The Fishing Coach

Spring arrived in the second week of May and as most of the passes were open at last, Jan and I decided to harness up the dogs and make a trip to the Vale of York.

The dog team.

I had volunteered to help my old friend, fellow PAA coach and more importantly, my accountant, Graham Walker to run a charity match in aid of the Alzheimer’s Society. Graham, his wife Anne and her sisters have already raised over £5000 for the charity and Anne is planning to do a sponsored walk on the Great Wall of China. See here for more details of Anne’s trek.

We arrived in Graham’s delightful village, Newton upon Derwent at midday and I was whisked off to see the fishery and visit a couple of tackle dealers. The shops were very generous with their donations, particularly Thompsons in Murton who told us to help ourselves to £100 worth of tackle from their shelves and then added two rods to our haul.

Here is a list from Graham of all who supported us:

Pool Bridge Farm let us use two lakes
Martech (UK) gave us the prize money
The Environment Agency provided a rod & reel for every novice
Cormoran provided a keep net for everyone plus a few good prizes and some Muckboots
Dynamite - loads of bait etc
Roy Marlow gave us a day for two at the Glebe
Thompsons in Murton let Martin Porter and me do a trolley dash for prizes and then gave us two rods
York tackle gave bait, a rod and other stuff
Joe Traves provided the meat for a barbecue for 80 people
Bruno, Derek North and Martin Porter came to support the event - I’d have struggled without them
The thirty five contestants, some of whom had to go to the pub every night to sign up new sponsors

and finally, when his mates had gone home, the winner of the £200 first prize in the “proper” match came around to donate his winnings - Chris Kendall, what a gent!

The matches, one for experienced anglers and one for beginners, were held at Pool Bridge Farm and my job was to help the beginners by providing coaching and tackle if needed. There were lots of prizes and a raffle so all the beginners went home with something.

The weather was very kind to us, if a little too hot and everyone caught fish.

This lad went on to win the beginners match

Not all the beginners were youngsters and Bernard caught this fine tench and the first still water barbel I have seen.

He certainly had a wonderful day, taking second prize and we all finished the day with a wonderful barbeque.

Graham and Anne are bird lovers and they have a barn owl that has been rescued but can never be returned to the wild since she would be very unlikely to survive. She lives in a special cage with room to fly and the privacy of an enclosed box in which to sleep. She’s very much still a wild animal and in no way tame. It was a great moment, sat in the darkness of Graham’s conservatory, to wait for the owl to make an appearance each evening at about 9 p.m.

You can see a larger version of the picture here.

We left late Sunday morning intending to return home in a leisurely fashion but made a diversion through Chesterfield to look at my old stamping ground. We had lunch just outside on the road to Matlock in a pub called The Three Horseshoes in Spitewinter - the food was better than we had dared hope considering that we stopped at the first place we liked the look of. It was probably the best Sunday lunch I have ever eaten and I would recommend it to anyone both for the quality of food and the excellent, friendly service.

A wonderful weekend with many thanks to Graham and Anne for their hospitality.

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Last weekend I went to Londonderry with the PAA as guests of the Loughs Agency on their two day Angling Fair. The idea was to show them our style of coaching as they are in the process of establishing their own coaching network. Unfortunately there was no water available on the site so all the physical activities such as casting had to be done on grass and various other activities were carried out in a marquee. Derek North had asked me to teach basic fly casting ( a subject I was a little rusty in). Waggler and feeder casting were also covered outside.

Coaching a young fly fisherman

Coaching waggler casting

Coaching feeder casting

Inside the tent tables had been arranged around the walls and pike, pole, carp and general coarse fishing as well as sea fishing and fly tying, demonstrations were given.

Teaching how to tie sea fishing rigs

Pole fishing instruction

Fly tying instruction

Flytying student

Carp rig clinic

Youngsters being shown insects and crustaceans

The Loughs Agency complex in Londonderry is very impressive and we were all very jealous of their facilities, especially the displays under a domed roof concerning the salmon, its life style and environment. We were made very welcome by everyone we met and apparently our contribution was well received by the public who seemed to flock to the site despite the showers. The Broomhill hotel we stayed in was very comfortable, the food excellent and the service superb. The picture below shows what they had to put up with but it gives no indication of the weird senses of humour that the hotel staff will probably tell their grandchildren about.

The team

The only letdown in the whole experience was the travelling. I left home at 3.15 a.m. on Friday morning and drove to Pershore near Worcester with Lee Blundell. Here we met Derek North who had organised the whole thing. With several other coaches we piled into a mini bus and a van and drove to near Preston where we picked up some more coaches. Then on to Scotland where near Lockerbie we picked up two more of the team and on to Stranraer for the ferry. A very fast crossing on the Seacat took us to Belfast with only the drive right across Ulster to Londonderry to complete.

We set up the stands for the next day at the Loughs Agency and finally reached the hotel at 9.30pm where they offered us a full dinner menu without batting an eye. After two days of coaching we were worried about the return journey, as the weather forecast was full of gale warnings and we were convinced that the ferry would be cancelled. The gales failed to materialise and the return journey went without a hitch… but still took nearly fourteen hours.

Great fun, a great welcome, wonderful people and good company! What more could you want?

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In the middle of last week Aidan and I returned to the river Thames, the scene of his recent triumphs and found the river flowing a little stronger but still in perfect condition. The method was the same as on his first visit but this time he was equipped with a more powerful rod, the Shimano Specialist that I had used on my last visit. After the usual half a dozen casts with maggots in the feeder and no hook length just to get some feed into the swim I fitted the same short, five and a half pound hook length and baited the size fourteen hook with three maggots.

