The Fishing Coach

On Sunday whilst on my way to a local game fair I received a telephone call from a very excited former student of mine who I haven’t seen for a couple of years. As I was driving at the time, although on “hands free”, I wasn’t able to give him the attention that he deserved but he phoned me again later that evening and told me the full story, his excitement unabated.

Russell on one of my courses in 2002

Russell was one of my first students, he did his basic course in July 2000 and was always ready for one of my days out but college and, I suspect girls, soon got in the way and he let his fishing take a back seat. He has recently returned to the sport and on Sunday morning caught a new personal best. He phoned to tell me as he claimed that “I’d taught him him all he knew”. Below is an excerpt of an email he sent me later, complete with a photo.

Hi Martin.

I was fishing the new Abbey Lake only 10 mins from my house. It was only the second time I’ve been there. I hadn’t been fishing and caught a fish since about 2006.

On the 1st trip I only got either a line bite or a nibble I couldn’t tell. After that trip I thought about how I could improve. So on the 2nd trip I took a rod with a marker float and I also used a feeder with carp pellet inside to lure the carp in.

I had 2 rods, 1 with a boilie and the other a lobworm and I got there at 7:00 a.m.. The bait was in the water by 7:30 and I sat patiently enjoying geting back to fishing. It was only 8:10 when when I was looking at my rods when I saw the rod start to bend and I was just thinking no way it is going to happen. After a second the indicator went up and it was taking line out and I was ready so I stuck and knew I’d hooked into something big.

It bent the rod right over 90 degrees, just like I got told, they fight like mad it took line and stopped and kept taking line then holding the tension for 3-4 mins. I didn’t dare reel in because it was still tugging like a rocket. As it eased up a bit I started to reel it in a little bit at a time and now had it half way in when it went all the way to the left of me for the trees. I used everything I learnt and just about kept it of the trees. I then had it rocketing back out again when it did a masive arc went all the way from the left now all the way to the right, under my other line round the tree to the edge of the swim and into reeds I was thinking no way am I going to lose it now. I just took the other rod off the stand and put it the other side while holding masive pressure on the fish as it was going deeper into reeds.

Now I had a new dilemma as I had a fish round the other side of a tree and into big reeds so I thought i don’t care I worked hard for this and went into the water only about a foot deep for the 1st 10 foot from the bank. I tugged and held pressure so tight for about 10 - 15 second thinking its going to snap then wow the fish comes out and finally its worn out a bit as I saw a big fish I knew it was a mirror now only making me more determind to get it. I reeled it right up 1 foot from my net then oh my god he went like mad when he saw the net and took more line out for 5 foot and that was its last fight and as I got it closer and netted it.

Weighed the mirror at 14lb 5oz - my biggest fish ever, also 1st fish I caught in 2 years only my 2nd mirror carp and 1st fish to break the 10lb mark.

I added the photo for you I hope you like it.

Russell

This type of feedback is just one of the rewards of my work with young people.

Well done Russell, I hope we can fish together again soon.

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My trip to Londonderry last month gave me a renewed enthusiasm for fly fishing but river fishing for trout in my area is ridiculously expensive and having paid a few visits to some still water fisheries in the area, I just couldn’t summon up the enthusiasm to fish one of them.

Rigorous enquiries, both in local tackle shops, amongst colleagues and on the net suggested there might be a short stretch of the river Itchen in Winchester that was free fishing and so I went on an exploration one afternoon and although I was unable to locate the stretch I had been looking for I found one length of river near the town centre where I saw another angler fly fishing. On speaking to him he told me that the river was indeed free fishing at this point and there were a couple of other stretches in the town that were free also, it turned out that he too was a qualified coach and he offered to show me where I could fish. His name was Keith Dipper and we met as arranged last Monday at his house. His front door opens onto the banks of the river and I spent a very pleasant day in his company with him acting as my gillie.

It was such a joy to be fly fishing a river again, I soon shook off the cobwebs from my casting techniques and was able to present a nymph in all but the most difficult swims. This is not an easy bit of river to fish, there is rarely room for a back cast and much of it is fast and turbulent. Add to this the fact that it is in an urban setting and I can see that it might not suit everyone. The wind was still coming from the East and was blowing predominately up stream, along with the cold spell the night before this made dry fly fishing unsuitable and any form of an insect hatch unlikely.

Keith assures me that under the right conditions it is possible to catch on the dry fly but we both chose to fish gold head nymphs. I chose a very soft actioned five weight Shakespeare fly rod that has become like an old friend over the years (nearly twenty!), it allows me to fish with a very fine point, three pounds breaking strain in this case and to use a small hook. The fly I chose was a size eighteen may fly nymph with a gold bead head fished on an nine foot tapered leader.

My guide caught the first two fish, small brown trout, before I hooked my first fish. Unfortunately it was a grayling that was out of season and the second and third fish were salmon parr and I don’t have a salmon licence. Not a good start, but my fourth fish was a small brown trout and I was as pleased as punch.

Keith showed me several stretches of the river on which there was no restriction to fishing some of which will be very suitable for winter fishing for roach and grayling, it seemed strange to be walking through shopping streets carrying a fly rod with a landing net hanging from my belt but the shoppers paid us no heed, too busy with their retail therapy.

After the tour we returned to the river near Keith’s house and I caught the best fish of the day, a brown trout of nearly two pounds that tested my light tackle to the limit aided by the very fast current. It seemed to spend as much time in the air as it did in the water and took me a few very enjoyable minutes to subdue.

A great day out - not the best day’s trout fishing but certainly the cheapest.

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For the last couple of months I have been working with a young lad called Aidan who is becoming a very keen angler. In order to broaden his experience I have been teaching him to trot a float on the tiny river Bourne at Twynersh. He has caught some small roach, perch and dace but whilst I was demonstrating the technique I hooked a small chub of about a pound which particularly interested him as it was the biggest fish we had caught from the river. When I explained that this was in fact quite a tiny chub he became even more intrigued and I decided it was time for a session on a bigger river in search of some more challenging chub fishing.

He is not quite ready for the problems involved in fishing small rivers like the Kennet where when even a medium chub is hooked the angler must be very quick and decisive in his response to prevent the fish reaching the snags it will be all too familiar with. This is the sort of intimate river fishing I have preferred for many years and so my repertoire of suitable venues to suit his requirements was some what limited. There was one place on the Thames I fished about fifteen years ago that gave me my first Chub over five pounds and I knew that the river had fined down from the recent floods and would be in perfect condition.

Last Tuesday I took Aidan, with some trepidation, to the river Thames just below Windsor to see if the chub were still there. The method I had chosen was ledgering with a maggot filled block end feeder, the method I had always used in the past but this time the main line on the reel was ten pound Fireline braid instead of ordinary monofilament that I would have used in the past. The reason for the braid was better bite indication due to the lack of stretch and less resistance to the current due to the fine diameter which would enable us to use less weight on the feeder to hold the bottom.

The feeder is mounted on the main line on a low resistance ring by means of a link clip so that it runs between two knots within a loop, the next two diagrams will, I hope, explain this. First thread the ring onto the main line and tie a loop with a double overhand knot so that the ring is inside the loop.

The next stage is to tie another double overhand knot to form a second loop, to attach the hook length, trapping the sliding ring between the two knots.

For the purposes of the diagram I have used sixty pound red monofilament as a main line - I would not fish this heavy for chub! The clip between the ring and the feeder would be covered with a piece of suitable diameter silicone tubing to prevent tangles.

The hook length is attached to the left hand loop by mean of a loop to loop connection. This is often fished very short perhaps only four inches. The way this rig works is the fish takes the bait and moves away with little or no resistance while the ring slides along the loop but when it hits the right hand knot the weight of the feeder hooks the fish.

