On Wednesday I had a new student from Slough Council, his name was Sam, aged thirteen and he had never fished before. I picked him up from his school at 9 a.m. and took him to Twynersh. My favourite swim on the Match Lake was free and despite a light shower of rain we started straight away. He was so enthusiastic he didn’t mind the rain and didn’t even baulk at the casting exercise with the plastic weight. He is a footballer and his muscle-eye co-ordination that the sport gives him helped a lot with what is often a difficult technique to master. He was soon swinging the weight back and forward with the four metre whip showing good control and I was able to take the lesson to the next stage.
As a total beginner I started him with a five metre whip and a pole float. He fished two maggots on a size sixteen hook to three pound line at about three feet deep. I loose fed maggots and hemp and soon had fish swirling at the surface. His first fish was a small bream and it was a pleasure to share the moment with him.
This fish was soon followed by a number of rudd, all taken just below the surface. He found the concept of striking, when he had a bite, a little difficult and missed a few fish by just pulling the bait out of their mouths.
After about an hour I decided that he was ready for some larger fish so I started adding some fish meal pellets to the loose feed. The ones I chose were the green Swimstim pellets from Dynamite baits. Shortly after I replaced the maggots on the hook with the matching soft hooker pellets. I replaced the pole float with a waggler float that carried more weight and altered the depth of the rig by sliding the float up to fish the bait right on the bottom. The extra weight helped to get the bait down through the smaller fish.This caused the bites to dry up and he went from “a bite a cast” to no bites at all. This resulted in a severe test of his patience, remember this is a thirteen year old boy and it was difficult to persuade him that it was for the best.
Patches of bubbles soon appeared in the swim and I knew the bigger bream were moving in, his next bite produced this fish, a common or bronze bream about three and a half pounds.
He followed this a little later by another about half the size and a few more rudd and roach.
It took some persuading to get him to pack up, he wanted to catch some more fish but I had to return him to school by 3 p.m. A good lesson enjoyed as much by the coach as by the student.
If you'd like to leave a comment on this post, here's how.