I cast the feeder into the usual spot and we sat back and waited. Nothing happened for about an hour, despite about six recasts with the feeder refilled and I began to wonder if the fish had become wary of the short hook length. I then lengthened the hook length to four feet to place the baited hook well away from the feeder in what the fish may well consider to be a safer area, the next cast resulted in a sharp pull on the tip and the usual drop back bite.

Aidan lifted the rod and bullied the fish away from the far bank roots as I had shown him. The fish weighed four pounds ten ounces.

The next fish was a monster at six pounds five ounces and took all of Aidan’s newly learned skills to keep it out of the many snags on the far bank. This is a huge fish for a fifteen year old lad and only an ounce below my best chub.

The last fish of the day was five pound fourteen ounces, making his two day total of chub up to six, four of which were over five pounds.

I don’t think he yet realises how lucky he has been!

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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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I have just got home from a great day’s coaching at Royal Berkshire Fishery near Windsor and even though I am dead on my feet I felt I should share our success with you.

The day started for me when I left home at 7.30 a.m. to drive to Slough to pick up one of my regular students, Aidan. The drive can be done in forty five minutes, traffic allowing. This morning it did no such thing, and it took me one hour and forty five minutes so I was knackered before I started. I picked up Aidan from his home on time, nevertheless, as I always leave plenty of time for such contingencies rather than let my students down and drove him to Royal Berkshire Fishery. There was a South West wind that was blowing onto the far bank of the main lake and we had no option but to fish into the face of it in order to be sure of catching fish but even this wind had a cold edge to it and the days fishing was far from comfortable.

Whist Aidan set up a twelve foot match rod with a waggler I chopped some worms and casters and added a little hemp and some very small pellets, I introduced this to our chosen swim with a small cup fitted to the end of an old six metre telescopic pole that I adapted for this purpose and then added half a cup of red maggots our chosen hook bait. I baited two areas of the swim, one straight in front of us, where I expected to catch lots of roach and one to our left very close in to the bank, which I intended to leave until the last hour or so.

I set up the waggler to fish just on the bottom with just two number eights below the float, a size sixteen hook with two red maggots completed the rig and Aidan’s first cast was rewarded with an instant bite which he unfortunately missed. The second cast had the same result but this time the fish was hooked and landed, a small roach which would prove to be the first of many. Encouraged by this I stepped up the feed and he got a bite every cast.

The shoal soon responded to the angling pressure and the bites slowed down but by the end of the session he had caught about twenty to just under a pound. Through out the day I continued to feed the margin swim with chopped worm and red maggot and finally in the last hour I set up a slightly more powerful rod with a four pound hook length and a size twelve hook. This rig consisted of a small waggler fished well over depth with an AAA shot fished on the bottom four inches from the hook which was baited with a small lob worm.

During the last hour we had several tentative tugs but no bites developed until I was putting the other rod away prior to packing up altogether, the float shot away and the strike was met with no resistance but he worm was still intact. I instructed Aidan to cast back to the same place and the float almost immediately slid away, he was rewarded with a spirited fight of a fine perch which weighed two pounds fourteen ounces.

A very fine fish and a personal best for Aidan, a very fitting end to a good day.

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Sometimes I think that anglers should be born with webbed feet (apologies to any readers that were), it has been so wet this month that my beloved river Kennet has been in the fields and most of the Wasing Estate has been inaccessible due to flooded tracks.

My thanks go to John Butler, the head bailiff on the estate, who had to winch my car out of a very muddy track last week due to a failure of my four wheel drive (more about this in a later post

).

I have managed one day barbel fishing since Christmas but my choice of swims was limited by access problems. I ended up in the car park swim above Brimpton bridge with the intention of field testing one of my two new flood rods. I found a pair of two pound test curve Harrison Torrix rods on Ebay and couldn’t resist them, they were less than half the price of new rods and were in mint condition.

I fished one in conjunction with a Relum centrepin (very similar to the Arnold Kingpin and the old Swallow centrepin). I have had this reel for about ten years but have hardly used it because it has been loaded with eighteen pound mono for carp margin snag fishing and the gap between the drum and the back plate discourages the use of light line. With the Kennet in flood I knew I would need to cast a lot of weight so I went to my reel drawer only to find that the line on the Relum was well past it’s sell by date. I replaced the line with a bonded braid made by Spider wire called Ultracast in thirty pound breaking strain, I dislike using ordinary braid on a centrepin because the coarseness of the braid makes Wallace casting difficult and this braid has a smooth coating.

I fully expect some criticism over the use of such a heavy main line but in my mind it was justified due to the strength of the current and the debris that was being washed down, the hook link was a soft twelve pound braid. There is no credit in leaving fish tethered to a bunch of weed and other debris because your end tackle became so heavy during the fight that the main line couldn’t take the strain.

I fished a large open-ended swim feeder weighing six ounces loaded with fishmeal ground bait and mixed pellets with a fifteen millimetre crab flavoured pellet on the hook. These pellets are really strong smelling and just the job for really coloured water. I managed to get the rig to hold the bottom in a small slack on the far bank by holding the rod up high to keep as much line out of the water as possible.

Martin James was fishing up in the weir pool, he came down for a visit and by some amazing coincidence he too was using a Relum centrepin (the only other one I have ever seen), which he praised highly. He had caught one barbel just short of ten pounds from the weir pool and we had quite a long chat.