The rod I chose to set up for Aidan was a twelve foot Shakespeare medium feeder rod well suited to the four pound hook lengths that were needed to get bites the last time I had fished the swim and sufficiently powerful for the fish around the four pound mark I expected. Two red maggots were put on the size fourteen hook on a three feet long hook length of four pound line and the two and a half ounce oval Drennen block end feeder was filled with red maggots also. (Never try and do this the other way round or your feeder will empty while you are putting your hook bait on!)

The swim requires a fifty yard cast (hence the ten pound main line) so I made several casts with no hook bait just a full swim feeder to prime the swim, there is quite a lot of accuracy needed so I did the casting for him all day.

The river was still flowing quite strongly and so I cast slightly upstream and as soon as the feeder hit the water I let out about thirty feet of line before closing the bail arm. This forms a large bow of line below the feeder and prevents it being dragged across the current by the pressure of the flow on the main line and if the feeder moves at all then it remains in a path parallel to the current and the maggots escaping from it continue along the same line. This is a very important thing when fishing any sort of feeder on a river, the idea is to create a trail of bait samples down the current along the same line and this will not happen if the feeder is dragged by the current or cast off line.

He sat behind the rod which was placed almost vertically to keep as much line out of the water as possible and waited for his first bite. The rod was fitted with a three ounce carbon quiver tip rather than a fibre glass one as with this method the bites show as a quick,short pull and then the tip straightens and this is shown better by a springy carbon tip than a softer glass one.

The tip twitched and then straightened showing the typical “drop back” bite and he lifted in to his first fish, much to my relief. I had told him not to strike as the fish would have already hooked itself against the weight of the feeder and he was playing his first big chub. He did well to keep the chub out of the far bank snags and bring it across the fast section in the middle of the river to the waiting net. The fish weighed four pounds six ounces, not bad for his first chub!

A couple of casts later he started getting false bites and I suspected the chub were picking up the feeder and shaking it to get the maggots out and ignoring the hook bait down stream, so I shortened the hook length to four inches and the next cast resulted in him hooking a very powerful fish which took him straight into the far bank tree roots despite his best efforts. I replaced the end tackle and stepped the hook length up to six pounds the heaviest I had with me, but I was now worrying about the rod not being designed for the hook and hold tactics we were being required to use.

Aidan also lost his next fish the same way due to his lack of experience, as much as the lack of power in the rod, so I made the next cast a little short to give him more time before the fish reached the snags. This resulted in fewer bites but he landed his next fish which weighed five pounds one ounce, a huge fish for one so young.

He then lost one more fish, much more powerful than the previous one, the hook pulling out but finally landed a real trophy of five and a half pounds.

A great day’s fishing for him and an eye opener for me.

I, of course, had to have some of this so I returned to Windsor on my own on Friday armed with a Shimano Technium Specialist rod with a one and a quarter pound test curve. My first fish made the journey worth while, it weighed five pounds eleven ounces and was easily beaten by the more powerful rod although I was using a lighter hook length, five and a half pounds but only four inches long. Alas no-one was handy to take the photograph.

The second fish was bigger but my digital scales had some sort of malfunction and told me it was seven pounds five ounces and I went into a state of total euphoria until common sense reasserted itself some time later. I weighed it again to be told it was in fact six pounds six, much more the size I would have thought. I have since tested the scales and they read accurately every time. This time the photo was taken by a chap out walking with his family, very kind of him considering I terrified him with my panting, wide eyed approach (I still thought it weighed 7lb 5ozs) which he mistook for some kind of psychopathic illness and almost fled (see eyes in photo).

I caught four more fish for a total of six and an overall weight of thirty three pounds.

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As a result of my first visit to the river Kennet this season I felt I had learned some lessons and could not wait to return to put them to the test. On my last visit few of the other anglers I spoke to had caught more than one fish and none as big as the two I caught.

I thought that the larger baits that they were using, such as large pellets and boilies and chunks of luncheon meat did not work as well as the smaller baits I had had such success with. Was the way I was presenting the bait the secret or was it the size of the bait?

I decided to return to the river on Thursday afternoon to try a more traditional method of Barbel fishing but with small baits. I fished one of my favourite swims on the Dalston beat of the Wasing Estate, just upstream of the Rowbarge public house near Midgham station, Woolhampton. Here the river was flowing fast with lots of overhanging trees on the far bank. Definitely not the swim for five and a half pound hook lengths, so I tackled up with my Hexagraph No. 2 with a Purist centrepin and twelve pound line. I chose this rod because it is powerful enough for the twelve pound line, despite it being listed as only one and a quarter pound test curve, and yet soft enough not to pull out the small hooks the bait size would dictate.

The method I chose consisted of a heavy open ended swimfeeder on a sliding paternoster link, a short ten pound flourocarbon hook length with a size twelve heavy forged hook tied with a knotless knot. On the hair I had mounted a small bait band to enable me to fish a banded pellet or a boilie. Perhaps I had better explain this a little further - if you thread your boilie onto a baiting needle (the type with the sharp point and the small barb) and then pull the bait band into the boilie the bait band will reduce in diameter as it stretches and expand again inside the boilie when released, the boilie will stay on the end of the hair. This enables you to fish most small pellets or any size of boilie.

I filled the feeder with small pellets and a few 10mm Dynamite Baits Source boilies with a plug of Halibut Pellet groundbait at each end. After seven or eight casts into a gap in the far bank trees with no bait on the hook I rested the swim for about an hour.

My first cast with an 8mm pellet resulted in a nice roach a few ounces short of a pound and when I rebaited, this time with a 10mm Source boilie, the rod tip started to bounce as the feeder was towed down stream. After a short but vigorous fight I netted this fine barbel of about four pounds.

I rested the swim for another half an hour after feeding a little more and then caught two more roach, followed by this barbel, a little bigger than the last.

The chap in the next swim who had remained fishless using larger pellets and who had acted as my photographer then went home and shortly before dark I caught this last fish about the same size as the first.

I decided to compose this picture in the John Wilson style but it was too dark to find any flowers.

It would seem that small baits will bear some experimentation. I will report back.

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Well the river season has finally started and as I promised in my previous post, my first outing was yesterday on my beloved river Kennet. The river was carrying a lot of extra water due to the recent rain and was nicely coloured, not the usual grey/brown (caused I believe by boats on the canal) but a more healthy, earthy brown due to soil being washed in by the rain.

My enthusiasm soared as I drove from stretch to stretch but all my favourite swims were taken. I have rarely seen the Wasing Estate so busy. I had anticipated this however and my Toyota 4x4 was fully loaded with enough tackle to cover most eventualities (some people will ask “What’s new, isn’t it always?”). I have long had the ambition to fish the Kennet with a pole and maybe catch a barbel on one and so the new pole gear I had bought from Les was also in the back of my “truck”.

It may have been fate but the swim I had always considered most suitable for fishing for barbel on the pole was vacant. This is the swim in the car park just above Brimpton bridge where there is a bit of slack water on the opposite bank on the inside of a bend, here the river narrows to about nine metres, a comfortable length to fish a pole. This part of the river is virtually snag free and provides plenty of room to play a fish. The decision, it seems, had been made for me.

I set up a Browning pole with a power top three fitted with what Les had informed me was a number fourteen elastic, the main line was 6.6lb (.18mm) and the hook lenth 5.5lb (.16mm) both Silstar Match Team. The hook was a size twelve Mustad with a small bait band on a hair tied with a knotless knot. The float was a new experience for me, it was a lollipop type, Desque made by Sensas and carrying 6gms.

