The Fishing Coach

It’s been a long time since I posted anything here, for which I apologise, but the house move I mentioned at the end of my post in May proved much more fraught than either Jan or I could have imagined. Having sold our house in March we finally moved on the 18th September, only being 100% sure that the move was actually going to happen with less than 24 hours notice. We were very lucky to have a very flexible removal team who put up with two last minute cancellations* and still turned up at silly o’clock on the actual moving day with big smiles and a cheerful attitude. If you need a recommendation for a removal team in the south east of England, let me know.

* Apparently caused by (a) a land registry problem on my vendor’s property, a 300 year old cottage and (b) the fact that said vendors had chosen Northern Rock for their mortgage and our exchange date fell during that week. Quite. I’ll tell you more about this when my therapist says I’m strong enough…

As if that weren’t enough, despite careful planning on our part and repeated phone calls and promises, BT decided to end our broadband service and install it in the new house… weeks before the actual date. Have you ever spent hours on a mobile phone trying to get BT to reconnect a landline? I should have started a swear box that first morning, I’m sure we’d have had enough to buy a second house by the time I was done with them!

I was also spending a lot of time packing and getting rid of furniture, books and various items that I knew we wouldn’t have room for given that we were downsizing in our very own episode of Escape to the Country. Jan listed some furniture on the recycling site reuze.co.uk but I was kept busy delivering furniture and multitudes of boxes to the local charity shops. There were very pleased to receive the first batch. And the second. But by week four I swear they had a permanent lookout on the corner and as soon as my box laden 4x4 turned into Shepperton High Street all 4 charity shops boarded up their doors and windows and refused to take any more stock!

Add to this the fact that I was quite busy coaching both for Slough Council and the NFA/Environment Agency, I just have not had time nor the facility to write some posts.

Anyway, I’m hoping that once this catch-up post is out of the way I’ll be able to write much more regularly in 2008. I’ve set the bureau up in a little corner of the dining room where I can chew the end of a pencil slave over the laptop to produce more regular posts.

Enough of my excuses, let me tell you about the summer’s coaching. As ever, my coaching activities are divided into three areas - council work with disadvantaged young people, private courses for young people and for adults who wish to return to fishing, often after a long break. Each of these areas provides their own very different rewards but when you look at the next photos you will guess why I enjoy the former.

So which fisheries I have used this summer? Well Twynersh of course, which has never let me down but tends not to fish well after a cold snap; Longmoor farm near Wokingham which tends to provide a better stamp of fish on average (the carp and tench being easier to catch in quantity) and Royal Berkshire fishery near Windsor which is a great roach water. I can’t remember any of my pupils failing to catch all this year even though the summer has been very wet at times.

Some of the kids forget their waterproof coats so I bring a roll of bin liners and cut holes in the top for their heads, it tends to make them look a little like penguins but it keeps them dry.

On a couple of occasions this summer I had families on courses and these too can be great fun. The girls in these pictures only came along for a day out but they soon got involved and really enjoyed themselves.

Another family had a great day at Twynersh but he will never live it down that his little sister caught the biggest fish.

Cheryl, a police officer, has done all of her previous fishing on the other side of the Atlantic but soon picked up the techniques of coarse fishing, catching some carp from lake one at Twynersh.

Several other anglers wishing to return to coarse fishing also had some great sport.

Twynersh also produced some pike for my students.

When I run a Pike Handling Course I usually use the Predator Lake on the Wasing Estate, here the pike are bigger and more plentiful.

One piece of good news for you all this winter is that one of my favourite fisheries has regained some of its old form, the Lower Itchen Fishery seems to be getting over the fish kill of two years ago.

Whilst the river is still not producing the quantity of big grayling it once did, there has been a 3lb 5oz fish caught this year. But not by me.

YET!

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