I tried several other sizes of flavoured marine pellets without success and eventually switched to a ten millimetre Dynamite Source boilie, hair rigged to a size ten hook. This produce a couple of tentative taps and finally in mid afternoon a barbel of just over five pounds (small baits in flood water, haven’t they read the books?). Dusk produced one more bite but the hook hold failed.

The rest of the month has been devoted to tackle repairs and replacements ready for the spring coaching sessions which are programmed to start half way through February. I did start a day’s chub fishing on the river Embourne (a tributary of the river Kennet) but it was spoilt by getting the car stuck and ended fishless.

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Earlier this month I ran my first Pike Handling course of 2008 with two very enthusiastic young lads. Elliott had been given a day out with me for Christmas by his father Clay and due to computer and other logistical problems I had to deliver the card (my partner Jan makes special handmade gift cards for such occasions) to their home address to ensure it was in time for the festive season.

This should have been a piece of cake given modern sat nav technology but unfortunately my TomTom seems to get confused when it hasn’t passed a street light for a couple of hundred yards and as my new student lived in the wilds of darkest Hertfordshire, a simple delivery turned into a major expedition second only to Stanley’s search for Dr. Livingstone. The point the TomTom took me to given the postcode was about three miles driving from the actual house and none of the locals I spoke to had ever heard of the house name.

At one stage (bearing in mind I was in very rural Hertfordshire) I was driving in desperation along a secluded country road when I spotted a woman walking towards me, I put on my best disarming smile so as not to frighten her and stopped to ask for directions. My smile was returned with some enthusiasm but my request for directions wiped it smartly from her face and replaced it with a look of confusion, she was from somewhere in Eastern Europe, at least that’s my guess, as she spoke nor understood a word of English.

I eventually got directions from Clay by phone and delivered the card safely.

As I left home on the day of the proposed course (not as early as I used to have to do when I lived in Shepperton) I was greeted by a howling East wind that took away the feeling in my ears before I got to the car. I met Clay and his son Elliot at Max’s Café at Padworth and was introduced to Elliott’s friend Jack who was to fish with him. Both lads were already keen anglers and asked lots of questions as I explained my plans for the day over a hearty breakfast.

We drove to the Predator lake on the Wasing Estate where Clay left the boys with me and we were faced with a landscape that the East wind had given the appearance of an arctic tundra, all the vegetation or what was left of it, was leaning sharply westwards in the fierce wind and the surface of the lake was being whipped almost to a foam. My heart sank for the lads’ sake as I realised it was going to be a difficult day and any shelter I tried to erect against that wind for warmth, would be blown away by it.

I set up four rods with the usual dead bait legering rigs, a snap tackle attached to an uptrace with a couple of swan shot pinched on to it and the boys remarked on the simplicity of it. I explained that this would do the job and there was no need to make it more complicated, they had been reading too many magazine articles designed to sell tackle rather than inform. The baits were to be frozen coarse fish as I have had hardly any runs on sea baits all season and a couple of years ago I was so confident using frozen sardines that I rarely brought anything else. I also set up one heavy and one light spinning rods and gave the lads a lesson on lure fishing as we waited for the deadbait rigs to catch the fish I desperately hoped would feed. I didn’t expect the lures to catch fish in these conditions and despite the lads’ best efforts I was proved right. I explained that most of the pike would be laid on the bottom and that any fish we did catch would be carrying leeches because of this.

When the two students had lost the feeling in their fingers due to their gloves being taken off to work the lure rods, we huddled together like penguins against the wind and talked some more about pike fishing and the associated tackle. About mid day one of the bite alarms sounded briefly but no run materialised, my hopes raised a little as I desperately did not want these lads to go home disappointed.

About twenty minutes later the same alarm sounded and a firm strike by Elliot resulted in him playing a small, rather dour pike which soon came to my eager landing net and sure enough had four or five leeches clinging to its body.

The fish weighed between four and five pounds but could not have been more welcome had it weighed twenty.

A little while later about mid afternoon the same alarm sounded again and this time Jack hooked and landed a slightly larger fish, again with it’s compliment of leeches.

I would have been more than happy with one pike between them given the conditions and would have cheerfully settled for just that at the beginning of the day,but both of them deserved their first pike and I’m only sorry they were not bigger.

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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.

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Since my last post I have been working two or three days a week and have done three outings with my fellow coaches from the NFA. One was an open day for Farnham Angling Society at their excellent coaching lake at Badshot Lea. I coached at this venue last year and really enjoyed it and it was just as good this year. This is a very forward thinking angling club who look after their juniors and manage their waters well. The other outings were at Judges Lake, Winchester run by Eastleigh and District Angling Club and at South Hill Park, Bracknell and run by Bracknell Herons. Two more forward thinking angling clubs. Well done, lads!

Meanwhile Long Moor Farm fishery is still providing the goods for my students with small tench and carp.

Any float fishing method works and almost any bait will catch, I have even caught carp on floating bread on a pole as a demonstration. Usually sweetcorn does the trick and the carp have a tendency to take it on the drop, but maggots or soft hooker pellets will also work. Hemp and trout pellets are banned but I feed the swim with carp pellets and maggots at first and then loose feed with corn. Everyone catches plenty of fish and as you can see from the pictures, this little lad is really pleased with himself.

These fish are usually caught on a five metre whip with no elastic and a three pound hook length and you can see from the next pictures how much joy they bring.

Many of these students have never caught fish before or nothing as big as these and I get as much pleasure from it as they do.

