The Fishing Coach

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?

If you'd like to leave a comment on this post, here's how.