three pound hook length on a number eight elastic.

Every now and then he switched to a number twelve elastic on a spare top three and spent a little time fishing paste on the bottom in the hope of a bonus tench or carp, without sucess.

He was soon handling the pole as if he had been doing it for years and was netting, unhooking and returning his own fish. The biggest was about a pound and a half and very many were about the pound mark. If I could get a bag of fish of this quality from the river Kennet trotting a float with a centrepin I would be a very happy man.

Most of the fish took a new soft hookable pellet I had bought from the boys at BB Angling. These are far superior to the last lot I tried. They stayed on the hook well straight from the pot but I found that if they were allowed to dry a little in the sun they stayed on that little bit longer to defeat the frantic attentions of smaller fish.

These may well be the pellets I have been looking for to defeat the attentions of the small fish whilst trotting on the river Kennet.

The more observant amongst you may have noticed that I have centred the pictures on this post rather than leaving them left-aligned as previously. What do you think?

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