Twynersh is still featuring in a big way on my coaching programme, particularly when I have larger groups. I have been using Lake Three again after a few years now that the landscaping work is finished and it is once again the site of many students first sucesses.

An Asian familly had a great day on one of my beginners courses, lots of fish were caught by everyone, both roach and perch, from this tiny specimen, his first fish.

To this slightly larger perch.

Roach were showing as well

Then this monster perch which weighed two pounds twelve ounces.

A great family day out and this little fellow will remember this fish for the rest of his life.

Lake Three at Twynersh has also been producing some nice bream which can be caught over a bed of ground bait, pellets, sweetcorn and hemp and these fish took sweetcorn and maggot cocktail.

As I write this the river season has started but the amount of rain we have had recently promises to make things difficult. I am waiting until Monday to make my start so that I have a better chance of getting my beloved river Kennet to myself. I’ll let you know how I get on.

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This month has been taken up with more visits to Longmoor Farm with various students. The venue never fails to produce lots of small tench and carp and has proved to be a real find. Many thanks to my mate Clive Williams who is a leading light in Taywood Angling Society for putting me on to it.

On 11th May I went up to Yorkshire to help out at the Pickering Game Fair. Graham Walker and his wife Anne extended their kind hospitality to me for the weekend and I had a great time and was made to feel really welcome. The weather forecast had been terrible and I was prepared for a two day soaking but the rain held off except for Friday night, until just after we had packed up on the Sunday. Derek North and I were suposed to be giving demonstrations on a tiny, fish free pond but most of the time it was full of spaniels and labradors doing gun dog trials. I had intended to give a demonstration of Wallace casting and lure fishing but can you imagine the result of me fishing a surface jerk bait with all those gun dogs about?As a dog lover myself I daren’t even think about it.

As you can see from the picture we were not exactly overworked, being sited well away from the main arena.

I had two what I call returners courses this month, these are run for anglers who fished when they were young and then often discovered girls, a career or had a familly. They try to return to the sport, often twenty or so years later only to find everything has changed. I try to reintroduce these anglers back to the sport by showing them that very little has really changed, just some of the tackle and the associated terminology. It is often just a matter of confidence - a thing that sometimes plays a greater part in our sport than is realised.

The pictures above show one such angler, Adam, who was able to catch a number of these roach from Lake one at Twynersh. It was a shame that a cold snap the night before had put the carp and tench down. The weather has been very changeable all month and so for the second course I abandoned my usual venue and the hope of bonus carp. I took Andrew to the match lake at Twynersh in the hope of some bream. After a period of reckless ground baiting with my favourite mix as we set up and then more careful feeding as he fished, he ended the day with fifteen bream to four pounds.

I have fished Marsh Farm three times but due to the changeable weather conditions I was unable to time my visits with the feeding times of the big crucian carp but I did catch some smaller ones and some tench.

My good mate Les, known here as Weller of the yard, has finally moved to Northumberland where he tells me there is very little coarse fishing and so he has sold me two of his match poles and his Boss box. Another steep learning curve for me and Les will have to learn to “chuck fluff”.

My move to the Kennet valley seems to be going ahead, my house is under offer and the offer we have made on a house in the village of Kingsclere has been accepted, I found this delightful village a few years ago whilst looking for a fishery close to Newbury for coaching with E2E and over the last couple of years I have revisited Frobury Farm quite a few times. This will place me within fifteen minutes drive of the Wasing Estate. Roll on!

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One of my previous students, Joe Perdoni, has asked the following question and I feel that it deseves more attention than a quick reply under the comments section.

Martin,
What is a good set up when ledger fishing for carp near a large patch of lily pads (line strength etc..) Should you always fish around the outside edge or (and excuse me if this is a bit of stupid question to ask) is their a set up you can you to cast right in amongst the lilies without getting snagged up?
Thanks
Joe

This will depend on the size of the carp you are expecting to hook but I would be reluctant to go below twelve pound main line, preferably fifteen and beware of these fine braided hook lengths as they are not as abrasion resistant as the manufacturers would have us believe.

I would advise that you tackle this type of swim with a heavy float rod so that as soon as the bite develops you are in contact with the fish and can begin steering the fish out of the lilly patch, straightaway, before it realises it is hooked. This is particularly effective at short ranges where you can lift the fish’s head to stop it diving into the roots.

The roots of a lilly patch are your main problem, the lilly pads and stalks are quite fragile and will not give you much trouble on fifteen pound line but deep underneath them are the rhizomes which link bunches of pads and these can be as thick as your arm. If a decent carp gets your line under one of these then you will be lucky to get it out.

If you must leger then use a line clip on the rod to stop the fish taking line and fish with the line very tight, even with the rod tip bent, but sit close to your rod or you will lose it. Fish the out skirts of the patch when possible and try to draw the fish out by loose feeding or groundbait prior to fishing.

If the fish will not leave the sanctuary of the lillies at any cost then putting your lead and baited hook into a pva bag will prevent snagging the pads on the cast but I would resort to the following set up.

Pick a patch of lillies less than two rod lenghts from the bank adjacent to plenty of bankside cover to conceal your presence. Prior to fishing, carefully remove a pad or two just in from the edge of the patch, to give a hole for your float to sit in and to enable your baited hook to get to the bottom, then prebait for a couple of days with bait samples.