I had experimented with this type of float when I used to fish the river Thames from a boat, it is designed to enable you to hold the float still in flowing water presenting the bait stationary and I learned that they have to be over shotted to prevent them riding up in the current, so much so that only the pressure of the current is holding the float on the surface. This is how I set up the float with a large olivette and a string of shot about a foot from the hook with the last six inches of line pinned to the bottom with two number six shot.

I was able to introduce hemp, maggots, casters and small mixed pellets with a bait dropper on this powerful pole set up and I did this regularly over the next hour. Meanwhile I set up another pole with 8-10 elastic and trotted an ordinary river pole float along the crease near the far bank, this provided a lot of fun with the small chub, dace, bleak and gudgeon which readily took my maggot and caster hook baits.

Martin James, who I know from years ago, turned up and checked my ticket and we had a little chat. He expressed the opinion that barbel should not be caught on the pole as landing them takes so long they are exhausted when returned. This caused me some concern as he is a very knowledgeable angler and I respect his opinion, so I resolved to be extra careful when returning any barbel I caught. I am no stranger to nursing barbel in the shallows for up to twenty minutes when caught on normal tackle, particularly in warm weather with low oxygen levels.

Shortly after Martin left I caught a couple of slightly larger chub, still under a pound and this is often the sign that the bigger fish are moving in. I put some more feed into the slack water on the far bank and put an 8mm halibut pellet into the bait band on the Browning pole. I shipped out the rig so that it settled just off the main current and put the pole in the rest.

I was just enjoying not having to hold a heavy pole while trotting and had just lit a cigarette (yes, I know it’s bad for you but you’ve got to die of something!) when the float tore away, the tip of the pole bent alarmingly and metres of elastic shot out. I found myself playing a very powerful fish. It felt much bigger than the three or four pound fish I had hoped for.

There are people who will tell you that playing fish on elastic is easy and that you are nothing more than a counter weight on the other end of the pole but I found that I needed all my skill to keep in touch with this fish and was soon grateful for my stillwater experience with big fish on the pole and for all the advice I have had from good pole anglers of my aquaintance (you know who you are).

I will admit that it seemed to take longer to get some sort of control over this fish than it would have done on my normal barbel float tackle but then the centrepins that I favour are very effective fish playing tools. When I saw the fish for the first time I was amazed at the size and then disaster struck.

Instead of my normal landing net with the heavy Conoflex duty telescopic pole I had a take-apart match landing net pole on which the last foot before the net can be removed after netting to facilitate unhooking the fish over the keepnet. When I put the net into the fast water at my feet in preparation for netting the fish the current removed this last foot, along with my net and swept it down stream. I was then grateful that the beat was so crowded and I was able to call to the chap upstream of me to lend me his net. Thanks Gordon!

The fish weighed 9lb 5ozs and was in beautiful condition if a little slim, certainly she will be double figures in the winter.

I rested her in the landing net in the current prior to weighing her and taking this photograph, mindful of what Martin had said and then quickly carried her in a weighing sling to a shallow stretch just up stream where I expected to have to nurse her back to strength in the current. I had no sooner removed her from the sling in the water and turned her upright and into the current when she tore herself free of my hands and powered upstream and away from me, not what I expected at all. I kept a close watch for a few minutes in case she reappeared, belly up, but saw no more sign of her.

Gordon kept an eye on my tackle while I drove to the nearest tackle shop and bought a new landing net, I had my usual pole in my rod bag. Before I went I put some more bait in with a bait dropper and did the same on my return.

After lunch I had a bit more fun with the other, lighter, pole rig and caught some more small fish and then went back to the slack on the bend with the heavy rig and another halibut pellet. I had fulfilled my ambition to catch a barbel on the pole and did not expect much more from what had already become a “red letter day”. Once again shortly after placing the rig, the elastic was steaming from the arched pole tip and I was into another big fish. This time I had the lessons learned from the last fish in my armoury and was able to make a better job of handling the tackle and the fish was in the net a little sooner. She weighed 9lb 3ozs but was cetainly a different fish as some marks around her anal fin (presumably caused by recent spawning) proved.

I fished on afterwards but pulled the hook out of a fish just before dark but was more than happy with my first day back on the river.

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Last week in between coaching sessions I decided that I needed some tench fishing away from my usual coaching haunts. I chose to visit Bury Hill Fisheries and fish the main lake as a result of an email from Bury Hill full of glowing reports of feeding tench. The first of May found me on the long bank of the old lake just after seven thirty armed with two light carp rods and a steeped up float rod, intending to fish any combination in pairs. The day ticket for two rods was £17, which I thought a little steep but the old lake is a very pleasant environment in which to fish and I have had some nice tench in the past.

One of the legering rods was set up with a semi fixed heavy open ended feeder with a short hook length, bolt rig style and the bait was a hair rigged 10mm. Source boilie from Dynamite Baits on a size 10 hook. The feeder was filled with the same small boilies and ground bait. The second leger rod had a much lighter open ended feeder on a paternoster link, with a three feet hook length and a size fourteen hook. This rig was fished in conjunction with maggots.

I fished the float rod with a waggler and a bunch of maggots on the bottom about two rod lengths out next to some lillies. I put a bed of groundbait next to the lillies first thing, intending to leave the float fishing for later and filled the feeder on the first rod with boilies and groundbait. I made eight or ten casts with this rod to the tip of a patch of lillies about twenty five yards away, filling the feeder each time, to put down a bed of bait.

The groundbait was a mix of two parts Expo to one part Marine Pellet Groundbait and two parts brown crumb. Hemp, pellets, sweetcorn and dead maggots were added to the mix.

I cast out the first rod with the semi fixed rig and as I was filling the lighter feeder on the other rod the bobbin shot to the first ring and I was playing a bream about two pounds with the boilie, still on its hair hanging from the side of it’s mouth. As bream were not my target I decided to rest this side of the swim and try the maggot feeded on the other side. No bites were forthcoming here, so I decided to float fish.

Bream nearly every cast both on the float and on the legered boiles, I must have had twenty five up to about four pounds but no tench. I was able to unhook most of them in the water from the edge of the fishing platform to cause them the least possible stress and avoid coating myself, my landing net and unhooking mat in bream slime. I have never been a fan of stillwater bream but I suppose it is better than blanking!

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As part of the preparations for selling my house my tackle store and workshop needed to be tidied out and I asked my longest serving student Tayler Clark to help me. He has done so before and is a pleasure to work with and he left with a lot of tackle, the sort of stuff you don’t want to throw out due to sentimental reasons but never use anymore. I also promised him a day’s carp fishing, so a few days later I took him to Royal Berkshire Fisheries and whilst I float fished for some more big roach, he ledgered pellets for the carp. His casting is now so accurate that he was able to fish right up against an island and was catching fish all day.

I have also had a couple of days at Marsh Farm. The first day produced a couple of crucian carp to about two and a half pounds and three tench, the biggest being over six pounds.

The second day was a disaster, one decent bite from a good crucian which shed the hook and a few small rudd. That’s why we call it “fishing” and not “catching”.

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We have certainly been blessed with a mild winter this time round and I wondered if the tench in a local shallow lake would be feeding early this year. All of nature seems to have been put out of phase by the unusual warm winter and it was with some hope that I arranged to visit the private tench lake in Surrey. As only one bank was fishable I opted for my favourite swim, even though it meant fishing into a cold strong wind.

I set up two Harrison stepped up float rods both with centrepins loaded with six pound line. Both rigs were set up to fish wagglers but one had a size fourteen hook for maggot and hooker pellets and the other had a size eight for a special bait. The latter hook was a new pattern I was trying, being lighter in the wire than most size eight hooks commonly sold for the carp hauling market, the Kamasan 983 is a very strong hook but made of finer wire to give lightness and a very sharp point. The barb is very small and easily crushed down.

