About this time last year I received an email from a man who wanted to polish his skills as he was already regularly fishing the river Thames and had been fishing since he was a lad. We tried to organise a day out together but as he works in the area of worldwide insurance, this last year with its natural calamities made this very difficult.
We finally got together this week and he booked two days, Wednesday and Thursday for our outings. He was having some problems leger fishing the Thames, getting his feeder rigs tangled and was worried about his casting accuracy. He told me by email that he had many other questions and so I decided to make Twynersh our first venue. I knew I could catch him some fish there and there was plenty of space for casting lessons.
We fished lake one and I demonstrated the method feeder in the hope of catching him a few trophy fish for photographs. I set this up on a bite alarm so that I could demonstate a couple of simple uncomplicated feeder rigs to cure his tangling problems. We also did a little casting practice and soon improved his accuracy by refining his casting techniques. Joe is an avid learner, he quickly grasped everthing I showed him, his enthusiastic questions demonstrated his rapid grasp of the concepts and made his instruction very challenging but all the more rewarding for me.
We were unable to get any worthwhile response to legered bait so I showed him how to use a polaris sliding float this has become a very popular method at Twynersh due to its extreme depth and although he hooked a small carp it became tangled in some underwater discarded line and the manager, Paul had to get a boat to release it. Very few carp or tench were caught on the whole lake and so we changed to float fishing with lighter tackle, fished very shallow.
I fed handfuls af small mixed pellets and Joe fished Dynamite Baits Swimstim Amino soft hooker pellets on a size sixteen hook. He began catching roach and rudd at every cast.
I would not like to estimate just how many fish he caught but he was more than pleased with the sport he was having and with what he had learnt.
I had already planned to take Joe on the river Kennet to teach him some river legering techniques and as he was enjoying float fishing, a technique he had not practiced much recently I decided to give him a real treat on the following day.
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