The rod I would use is a Harrison “Stepped up, Stepped up” float rod which will handle twelve pound line comfotably and is twelve feet long with a through action, coupled with a robust centrepin loaded with twelve pound line. Use a strong forged hook no smaller than size six under a small pole float, fix enough weight to sink it six inches from the hook and set the float so that the tip is just under the surface. When and only when, the float rises above the surface, strike quickly(ignore any dips or sideways movement of the float) and hold. .Once hooked try to lift the fish whilst steering it out of the lillies. The centrepin will allow you, if you are brave enough, to take a couple of turns of line from the fish while you are lifting it and this will sometimes make the difference.

This fish was taken from a frightfully snaggy swim in the corner of Split Lakes on the Cemex complex at Yateley using similar tactics, it weighed twenty one pounds.

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On Wednesday I took a young lad from Slough back to Longmoor Farm with the promise to try and catch him some bigger carp. I decided to try fishing up in the water instead of on the bottom and fed quite heavilly and often with maggot and low oil carp pellets. We started with a little revision on the short, elasticated pole and he was soon playing a three pound carp which had taken his bait on the drop.

He continued to catch smaller carp and lots of tench and because of the way I was feeding most of them were caught up in the water, taking the bait on the drop. We then switched to rod and line, a waggler rod, four pound main line and three pound hook length. The result was the same but a different experience for him and a slightly better carp.

This was a pretty Common Carp at five pounds and his biggest fish of the day.

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You may have noticed that I have not written anything here since the beginning of March but I have been quite busy with coaching. To cap it all the hard drive on my computer packed up and had to be replaced. Fortunately my partner’s friend was able to recover most of my data but some pictures I was intending to publish here were lost.

We have also finally put our house on the market with a view to making the move to the Kennet valley I have long promised myself. This involved a bit of decorating at home and a lot of travelling to view potential new homes. Much has been achieved but there is still a lot to be done.

I have, as mentioned earlier, still been coaching with some great results and have started using two new fisheries. The Royal Berkshire Fisheries that provided me with a two pound roach this winter is the first to be included in my coaching stable. It is located much closer to Slough, where many of my students live and has a good head of small to medium sized roach, ideal for the less experienced anglers to develop their techniques on. These fish are rarely troubled by anglers, as most who frequent the fishery are only interested in the carp and are fairly easy to catch.

That is not to say that I have abandoned my old favourite venue Twynersh although its depth makes for difficult waggler fishing it has been producing some nice bream for my students.

I am not a fan of still water bream myself but they are great fish for my students to catch in that they are not likely to break lighter hook lengths and embarass anyone - also they look massive with a young lad stood behind them.

David caught this fish with an six meter take apart pole with a number eight elastic and a two and a half pound hook length. It weighed an ounce or so over seven pounds. Well done David!

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I mentioned that I was now using two new fisheries for coaching - the second is near Arborfield Garrison near Wokingham. The garrison has many memories for me as at the tender age of sixteen years I left home and joined the Army to start an engineering apprenticeship at the Apprentice College there. This monstrosity has since been torn down but the scars are still in my memory. I completed my training next door at the School of Electronic Engineering and revisited there on two more postings for courses during my thirteen years service. It was during one of these courses that I first fished my beloved river Kennet.

The new fishery is called Longmoor Farm and is located on the Nine Mile Ride. It is a small lake set in a woodland setting and is stocked with small tench and carp and when I say stocked I mean STOCKED! It’s fish soup.

Everyone I have taken there has caught lots of fish and they take almost anything you put on the hook. One of the lads even caught a tench with no bait, just a bare hook!

You are not going to trouble the angling press with your specimens from this venue and I don’t expect to bump into Terry Hearn or Chris Yates there any time soon but if you need to catch fish all day then this is the place for you. I usually set my students up with a short pole with a number eight elastic or a five metre whip with no elastic (preferably the latter) and a three pound hook length. They all love it!

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I have also held two courses at my old favourite venue Twynersh, one for a chap who fished as a lad and wanted to return to our beloved sport and one for a father and son duo, both beginners.

Paul Wiseman tried to return to fishing after twenty odd years and found he no longer “spoke the language” everything has changed so much since he last fished. He soon found that he had not forgotten as much as he had thought and I was soon able to bring him up to speed. I showed him most of the basic methods and he caught lots of roach and rudd. Unfortunately the previous night there had been a sharp drop in temperature and the carp and tench were less than enthusiastic about feeding. He did manage a couple of each but only small fish.

Paul Clabburn and his son Tom were both beginners and as usual I started with the pendulum exercise until they had learned about the mechanics of handling a fishing rod and then they fished with short poles with number eight elastics (I used the elsaticated rods rather than the whips in case of the larger bream). Dad was first off the mark.

Tom soon caught up and the element of competition between students that often produces such good results started to develop.

Tom finally topped his Dad with an unexpected pike which he was brave enought to hold for this picture.

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I have been coaching Tayler Clark off and on for nearly eight years and I have been fortunate to watch him develop into a fine young angler. I had promised him a pike handling course on the Predator Lake on the Wasing Estate over the Christmas holidays but with the loss of my mum this never happened. Last week he called me to tell me he was about to start his half term holiday and would like to go pike fishing.

I tried to organise a full course but with such short notice I ended up with just Tayler and his freind Aaron. I picked them up from Tayler’s house at 7.30 am Thursday morning and drove down to the Kennet valley. The track to the Predator lake was still underwater but not as bad as my last visit when the flooded Kennet made the lake inaccessable. A little bit of water and mud is no problem for my Toyota 4x4 and after a drive that the lads really enjoyed we were parked at the lake. The floods made the siting of the rods a little problematic as Aaron did not have waterproof boots and the wind added a chill to an otherwise very mild day.