The special bait was prawns which I knew had been sucessful there in the past but I chose a new twist - I fed chopped “Tesco frozen value prawns” but I was going to fish bits of king prawn on the hook. The size of the hook also gave me an option of fishing a sizeable lump of paste.

I was surprised to see that my favourite lilly patch had not totally died out during the winter and this saved me looking for the sunken remains with a plummet. I fed the chopped prawns with hemp to one side of it and maggots, hemp and small pellets to the other.

Most of the bites came to the pieces of king prawn and although I missed more than my share due to the problems caused by the strong wind, I ended the day with four tench and a bonus bream, the latter took a small hooker pellet. Not bad for the last week in February.

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Yesterday I went back to the swims that Chris Clark had shown me at Royal Berkshire Fisheries but this time I left my pole fishing kit at home. I wanted to catch some more big roach but this time on a rod and centrepin combination as the big roach seem to inhabit the margins on this fishery and this makes it suitable for the centrepin approach that I so love.

I set up the Harrison 15ft GTI match rod with a lightweight Youngs centrepin loaded with two and a half pound Maxima, the float was a Drennan stillwater blue carrying 3BB and a size twenty hook to a two pound hook length completed the set up. I intended to fish single maggot or caster so I began by feeding hemp, maggot and caster a little at a time as I set up and for a half an hour whilst I had a cup of tea and a smoke.

I was fishing about five feet deep two rod lengths out very close to an over hanging bush and I had set the float to fish with about six inches of line on the bottom. The casters had been frozen so very few were suitable for hook bait (the freezing seems to make most of them burst) but they were fine for loose feed and I was catching straight away with maggot or caster on the hook. The small fish showed first but clouds of mud in the shallow water warned me that the weather was mild enough for the carp to feed and sure enough I hooked something that took me straight into the roots, my tackle being too fine to stop it.

I set up my Harrison Interceptor stepped up float rod with a youngs purist centrepin loaded with six pound Maxima and started to feed a little sweetcorn with my loose feed. The result was this common carp which put up an excellent fight in such a confined swim. It took double sweetcorn on a lift rig, a method I use a lot for tench but it works on carp as well.

I switched back to the lighter rig with double bronze maggot and soon started to catch the better roach, the best of which weighed a pound and three quarters.

Just before dusk as I was thinking about packing up I caught a perch that weighed exactly two pounds, good fun on light tackle. I am beginning to like this fishery and hope to be able to include it in my coaching portfolio.

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Last Friday I took Les Weller (Weller of the Yard) down to Timsbury Manor to fish the river Test and its carrier streams. Les had asked me about this fishery as he had seen it mentioned on some angling forum but had never fished it and as most of our local rivers were about to burst their banks it seemed the ideal venue.

We arrived at about eight thirty in the morning and found the main river very swollen but the carriers were fishable. Unfortunately the banks were sodden and it was like crossing the battlefield of the Somme just to get to the water’s edge. Walking ankle deep in mud soon makes the legs ache despite travelling light which is the order of the day for this type of fishing. The bailiff was very helpful and advised us on the best places to fish but the whole place has a run down look to it and Les commented that it needed some real money spent on it to increase its appeal. He thinks the place could be a goldmine but he knows about these things as he manages the Surrey estate I have mentioned before.

While we were setting up at the car his rod fell down and his holdall fell on top of it breaking off the top ring and removing the liners to a couple of others, a disasterous thing to happen at the beginning of the day. Doubly so because for probably the first time for years I had not brought a spare float rod, as anyone who has ever fished with me will tell you, I normally bring two or three of everything I need and one or two things that might come in useful.

Les did not let this stop him for too long and we were soon trotting our floats on one of the carriers. We both caught some grayling and a few trout, the biggest of mine, a brown trout weighed nearly five pounds. I have been spoiled by the river Itchen when it was at its peak a couple of years ago and four or five two pound grayling were caught each trip but I was happy with this fish which might have been a pound.

I’ve cropped all but my hands and the fish from this picture because I’m wearing an expression of bewilderment and extreme concentration that would be understood by anyone who has tried to hold anything other than a very small grayling with cold hands, they are like a muscular bar of soap.

The weather was not particularly our friend on this outing as the down stream wind carried very cold rain and despite changing swims several times not much else was caught, although Les did manage a nice roach of about a pound from a very sheltered carrier.

I was using my fifteen foot Harrison GTI match rod and Les obviously took a shine to it as couple of days later he told me he had ordered a slightly more powerful Harrison rod from Mark Tunley, a rod builder he had found on the internet and this chap is repairing his old rod as well. Les wants me to write a review of his new toy when he gets it so watch this space, although I don’t promise to be totally unbiased as I love Harrison rods.

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Last week I received a wonderful email from James Halton, a student from one of my autumn pike handling courses. James has kindly agreed to let me share his email here.

Dear Martin

This weekend I finally had enough time to go for a proper pike fishing session. Rupert was away so a friend of mine, Matt asked if he could tag along. We went to a section of the Aylesbury Arm Canal, near a turning bay near Aston Clinton. On Friday night at the tackle shop I was told that numerous pike come regularly out of that stretch, and the reeds on the nearside bank are always a good bet. On arriving at the canal it was extremely cold and we struggled to catch many livebaits, but luckily there were just enough for the day. So I set up two livebait paternoster rigs just as you had shown me, one for Matt and one for myself. However I found the helicopter rigs a tad fiddly, so I settled for a John Roberts paternoster boom. And a “Pike System” egg bob float to finish the rig off. I used a rubber band which worked very well as a floatstop.

After about an hour and a half one of the skimmers became increasingly agitated, the float bobbed under and slid strongly to the right. Seeing this I picked up the rod and gave it a hefty whack (with my new Greys Prodigy Deadbait which I got for Christmas), I connected into a fine 5 or 6lb jack pike that fought well. Matt landed it and I removed the hooks like you showed me. It weighed in at 5lb 8oz. Matt had the next pike on a medium size roach, he played it well on his new “Monterra carp” rod. I netted it and took out the hooks, a fine fish at 3lb 6oz. I struck into the next pike, but as I soon found out it was much larger than expected. It jumped spectacularly and looked well over 12lb. However unfortunately the hooks flew out at the net and the elusive predator sulked back to the depths of the canal.

The next pike came on a large skimmer and resulted immediately after the cast. It fought hardly and weighed in at 5lb 2oz. Just as our day was going so well, a barge ploughed through the swim ruining it. We then decided to head for home.

Just before Christmas I also had the pleasure of catching a 12lb ghost carp, the biggest fish of my local venue. It took a cocktail of maggot and sweetcorn. But I did not intend to catch it, I was going for roach at the time. It was on my Abu enticer match rod and 2lb line, it looked as if it was going to snap in two! Anyhow some kids helped me net it and photograph it, but they failed to actually press down on the button!

He also sent some fine photographs.

Another young angler set on a path that will provide him with rewards for the rest of his life and he is already sharing his knowledge.

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Last week Chris Clark persuaded me to go after some big stillwater roach at Royal Berkshire Fishery where he did very well last season. The day was very mild with little or no wind and I decided to use my pole with a number four elastic and a two pound hook length. As the lake we were fishing is only about five feet deep I was able to use a very light pole float shotted down until the tip was only a dimple on the surface. The bait was a single red maggot on a size twenty hook. I presented the float under an overhanging bush at about eight metres and fed maggot and hemp.

