The Fishing Coach

Last week I took a father and his two sons to Frobury Farm for a basic lesson. Billy is already a great fan of country sports and is keen that his sons should share his enthusiasm but as his knowledge of coarse fishing is limited he contacted me to teach them. He has arranged for them to have shooting lessons as well.

Frobury is now very local to me infact it was during my search for Frobury Farm, a few years ago that I discovered the village that we are now so happy in.

The fishery once again came up with the goods and between them the lads had nearly a hundred fish. Carp, tench, rudd and perch and although Billy did not fish much(coarse fishing not really being his thing) he got fully involved with the lesson.

Dad acting as ghillie for his sons

I wonder if these lads realise what a great Dad they have?

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As I have mentioned before, I do quite a lot of work with schools in Slough and most of this is with total beginners, one such lad, Bilal, made the Anglers Mail with a perch he caught on his first lesson with me. He was fishing with a five metre whip without elastic, two and three quarter pound hook length and a size sixteen hook with two red maggots. The venue was one of my new favourites, Royal Berkshire Fisheries at Windsor that I have been visiting a lot over the last eighteen months. It has plenty of small fish and is very close to Slough.

It was the first time he had ever held a rod yet on his first cast he hooked this fish and bullied it to the surface and screamed for me as he dragged it across the top. I saw the size of it, grabbed the nearby landing net and scooped it up before it realised it was hooked. It weighed three pounds three ounces.

He looks justifiably pleased but I think it may be sometime before he realises just how lucky he was.

Keith Arthur was also kind enough to give this catch a mention on his Sky Sports programme Tight Lines.

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I have had two days on the river Kennet this season teaching general river fishing but especially float fishing with a centrepin. This is becoming more popular thanks to that nice Mr. Wilson and his TV programmes but he is such an excellent angler that he makes centrepin fishing look so easy. People watch him having so much fun and then go out and buy a centrepin reel, only to find they are quite tricky to master. That’s when they come to me.

The chub were obliging after a little practice but very few small silver fish were showing and the barbel refused to co operate totally to a moving bait.

Rob caught the best roach I have seen from the Kennet for a while and couldn’t really understand why I was so excited about it, it bodes so well for the future this being quite a young fish.

We had to revert to legering to catch Alf these barbel.

Both guys had a great day and were fun to teach.

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Since moving to “paradise” I have been looking for a local venue that provides some good tench fishing and on advice I joined Newbury Angling Association and the 16th June found me fishing one of their waters, Knott’s lake, that had been closed for their voluntarily imposed closed season.

I am ashamed to say I blanked, as did most of the other anglers but I returned a couple of days later with a bit of local information and fished the opposite end of the lake in the deeper water. I found the tench but not in the margins where I had been told and they were not interested in the big baits I had been told to use.

I finally made contact with feeding fish, two rod lengths out in eleven feet of water and caught about eight or nine on float fished red maggots.

Not the prettiest fish, nor the biggest but great fun on a centrepin and a float rod.

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I have mentioned in the past a lake in Surrey that used to be managed by a very good mate of mine, Weller of the yard. Les moved to Northumberland just before my move and I was surprised to be invited to a netting of the lake earlier this year. The netting failed to show any of the tench that used to attract me to the lake and I went home very disappointed and sure I would never go back

In June this year Les again invited me to fish the lake as he was “down south” visiting and he said that the anglers who had been fishing it for carp had been catching tench. It was too good an opportunity to miss and a chance to see Les again.

The lake had changed a lot having been landscaped and tidied up after a great deal of work had been done on the estate, but the tench were still there!

It was good to fish with Les again and a chance for me to experiment with my new paste which I call “surf and turf” being a mixture of luncheon meat and trout pellet. This is a very soft paste and the tench loved it but it requires some stiffening to keep it on the hook before I try it on the river.

As you will see from the picture below they were not huge tench but caught on a float and with a centrepin, half a dozen of these make a good day’s fishing.

Small carp can also be fun on this tackle.

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This Summer I have been very busy coaching alongside my colleagues from the NFA often in conjunction with the Environment Agency at various fisheries in the South of England. The days are organised by the fishery in question and the EA provide the necessary support and fund a group of NFA coaches. These events are usually well publicised locally and the general idea is to encourage beginners to try fishing for the first time under the guidance of a qualified coach for a short taster session of about half an hour.

The beginners are often provided with a starter pack at the end of their session, complete with a whip and a ready made rig. These days are great fun, involving a close interaction with various members of the public, often helping them to catch their first fish and provide me with a chance to fish different venues most of which I wouldn’t visit otherwise.

One such venue is Sparsholt Agricultural College where the Fishery Studies department have developed their own, very exclusive coarse fishing lake. They held an open day on the last week end of April and we were involved in our usual role. I set up my usual coaching kit, a composite pole (I don’t cry if it gets broken) with a number eight elastic and was soundly smashed on my second cast, the carp were obviously bigger than I expected. However once the public turned up the bigger carp stopped feeding and great sport was had by all the novices.

Another such event was held in Bordon, Hampshire at Kingsley Pond organised by Oakhanger Angling Club and is one of the prettiest venues I have ever visited.

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