We set up six rods, in three pairs, legering various deadbaits and sat back to wait for some action. After a chat on tactics and a complicated discussion on the ethics of fishing I gave them a demonstation of trace making but we had to retreat to the shelter of the car to heat shrink some off the treble hooks as the wind was so strong. Two and a half hours passed but I resisted the impulse to move as this fishery often does not switch on until lunch time and then the drop off indicator on one of the rods shown above fell to the ground and the bite alarm shrilled. Aaron took the first bite but the fish dropped the bait as he struck, we were all a little disapointed but a missed bite is better than nothing and their enthusiasm was renewed.

We had discussed a rota for taking the bites (ever the optomist, me) and as Tayler’s personal best pike was bigger than Aaron’s we decided to let Aaaron take the first fish. Shortly afterwards the next bite came on a legered dead trout and Aaron was into a good fish which he played quite well. I netted the fish and as I carried it to the unhooking mat I noticed another trace besides our own hanging from its mouth. Our trace was easily removed but the other trace disappeared into the pike’s stomach.

I explained to the lads what this meant and with Tayler’s help I started to invert the stomach very gently but the hooks were very far down and I ended with the pike’s stomach turned inside out further than I have ever had to do before. The top hook on the trace had slid down to the other treble, they were tangled together and hooked into the wall of the stomach. These were of the stainless steel variety probably salvaged from a lure before being incorporated into a homemade snap tackle. This type of hook would have taken a long time to rust away, even in the acidic environment of the pike’s stomach and had to be removed to enable the pike to feed properly.

Using a set of bolt croppers I carefully cut the hooks into pieces and removed them a bit at a time, the lads watched this process in silence and finally understood the need for the comprhensive tool kit I always carry for unhooking pike. I had just completed this difficult operation and had started to replace the stomach of the fish when another bite alarm sounded and I sent the boys to deal with it, telling Tayler to strike immediately. This he did and was soon playing a good fish. I replaced the pike’s stomach very carefully, put in into a sack in the shallows and then went to net Tayler’s fish.

The result was the photograph below, Aaron’s fish on the left weighed fifteen pounds twelve ounces and Tayler’s fish weighed fourteen pounds thirteen ounces. Both were their biggest pike and swam off with no ill effects.

Once the fish were returned and all the excitement had subsided (I still get just as excited as the lads do and the day I don’t is the day they nail my coffin shut) I examined the remains of the snap tackle I had removed from the pike’s stomach. I found that the swivel on the end had no main line attached to it which meant the the knot securing it had probably parted. I wish some anglers would learn to tie knots properly and test them rigourously before use.

Aaron caught one more pike about seven or eight pounds in weight and both lads missed one run each, I explained that these were probably small fish who had not got hold of the bait properly but that it was not worth the risk of deep hooking a fish by waiting longer before the strike.

By about 3.30 pm Aaron was complaining of very cold, wet feet and so we decided to call it a day, one which we will all remember for some time.

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January saw my last two sessions with Keiran from Slough and as he had done so well with a rod and reel I decided to show him the basics of pole fishing. The venue was as usual Twynersh Fishing Complex and we fished the swim where he has had most of his success. On a previous lesson he caught some bream and was troubled by a large pike so I brought some pike tackle along as well, just in case.

He was very interested in the seat box and associated “ironmongery” but then us boys love gadgets and was soon fishing at about eight metres in nearly ten feet of water next to some lilly pads.

I had set him up with a number eight elastic, a pole float taking about three quarters of a gram (due to the depth) and a size eighteen hook to about a three pound hook length. The bait was a single red maggot and I was feeding pinkies and a little hemp.

Keiran was catching roach almost straight away up to about twelve ounces and had soon mastered the technique of shipping the pole in and out each time. He was enjoying the technique so much and I was having fun teaching him that I gave no more thought to the pike fishing until one of his small roach was taken on the way in and Keiran found himself playing a pike well into double figures.

He played it well for about two or three minutes while I waited for it to bite through the hook length and when this didn’t happen I started to feel that he had a chance of landing the fish, sometimes the hook pulls out of the fish that took the bait and into the pike’s jaw in such a way that the hook length is away from the teeth. He was doing very well and had even extended the pole to ten metres to give himself more scope to play the fish, slowly Keiran began to gain line and the pike, a fish of fourteen or fifteen pounds was approaching the waiting net. The light hook length had taken a lot of strain and had perhaps even touched the teeth on occasions and it parted at the net,allowing the fish to escape.

We were both very disappointed but I think he took it best of all and said “It’s not my biggest pike!“.

The next week we did the same, at the same place and this time I set up the pike rod first and the result was a smaller pike but a welcome one nevertheless.

He also caught a number of fine roach up to about a pound.

Keiran has learned a lot during his time with me and is well on his way to becoming a fine angler. I have enjoyed teaching him and look forward to meeting him again in the future.

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I have recently had a question in the comments box on one of my older posts, I am always grateful for such feedback and I think that I should share my answer with all those who have nothing better to do than read my ramblings. Here are the questions.

“Will high or low preasure from the weather affect pike fishing?”
Comment by Jon Morgan-Parker — January 14, 2007

Most of my pike fishing is planned three or four weeks in advance so I don’t pay too much attention to air pressure when considering whether to go after pike or not but the major consideration as I see it is the temperature changes prior to your day’s fishing. Fish - being cold blooded creatures - cannot regulate their own body temerature and so are susceptable to sudden drops in temperature. These changes in temperature will cause their muscles and digestive systems to slow right down. They will feed very little and this will make them difficult to catch.