Chris was into fish straight away and had several very good roach before I got my first bite, we caught fish all day long and between us caught over twenty roach over a pound. Both of us hooked carp, for which this fishery is famous but this was usually a fleeting experience on such light tackle, although Chris managed to land one of the smaller ones on slightly heavier tackle.

The best fish of the day was this fine specimen of exactly two pounds (not one pound fifteen ounces as they usually are). I wish I could catch roach like this on my beloved river Kennet.

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Over the past year or so I have been working with Steve Gray of All Things Piscatorial and we have fished together a number of times as we share a love of trotting rivers. Steve had mentioned that he had never caught a grayling so on the 13th December I took him to my favourite stretch of the river Itchen near Southampton. After a cooked breakfast in a café in Eastleigh we arrived at the river at 9 a.m. and were soon catching trout.

I tried my favourite swim fishing from a jetty on a sharp bend and managed the first graying of the day.The fish took double red maggot but fish can also be caught on sweetcorn.

Steve soon had his first grayling and was very pleased with his achievement but I wish he could have fished here a couple or years ago when the fish were much bigger and more plentiful.

I had given him some floating braid to trot with and I think I have another convert. We wandered up and down the river with only a few more fish to show for our efforts but both enjoyed the day just fishing the way we wanted without having to worry about anyone else.

Unusually I caught the biggest graying of the day, Steve generally gives me a good hiding when I take him to one of my venues, he is a very good angler.

This fish weighed about a pound and three quarters and two years ago would not have been mentioned. What are we doing to our rivers?

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A couple of years ago my friends and I spent a lot of time each winter fishing for grayling on the river Itchen but then low summer flows and an algal bloom caused a massive fish kill and most of the big grayling were lost. Last winter it was difficult to catch grayling at all.

Last week I was in the Davies Angling shop in Staines to buy some bait and got talking to Phil Leach the new owner. He mentioned that he had just had a great day’s grayling fishing on the river Itchen and explained that he had fished the Lower Itchen Fishery. I was delighted that the river had recovered so quickly and bought some extra red maggots for a trip down there the following day. As this is the first year in the last five years that I have not renewed my season ticket for the fishery, I telephoned the bailiff Jon Hall and the owner Lyndsey Farmiloe to book a day ticket and I was pleased that they remembered me.

Wednesday morning at 9 a.m. I was at the fishery as it opened and it was great to be back. I now own a Toyota 4x4 so the track along the riverside no longer holds any fears and I drove down to the top end of the coarse fishing stretch. Parking right by the riverside and fishing with my back against the front bumper of my car is a luxury I have missed and I was soon playing a spirited brown trout. About the third trot down I hooked my first grayling and was reminded of how well they fight. It was only about ten ounces, much smaller than they used to be, but I was very pleased to see it.

I am still using four pound Fireline braid for trotting and the lack of stretch in this line amplifies the fight, as well as making it easier to hook fish at long range. I am also experimenting with some new hooks that were given to me by Dave Higham on my last visit to his fishery at Oham Lakes. These are made by Kensaki and are quite fine in the wire but Dave promised me they were very strong.

I used them in size eighteen tied to a two and three quarters pound hook length and, as I had hoped, they dealt with trout up to nearly three pounds as well as grayling to a pound and three quarters very well. They are just the right size and shape for my favourite double red maggot hook bait.

Just after lunch I was trotting on a long straight stretch of river, down past the remains of a weed bed behind which I have found the grayling sheltering in the past. At the end of the trot I always hold the float back hard to make the bait rise up in the water, this often provokes a take that is often felt rather than seen on the float. On this occasion I felt a sharp tap and struck into what felt like a small fish, as I started to gain line the rod slammed over and the fish tore off down stream. It was a similar feeling to hooking a small roach or dace on the river Kennet and having it taken by a big pike and at first I thought that this was what had happened.

After twenty yards of line had been stipped from my reel at great speed I realised that this was not a pike and as I only load my centrepins with forty yards of line to prevent it bedding in, I decided it was time to get up off my ar*e and give chase. I eventually managed to get downstream of the fish and turn it into the current. I then realised that my landing net was thirty yards away and was too small anyway. The fish turned down stream again and I lost the twenty yards of line I had just won back in one very powerful run and again I had to run to get below it. In doing so I passed another very understanding angler who had a larger net and followed me. The fish eventually rolled into the net and I had caught my first salmon, a seven pound cock fish who was very coloured and had been in the river some time. Shame it was the wrong time of the year and I didn’t have a salmon license but it would have gone back anyway.

I had always hoped that my first salmon would be caught on a fly and not on double red maggot on a size eighteen match hook to a two and three quarters pound hook length. Still, beggars can’t be choosers and I wouldn’t have missed that fight for anything. I ended the day with several trout and a dozen grayling to a pound and three quarters, the sidestream was, alas, unfishable due to the floating leaves but it was wonderful to see that the river is recovering.

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On Wednesday I took Steve Gray from ATP (All Things Piscatorial) for a return trip to the river Kennet. I had booked him a guest ticket on the Warren Beat on the Wasing Estate and the plan was to trot the river for the roach and dace. I had not had a day fishing for myself for some time as I had been quite busy with my coaching activities and so this day, in good company, was to be something of a rest and recuperation session. I therefore chose to fish in my favourite manner, wading and trotting a float on light tackle.

Picture by Steve Gray

This is, for me, proper fishing - in tune with the tackle and the environment, totally absorbed in my chosen sport. I am not chasing a big fish that has been caught by many people and given a name, nor am I trying to fill a keep net fuller than the other anglers in a match. I am only in competition with the fish and the river and that is enough for me, no worries about targets or beating personal bests. Just enjoying practicing the skills I have aquired over the years in communion with nature.

Picture by Steve Gray

As you can see from the last picture, the swim I had chosen was shallow and quite pacy. Despite the plentiful cover provided by some tree foliage in the water at the bottom of the swim the fish were soon spooked by many of their numbers being caught and returned. It was time for a move. Steve wanted to go upstream to a peg we had fished last time where he had some trouble with pike, as he had brought some pike tackle to even the score.

We moved and whilst I tried to get the roach and dace feeding he killed his first roach and suspended it under a float on heavier tackle with a wire trace. The result was this magnificent perch that tipped the scales at exactly three pounds.

I think the Wasing Kennet Syndicate may have a new member next season.

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Last Saturday I travelled down to Whinwhistle Fishery near Romsey in Hampshire for the second All Things Piscatorial Roadshow. I had arranged to stay in a hotel overnight to attend the social evening and discussion the night before the match on the Sunday. Only Steve Gray and Ian Coates were there, along with their partners and as the journey took less than an hour I could have travelled down the following morning and saved myself £40. I spent a disturbed night in the hotel due to a long lasting wedding reception and arrived at the fishery in time for breakfast with the others. There were only seven coaches in attendance which was a disapointment as we were raising money for the The Teenage Cancer Trust. We had lots of raffle prizes, kindly donated by various people but no-one to sell the tickets to.

It was decided over breakfast not to count carp in the match, I am afraid I was responsible for this as I stated my reluctance to put carp into any kind of keep net and I hope this did not spoil the enjoyment for the others.

I am neither a match angler nor an expert with a pole but I enjoyed the element of competition and soon entered into the spirit of things.

I was pegged next to Steve Gray who proceeded to give me a right pasting, ending the match with nearly four times the weight I weighed in. He arranged for his wife Paula to distract me by constantly taking photographs of me, I hope she likes sweetcorn.

Steve has written a full report of the day, well worth a read. The day ended with Steve having his head shaved for the charity.

I understand that a lot of money was raised for the chosen charity but it was a shame that the event could not have been better supported by the other coaches. I do hope that there will be more support for the next one.

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Tuesday was the first day off I have had for some time with no urgent preparation to do for the following day and I awoke that morning with a feeling that something was missing. I went to my bait storage fridge and freezers to do a stock take and found that I had several small quantities of various baits left over from coaching sessions, some frozen, some in the fridge.

It seemed to me that it has been a long time since I had a day to myself where I can do what I like. As much as I enjoy coaching I still like fishing more. I decided that a day on the Predator Lake would use up some of my frozen dead baits left over from last season, the lake had only just re-opened on the 1st September. I started to look for a heavy spinning rod to use in conjunction with a multiplier reel to “wobble” a dead bait over the weed beds that would still be left from the summer. During my search I found a rod that I forgotten I had, not as strange as it sounds when you are a tackle tart like me.

Last year when visiting The Tackle Exchange in Walton-on-Thames I had seen a second hand Italian made match rod with a very fine tip which I thought might be ideal for very light lines. I was not able to test the rod in the shop as it was quite busy and I was unable to put a reel on it and run the line through it. When I got it home and tested it properly I found it was very “floppy” and the logos and decals on the butt section were horribly garish.

The rod had only cost me £20 so I cut off the butt section just above the handle and removed all the guides. I then removed the bottom cork of the handle and pushed the butt section up through the handle until the ferrule just protruded, I packed it in position with some pieces cut from the wide end of the blank and araldited it in position. (Don’t try this at home, sometimes the result is a disaster!)

I ended up with a short (10ft 5ins) trotting rod which at the time I was a little disapointed with as it seemed rather stiff and unforgiving, so I put it up on a shelf and forgot about it. Yesterday when I set it up again it did not seem so bad and I decided to give it a trial run on the river Kennet while I was on the Wasing Estate. I found a couple of pints of Dynamite Frenzied Hemp and a pint of fresh(ish) casters in the fridge, some frozen casters and frozen Dynamite Frenzied Tares in the freezer and with two centrepins, my favourite Harrison GTI match rod and my new found “designer” rod I was on my way to the Kennet by mid morning. I also took the heavy spinning rod, multiplier reel and some frozen roach dead baits for the evening.

Before midday I was thigh deep in the Kennet having set up both rods and fed some hemp and casters, I started with the Harrison and a stick float (one of the few swims on the Wasing Estate where you can use a stick float) with casters on the hook. I was into fish straight away, roach and dace every cast, so I introduced some tares into my loose feed.

The new rod was then put through its paces with 2lb mono main line and a size twenty hook to a pound and three quarter hook length, firstly with a single caster and then with a size sixteen wide gape hook with a tare on it. All my reservations disappeared, the rod had a fast crisp action similar to my Drennan Superstick rod but being shorter was suitable for swims with overhead cover as often found on the Warren Beat. It handled good fish on light tackle and I was delighted with this new found tool in my armoury.

The rod in question can be seen in the above photo but the floats are too heavy for the swim in question. The roach is about a pound but well on his way to becoming a big fish.

I fished for about four hours on and off, changing rods and baits regularly, I caught a fish nearly every cast with good quality roach and dace mixed in with smaller fish and little chub. Tares seemed to catch the better stamp of fish but as always were difficult to keep on the hook and only gave one chance to hit the bite. This is always a problem when dace fishing but the fast action of the new rod helped greatly with this and more dace were hooked with this rod than with the Harrison.

At about 6pm I packed away my float rods (none too soon, I was beginning to ache) and went to the Predator lake to try and catch a pike or two. The tackle was a heavy spinning rod with a multiplier reel with fifty pound braid. I always use very heavy breaking strains when pike fishing with braid as the lack of stretch can cause the line to break with a sudden shock particularly when casting big baits. The lake was still heavily weeded and I was only able to work the roach dead bait in the top foot or so and then only in the places where the weed did not reach the surface. I tried all along the road bank and was rewarded with one take only to have the fish come off as soon as I applied any pressure. These are always small fish, aren’t they?

A great day on my favourite river - I am so lucky not to have to work for a living anymore!

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On Tuesday I took Steve Gray from All Things Piscatorial to the Warren Beat on the Wasing Estate as a guest since he wanted to give the river Kennet a try. We met at Max’s cafe on the A4 and after a hearty breakfast we were on the river before 8 a.m.

The first swim I showed him was fast flowing and quite shallow but Steve had expressed a wish to trot a float whilst wading and I knew this swim would produce fish. His first fish was this tiny barbel, a real rarity, I think I have seen more ten pounders than fish this size.

We trotted for about an hour and both caught roach and dace and Steve caught another tiny barbel. I set up a light trotting rig as soon as the bigger dace began to show, three pound main line and a one and a three quarter pound hook length. I was smashed first trot down by what I assume was a big chub (well you’ve got to try) and changed up to a slightly heavier hook length. After we each caught more fish, mostly dace, the swim went dead and the bites stopped. I assumed that the bigger fish, perhaps even barbel had moved in and reached for the heavy trotting rod again.

One of my better decisions as this fish would have been a real handful in such a fast current on the light tackle I had been using. We then decided to move to another swim and loaded the rods still made up into my car for the journey.

In the next swim it was a fish every trot down until I over fed my swim in the hope of attracting some bigger fish. Steve, who was just downstream of me kept catching roach and dace but had a lot of trouble with pike who kept taking his fish on the retrieve. He lost about six or seven but did manage a nice roach.

In desperation I tried laying on with a hair rigged 10mm Source boilie just under my rod tip and was rewarded with a chub of about three and a half pounds just before it was time to pack up.

As I was packing away my first rod Steve, who only had one rod to put away, finally landed one of his tormentors, not the biggest pike he has ever caught but he seems happy with it!

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A couple of weeks ago I wrote here about a fly fishing lesson I gave at Syon Park to a Canadian relative of one of my pupils. Steve has since sent me an email about what he has caught at home since his return.

“Hi Martin,

How are you doing?

I have been going fishing for the past week and have been averaging around 8-9/night. These are pickerel that we catch here and are really good eating, especially at this size.

They are possible to catch in the daylight but a boat is really required to get them because they go deep in the day and are at the bottom. At night they come up and feed at the surface in shallower water with a rock or sand bottom. Currently I am fishing an area that is a mix but mainly sand with weeds. I am getting them on what is called mister twister, a plastic bodied bait that attaches to a jig head and is about 3-4” in length for this time of year. As the summer passes we will gradually increase the size of bait as water temperatures rise and they become more aggressive. People are catching them on floating rapallas as well but this is working for me so I stick to it. Glow head with white body and I don’t flash the head to make it glow. It just appears as a pearl or off white like color as I am sure you know.

We are only allowed 6 here as a limit/ person but I give them to others when I over catch to people that are not getting them, or I will release the smaller ones back to the river. I am in the great lakes system fishing the St. Clair river right at the mouth of Lake Huron which is at the bottom of Lake Huron.”

Pickerel, also known as Walleye seem to be very much like our Zander:

Picture courtesy Manitoba Fisheries

It’s good to know what other anglers are doing in other parts of the world.

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On Tuesday I had a day on my beloved river Kennet, fishing a swim on the Warren beat of the Wasing Estate. I took six pints of frozen casters and a couple of pints of fresh ones for the hook, bought from Davies Angling who always have excellent bait and give me a good price.

I spent the first part of the day in this swim trotting double caster and feeding hemp and caster in five feet of fast flowing water. I alternated between a heavy rig with a stepped up Harrison float rod with six pound line and my Drennan Stick float rod with two and a half pound line. The latter is not my choice of barbel tackle but is more fun for the roach and dace.