High pressure systems generally mean cold, bright weather and whilst the extra sunlight will help the pike find its prey and the cold water will cause the prey fish to shoal up, sudden drops in temperatre will discourage the pike from feeding.

Low pressure systems generally mean warm, wet and windy weather and although the river pike fishing can become difficult I prefer this type of conditions for my pike fishing. However do not discount the low pressure periods as most fish will adapt to the cold water and will start feeding again after three or four days despite the temperature if only for short spell each day. This is particulary true of pike and is not an exact science but that is what makes our sport so interesting.

“How long would you leave a bait in a swim before thinking of relocating with another cast?”
Comment by Jon Morgan-Parker — January 14, 2007

This is an even more difficult question to give a straight answer to as there are a number of variables. There are times when pike are active hunters and will go looking for food and there are times when you need to present them with an easy meal. The warmer the water the more likely they are to be actively hunting but even then they don’t need to feed as often as a mammal would so may not be hungry.

As a general rule I would say that if you haven’t had a run after forty five minutes then it is time for a move but not until you have tried twitching your dead bait a little. If you are lucky or hardworking enough to have located one of the legendary hot spots and are fishing in cold weather then it may be worthwhile waiting for a little longer for the short daily feeding spell that sometimes occurs. I used to fish a gravel pit where you could set your watch by the 1.15pm. feeding spell! If you didn’t get a run then you might as well have gone home.

Many thanks Jon for your questions - it really helps to motivate me whenI know that someone is reading this drivel I write, I hope I have been of some help.

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On Thursday I returned to Twynersh with Josh hoping to get my favouite swim but word had got out about Keiran’s carp. There were two other anglers in the swim but they were fishing normal carp tactics, boltrigs and boilies at long distance and had lost one carp in the snags. The biggest and often best feature in any lake is the margins - just don’t hammer your bivvie pegs in with a mallet.

Josh managed a couple of the quality roach that we have become used to at Twynesh but no bream and tench showed.

He is now ready for something more challenging.

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On Tuesday this week I took Keiran from Slough back to Twynersh in the hope of catching him some more bream or a tench like the one Josh caught just before Christmas. I stepped up the tackle a little in case of larger fish - he used a fifteen foot Shakespeare carp waggler rod and a Shimano fixed spool reel loaded with six pound Maxima line. I have been trying some new hooks from Preston, the PR 29 to 4lb 12oz hook length.

I also had a lot of casters I had bought for a day on the upper Kennet which had been cancelled due to extreme river levels. I had frozen them at the time but defrosted two pints for this coaching session. I fed heavily with pellets, hemp and casters and Keiran was soon catching the quality roach that we have been used to at Twynersh. The bites were very finicky and as the wind had dropped I set up a pole float fished two inches over depth just under the rod tip next to the lilly patch.

This improved his bite indication greatly and he hooked into a much larger fish that shot out into much deeper water. Keiran did not panic but held the rod tip up and let the front drag on the reel take the pressure. The fish seemed to cruise lethargically round the swim doing pretty much what it liked but at my direction he was able to keep it away from the snags by the liberal application of side strain.

He played the fish for about fifteen minutes - following my instructions to the letter - and did not fall into the trap of becoming impatient as so many young (and older) anglers would have done. When the fish first surfaced I realised it was much bigger than I had expected and knew I would have trouble fitting it in the landing net, but Keiran’s patience held and after three or four attempts it was in the net. My relief was immeasurable as I had been worried that I would knock it of the hook trying to fold in into the twenty inch pan net, we would both have been distraught had this happened but I would have taken the brunt of the guilt as his coach.

Twenty two pound seven ounce common carp

The result was this beatiful fish in excellent condition. We were both over the moon and had to sit for at least twenty minutes just drinking tea. He caught little else that day as the swim had been thoroughly disrupted by the fight but it just didn’t matter.

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The mild spell continued and I took Keiran from Slough for another lesson. Once again Twynersh was the venue and after Josh’s sucess I fed some groundbait from the start with lots of frozen red maggots and pellets in it. Normally this would be the kiss of death this time of year but the weather had remained very mild, although wet.

The roach were feeding immediately and the the bream moved in shortly afterwards.

Keiran hooked six bream in all but only landed four as one came off the hook during the fight and another was taken by a large pike on the way in. We shall be back to see that pike later.

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The mild spell continues and Josh and I went back to Twynersh the following week, this time he used a rod and reel. Three years ago I bought four Shakespeare Valor match rods for coaching, each twelve feet in length and I have been very pleased with these rods ever since. I have even fished with them myself with my favourite centrepins when trees overhead would have made a longer rod difficult.

I set Josh up with one of these rods and a Shimano fixed spool reel loaded with four pound line and a three pound hook length. The hook size was sixteen and the bait was double red maggot. He soon started catching good quality roach.

I started to notice bubbles in the swim and as they were in quite small groups I suspected bream to be the culprits and so stepped up the feed adding soaked pellets to the menu. The result was this fine five pound seven ounce tench.

He landed this fish on his own without any physical assistance from me - a real achievement for one so young and lacking in experience.

I look forward to working with this lad in the future.

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First let me apologise for not posting for a couple of months but I lost my mother suddenly in the middle of December and I have also been waiting for permission to use some of the pictures I am about to publish.

Just before Christmas you may remember we had a very mild spell of weather and I took a new lad called Josh and his teacher Natasha to Twynersh. I started him, as always, with a whip but Josh had fished before and will soon graduate to rod and reel.