The first trot down, with the heavy rig, produced a chub of about four pounds followed by a small brown trout. These were quickly followed by a small barbel of about a pound. I then realised I had forgotten my camera as barbel of this size are rarer than nine pounders and I would have liked a photo. The swim then seemed to die and despite further feeding no more bites were forthcoming.

I switched to the lighter rig in hope of some silver fish and had another barbel, the same size as the first and a bigger brown trout, about two pounds. I also foul hooked a couple of larger fish at the bottom of the swim in the faster shallow water. Fortuneately the hook pulled out quickly both times. I shortened my trot to avoid the gravel shallows in case there were barbel spawning there and managed another small chub of just less than a pound. No roach and dace were showing and despite trying float fished pellet on the rig I described in my last post, I had no further bites. As I had feared, the bristle hair did not hold the pellet securely enough for the pressure of the fast water and I was never sure if the bait was still on. Take a look at the picture and avoid them!

By this stage I convinced myself that there were barbel spawning on the shallows below me, although the Kennet is still too turbid for me to see them, so I moved upstream to the Brimpton beat to my favourite trotting swim just above the bridge. I fished there for the next two hours with the light float rig and caught dace and roach “a fish a chuck”, the biggest dace was about half a pound and the best roach was a “pounder”.

This is why I love this river so much, not for the big fish but for it’s variety of sport in such lovely surroundings.

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This morning I left home at 5.45 a.m. bound for the South Lake at Shepperton Marina hoping for one of the bigger tench that this lake is known for. I had decided to try a little ground bait instead of just loose feeding hemp and pellet as I had done on my two previous visits. I used a special mix that I have found effective for tench in the past, it contains a commercial ground bait called Expo which is marketed by Van Den Eynde. The rest of the mix is made up with brown crumb, powdered trout and bloodworm pellet and cooked hemp seed. To this I add sweetcorn, frozen maggots, small pellets and chopped worms. I keep the liquid from cooking the hemp, to which I add a little molasses, allow it to ferment for a couple of days and use it to mix the dry ingredients with.

This is a very effective groudbait but only on some waters, others I have found it to be “the kiss of death” hence my reluctance to use it at South Lake.

Today it produced one bite, which has been my average on this lake so far, not a conclusive result. The fish was a female tench of 5lbs 1oz taken on float fished bloodworm pellet paste in ten feet of water next to some lilly pads.

This is my best tench this season and was taken on my Harrison Interceptor float rod and six pound line. The reel of course was a centrepin (Young’s Purist).

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Steve Gray who runs All Things Piscatorial (”Your one stop coaching site”) is the manager of a syndicate on the South Lake at Shepperton Marina and had convinced me to join this season. After the way he showed me up when I took him pike fishing he should have let me join for nothing…

Anyway, today was the opening day of the new season on the lake and was to be the first time I had fished it. I met Steve at the lake with Nigel Botherway (also a syndicate member) and we had a chat about the lake. I would liked to have stayed and chatted longer as I know Nigel from his days at Heathrow and there were many stories to re tell but I wanted to get fishing. I imitated a News of the World reporter and made my excuses and left.

The swim Steve had recommended was peg one and had a patch of lillies to the right and an overhanging tree on the left but I was surprised to find it was thirteen feet deep. I just managed to fish it with a 3AAA Drennan Tench waggler float rather than a sliding float. The stop knot would have caused problems passing through the small rod rings when casting with the centrepin reel I was using. I fed some hemp and trout pellet. I was trying some tinned hemp from BCUK that Dave from Oham Lakes had given me.

It smelled good and was very oily but today was not the day for a fair trial. The wind picked up soon after I arrived and then switched direction to come from the North, it was very cold and we were soon shivering in its blast. More like February than “Flaming June”.

I had my fist bite after an hour but as is so often the case it came when I was talking to a passing angler and I missed it. How do they know when you’re not looking? You watch the float all day and it doesn’t even twitch but you pour a cup of tea or look up at a singing bird and when you look back you see your float comming back up.

Shortly afterwards my second bite produced a hard fighting male tench of about three pounds that justified my decision to use six pound mainline. It tried to reach the lillies and when I turned it it went for the overhanging tree.

It’s always good to “break your ducrk” on a new water on the first outing. I will be spending a lot of time at Shepperton Marina this summer - there are problems to be solved due to the depth and my lack of knowledge of this water but I’m sure that this venue has great potential and I’m very much looking forward to it.

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Although I am primarily a coarse fisherman I really enjoy a spot of fly fishing for trout on a river so when I was offered a day on the river Test as a guest of Strategic Shipping by their Import Manager Roy Meincken I nearly took his arm off.

The day was planned as a thank you to their customers but many of them had obviously seen the weather forecast and cancelled at the last moment. I was honoured to be offered a vacant place. The day started with me picking up Roy and one of his directors, Mervyn Griffiths. I had volunteered to do the driving so that they could have a drink with their lunch. This was the least I could do at the prospect of fishing one of the most famous trout rivers in the world.

After an excellent breakfast at the Grosvenor Hotel in Stockbridge we drove to the river, a stretch at Kimsbridge under the control of the Tackle manufacturer Orvis. This stretch is known as the “Ginger Beer” beat because of the foam from the weir at the top of the beat.

I had fished this stretch about two years ago, again as a guest of Strategic Shipping and had many fond memories, particularly of the gillie Jim. Unfortunately he has since passed away but has been replaced by Brian who is a helpful and capable angler and soon became part of the party. Orvis supply all the tackle needed but my fly casting is such that I don’t need to be further handicapped by using an unfamilliar rod. I used my old Shakespeare Royalty fly rod (perhaps the cheapest rod ever to be used on this famous beat) and a five weight, weight forward, floating line with a four pound flourocarbon tippet.

Roy and I started off in the weir casting weighted nymphs upstream into the fast water. We used to fish together a lot but since his motorbike accident he has not been out fishing much. I soon remembered how much fun it is to fish with him as the “banter” flowed thick and fast and I hope to get him back on the bank as soon as possible. One brown trout took my nymph whilst I was talking to Roy and virtually hooked itself, causing yet more levity.

We then split up, Roy going with Brian the gillie while I tried the main river.

Brian and Roy

Out of the shelter of the bushes and trees around the weir I was faced with the full force of the wind which made casting and fly presentation very difficult. The river was quite turbid after the heavy rains of the last two days and visibilty was too limited to spot fish near the bottom. This meant that my favourite method, the “upstream nymph”, was out of the question and I was very pleased when a hatch of mayflies started. It was very difficult to present a fly on the surface without the downstream wind pulling it across the current and although I covered lots of fish I got few takes.

Whenever the wind dropped a little and I was able to present the fly without drag I got a take but the fish soon became difficult to please and the hatch changed species and was difficult to match.The picture below shows how finicky they became and the only way I could get a positive take was by dropping the chosen fly on the nose of a rising fish, not an easy task in that wind.

I ended the day with seven fish, one Rainbow and six Browns, one of which was about three and a half pounds. I apologise for the lack of pictures but I was on my own and having too much fun for photography, I even got a brief glimpse of a water vole, a very rare creature on the mink infested rivers I usually fish.

A wonderful day on a very special venue with great company and I will express my heartfelt gratitude again to Mervyn of Strategic Shipping for inviting me.

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Once again I have visited my favourite water on the Taywood A.S. ticket and fished the notorious motorway bank. I used the same tackle and methods as I did on Friday but got to the swim at about eight a.m. My experience of these vast gin clear gravel pits tells me that early morning fishing for tench is little use as they cruise all day looking for food and the trick is location.

I was surprised to find another angler on the same bank. He was using the same sort of tackle as me and not fishing for the carp for which this lake is renowned. I had a quick chat with him and he was happy for me to set up in my favourite swim just next door. It is always polite to ask - you never know, you might need him to take a photo later!