One of his first fish was this fine one pound four ounce roach, it is difficult to explain to the modern carp fixated angler just how special this fish is.

We also tried trotting the river Bourne which runs through Twynersh Fishing Complex, Josh was not quite ready for this but I managed to hook this chub during the demonstation.

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Today I had been given permission to take Kieran from Slough to the Predator Lake on the Wasing Estate for a pike handling course. He has been fishing with me twice already and after losing a small roach to a pike at Twynersh has been keen to catch our largest native predator. He even disrupted his whole family to be ready for me to pick him up at 7 am. And it was tipping with rain.

We drove down to the Kennet valley and stopped at Max’s cafe in Padworth for a bacon sandwich. As we arrived at the lake the rain stopped and the sun came out. I thought we had used up our daily ration of luck and did not anticipate the day’s fishing that followed. I set up the first rod and cast out a still frozen sardine.Three more rods were then baited with a variety of other dead baits and we had just sat down when the bite indicator on the first rod went off. The bait must still have been partially frozen - perhaps the pike like sardine flavoured ice lollies. Kieran was into his first fish that pulled back at him and did very well to learn fish playing skills as he went. The pike weighed eleven pound four ounces.

Shortly afterwards the same rod produced anothe fish of twelve pounds fifteen ounces, again to a partially frozen sardine.

Our last two sardines accounted for two more large pike - one weighed fouteen pounds six ounces:

…and the fourth weighed a massive fifteen pounds ten ounces.

While he was playing this fish one of the other bite indicators went off and I banked a pike just under ten pounds which I managed to land, unhook and return safely whilst he was still playing his fish. As I struck into this fish and a later one under similar circumstances I dreaded it being a real monster but my luck held in both instances, each fish being about the same size.

Kieran ended the day with six fish, his remaining two being just under ten pounds. The biggest four had taken sardines and the smallest four had taken roach. Only the half herring failed to produce a bite. How do you convince a twelve year old beginner that pike fishing is not always like this?

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This last couple of weeks have seen the arrival of Autumn with a vengeance - the leaves have turned from green into all the wonderful shades of red, brown, yellow and orange and have started to fall. The weather has taken a marked turn towards Winter with dropping temperatures, heavy rain and gales. The rivers are getting their first flush through of the year with the heavy rain we have had and I anticipate some good sport when they start to fine down. I like this time of year!

Coaching work is beginning to dry up as few people are as enthusiastic about this weather as I am but I am still getting a couple of jobs a week with Slough BSS. and I have even met a few new students. It is unfortunate that I am unable to show the pictures I have taken due to concerns about child protection but Twynersh has been producing some nice roach up to nearly a pound. The pike handling courses have also produced some nice fish, including this fish of just over ten pounds. Excuse the sinister nature of this picture but I must hide the identity of the young people concerned.

I have been surprised about the way most of the students have dealt with the bad weather and I have had few complaints - perhaps the younger generation are not as soft as we thought.

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Last week I had three courses, two with BSS Slough and one private course with Richard and his son Edmund. The venue was as usual the Match lake at Twynersh but as my normal swim was taken on the first day we tried the other end of the lake.

Not as many fish were caught but the roach that my students did catch were of a much better stamp, so we used that swim for the rest of the week.

On the Saturday course Edmund caught the first fish and gave his Dad a good ribbing as a result.

Richard soon caught up with this unorthordox specimen.

In the end Dad caught a real fish but not as big as his son’s.

Both are now hooked on angling but the lesson finished early at their request due to the cold. I am looking forward to seeing these two in the Spring.

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On Friday I was able to take Paul from Slough back to the Wasing Estate to sample the pike fishing on the predator lake. I was able to organise this at the last minute thanks to the cooperation of the head Bailiff John Butler. Once again legered dead bait was the sucessful method, although Paul did a bit of lure fishing as well.

He caught three pike but unfortunately all were under ten pounds.

He enjoyed his day and although the sport was a little slow he showed no signs of boredom as I would expect of a lad of his age. His thirst for knowledge of our sport is almost intimidating and I’m looking forward to our next outing.

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A few weeks ago I had taken Andrew on an introduction course at Twynersh and during the lesson he had expressed an interest in pike fishing. I’d promised him a day on the predator lake on the Wasing Estate and we had booked the 1st of November. As I had already got a guest ticket for him I was determined to fulfill my obligation and as my fever had broken and my digestive system had become a little less disorderly, I picked him up from his home as arranged (he lives quite close to me).

We drove to Padworth and went into Max’s cafe but I was unable to face a cooked breakfast and so just settled for a cup of tea (to those of you who know me that will be a measure of just how ill I had been.)

The plan for the day was to introduce Andrew to pike fishing by demonstrating and explaining the principle of both dead baiting and lure fishing. Once a pike was caught I would then cover safe handling and unhooking. The previous few nights had been the coldest of the autumn and despite both our efforts the pike were uninterested in lures. Andrew learned the basics of fishing with lures, improved his casting techniques and kept warm with the exercise until the autumn sun melted the ground frost.

After we had been lure fishing for about an hour a pike found one of our legered dead baits and Andrew landed his first pike.

He ended the day with four fish, the biggest weighing just under fourteen pounds and I was able to demonstrate how to unhook a pike safely, several times.

Although he enjoyed his day Andrew was not too impressed with the fight of still water pike and found the sport less than fast and furious.

The photo below will demonstrate how fast winter is approaching, I was fortunate to be able to share a little of the last few hours of the life of this beautiful creature, once an agile, fast moving, flying predator now become sluggish due to lack of food.

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