Over the next couple of hours I had three line bites, where the indicator just lifts a little and drops back. These I am sure are caused by a patrolling fish swimming into the line between the feeder and the rod tip. The chap in the next swim left about lunchtime but before he did so he threw in about a dozen large balls of groundbait thirty yards in front of him. This was just within my casting range and after he left I couldn’t resist an experimental cast into the area. It would have been rude not to!

The result was a 6lb 4oz bream heavy with spawn and would have explained the line bites I had earlier.

The hunt for the big tench continues.

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Yesterday I had my first day this year on Taywood Chertsey South lake still looking for some more big tench. I didn’t start until about two thirty in the afternoon and spent a little time at the water in reconnaissance I decided to fish one of my favourite swims on the motorway bank. I set up my two Sportex 1 1/4 lb test curve legering rods, one with a maggot feeder, the other with a semi fixed lead and hair rigged paste. Both rods were fished on buzzers with drop off indicators whilst I used a plummet on a twenty foot float rod to explore the margins. On this motorway bank the marginal shelf common to most gravel pits is about twenty feet out and drops into fifteen feet of water in some places.

My first bite came on the maggot feeder shortly after I had made about six or eight casts without a hook length to put a carpet of bait on the bottom of the drop off on the left hand side of the swim. The indicator lifted in a series of hesitant jerks but the strike met with no resistance, it was probably a line bite.

Over the next couple of hours I remained biteless so I reeled in the the paste rig rod and set up the long float rod with a sensitive waggler. Whilst I was doing this the buzzer on the maggot feeder rod went off in a long bleep as the indicator was lifted steadilly to the rod ring, again the strike was met with no resistance?

The long float rod proved to be a problem to fish with as the surrounding bushes had grown quite a lot since the last time I fished this swim. It was almost impossible to get room for a back cast and my right wrist was not yet strong enough after the sprain to flex the action of the rod for an under arm flick. I finally managed to get the float where I wanted it and fed maggots and hemp on a little and often basis.

I had already had two bites - not a bad result for this area of what is a very hard fishery and I was not expecting to see the float slide away so confidently. The result was not a big tench nor even a big bream but an eel about a pound and a half that seemed to be hooked right down it’s throat, as they always are, about four inches from its bum.

I packed up after that and went home to work on a sliding float rig that will allow me to use a managable sized rod, I may have to put a larger bore tip ring on one of my stepped up Harrisons. The reason for this is that a sliding float does just that and is stopped at the correct depth by a stop knot, tied in a separate piece of line, around the main line. Because of the depth the stop knot would be somewhere near the reel on the cast and would have to travel through most of the rod rings, the tip ring is always the one that causes the problems being the smallest. This is particulary exacerbated by the use of the heavier than usual six pound main line required for the large fish in this lake.

I will report on my progress.

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Chris Clark, a musician friend of mine, is one of the founder members of the Molesey Anglers Curry Club and wanted to end his winter fishing fast with some tench fishing. With permission from Weller of the Yard I took him to the private Surrey lake that Les manages.

Prior to his arrival at my place Chris telephoned me to say that he had just realised his rod licence had expired and because this would be his first outing this year he had not yet renewed it. As we had planned to be at the lake at 8am the local post office would not be open and he thought we would have to wait until it was. I suggested that he bought his new licence online at the Environment Agency site and as soon as he arrived he did just that. Well done the EA.

The day was overcast with a brisk south westerly wind that brought quite a chill to the morning and would have made fishing with a pole float on running line tackle impossible. We both set up with quite heavy wagglers, Chris with a fixed spool reel and me with my favourite centrepin. He fished with soft hooker pellets and I used bloodworm pellet paste in adjacent swims.

First cast produced a nice common carp for Chris that was about eleven pounds.

Despite a severe drop in temperature and a light shower we fished on until 3pm, catching fish after fish. We caught tench to four pounds, carp and bream. I lost a beautiful mirror carp that we saw on the surface shortly before it threw the hook, we estimated it to weigh about fifteen pounds. It would have made a lovely photo.

In all we caught about twenty fish between us, Chris was pleased to get “his string pulled” again as he had not fished since before Christmas.

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Spring has finally dragged herself from the icy grip of winter and whilst it is still far from warm I decided to have my first tench fishing session. The venue had to be quite shallow as the deep gravel pits that occur locally warm up slowly and a high stocking density of tench would improve my chances. It was not yet time to try for the big fish, I wanted quantity rather than quality, lots of bites rather than a long wait. It had been a long time since I had done anything except pike fish and I expected to find my skills a little rusty especially with my wrists still not being fully healed.

The venue I chose was a small private lake in Surrey that is managed by a friend of mine Les (known here previously as “Weller of the Yard”). This fishery is only accessible to a carefully selected group of anglers by request of the new owner. Some of these anglers are not very chatty, this miserable bloke sat in the next swim and never said a word all day!

Scarecrow to frighten off the cormorants

On my arrival on Thursday morning the sky was overcast with a strong breeze from the West. I fished the swim Les had recommended near South East corner of the lake and set up a long rod (twenty feet) with a centrepin. With a pole float and a plummet I searched for the remains of last summer’s weed beds and located a gap between them about seven metres from the bank. I fed this area with a mixture of hemp and trout and bloodworm pellets. By this time the wind was increasing and I was finding it difficult to handle the long rod but did manage my first tench on a soft bloodworm pellet.

This fish was far from the biggest tench I have ever caught but after that dreadful long winter it was one of the most welcome.

By the time I had finished taking the photograph and had returned the fish, the wind had increased further and the long rod became impossible to use. I set up my Harrison Stepped Up Match rod but had to use a fixed spool reel as I would have to cast into the teeth of what was rapidly becomming a gale force wind. I first tried a 2 swan shot Drennan Tench float as can be seen in the photograph and with six pound mainline and a five pound hook length was just able to cast to the baited area. The casting technique I was having to use caused the soft pellets to come off the hook so I switched to bloodworm paste and I started to catch fish. I soon had caught ten tench and a small common carp, the biggest tench was about four pounds and the carp was the same weight. Bites were difficult to spot with the waves on the water and eventually became impossible.

I had to change to a heavier float with a bulbous and therefore more bouyant tip with a “BB” shot on the hook length to anchor the float in place. I finished the day with fourteen tench and the carp and felt better than I had all winter. A good result under appalling conditions.

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I have written much here about the Pike handling courses I have been holding on the Predator Lake and now that my wrists are back to almost normal I decided that it was time to have a days pike fishing on this excellent venue.

As there is not much left of the fishing season I had to chooose a less than perfect day and after scanning various weather reports I decided on the last day of February as being the most promising.I was joined by Steve Gray from All Things Piscatorial who is a very capable predator angler and a man I hope to be working with in the near future.

We met at the fishery at first light and were rewarded by one of nature’s finest sunrises.

We set up in adjacent swims and sat together in the shelter of an umbrella to keep out of the wind. Both my rods were set up to leger dead baits and Steve did the same with one of his rods but chose to fish a drifter float on his second rod. I watched him fish the drifter float in very difficult conditions and learned a lot about this method. Just before lunch my left hand rod signalled a bite and the first fish of the day was mine. A chunky pike of about fifteen pounds, not big enough to be worth the stress to the fish of weighing it.

Steve soon followed with a much smaller fish on his static dead bait rod.

We seemed to be experiencing all four seasons in one day as the weather went from warm to cold and windy with sleet and snow showers in twenty minute intervals.

About an hour before sunset Steve’s static dead bait rod again signalled a run and as soon as he struck into the fish we said in unison ̶