The Fishing Coach

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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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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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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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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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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Life is so full of coincidences! Last week I had a very sucessful day on the river Test fly fishing for trout then towards the end of the week I was telephoned by a future student who asked if I could give one of her relatives, who was visiting from Canada, a fly fishing lesson. Normally I would have recommended that he find a casting coach and get some casting lessons first but he was returning home in two days and would not have time. I gave the matter a little thought and after a telephone call to Syon Park I agreed to show him the basics.

On Sunday I met Steven at Syon Park and began my first fly fishing lesson. Steve had never cast a fly but after about twenty minutes, with a bit of wool on the leader instead of a fly, was doing a fair job of laying the fly on the grass about ten yards away. He was either a natural or I have a better casting action than I thought. He was still making a few mistakes with his technique but all he needed was practice.

I tied on an epoxy resin buzzer and explained how to fish it slowly.

Steve had already done quite a lot of fishing in Canada, catching walleye and perch, sometimes through a hole in the ice but nothing had prepared him for the sheer speed of a rainbow trout. He got a take right under the rod tip at the end of the retrieve and managed to hold onto the fish for about forty seconds. He almost had control of the fish when it surfaced and saw us, it turned and shot away at great speed catching him by surprise, pulling the rod down and parting the leader before he could let go of the line he was holding.

I don’t know who was more upset, him or me. He had one more take during the rest of the day but alas failed to hook the fish. His casting improved throughout the day but I suggested that if he intends to take up fly fishing he should get some more casting lessons. Money well spent!

He enjoyed the day as much as I did but I was disappointed not to have got him a fish. He certainly earned one.

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Last week I attended the AGM of Taywood Angling Society, a club that has been having some trouble. A couple of years ago they suffered a massive fish kill on one of their waters, their prime carp fishery at Staines and since then their membership has slumped. This water was not the reason I joined the club three years ago, I was interested in one of their lakes at Chertsey. This lake is gin clear and heavily weeded but full of natural food, it has a very low stocking level and very few small fish. It is a hard water to fish but holds carp, bream and tench to very large sizes and has very little angling pressure.

I fish this lake about a dozen times a season and blank more often than not but I have had a few of the smaller tench and one monster that weighed 9lb 4ozs. This lake is possibly capable of breaking the tench and bream records so I fish on in hope. I wouldn’t dare guess how big the carp are but I have seen some huge fish.

The club also has a stretch of the Thames at Sonning which I will get round to fishing this summer. They have now gone into partnership with Mid Kent Fisheries who have promised to help with the problem with the lake in Staines. They will be doing a fish survey with a view to restocking if necessary.

To recruit new members Taywood AS have dropped their joining fee this year so if you fancy a challenge and have a little time on your hands, why not join?

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A couple of weeks ago I went over to Shepperton marina for a chat with fishing coach Steve Gray who runs All Things Piscatorial, a new website for and about fishing coaches. He introduced me to Bob from Hampton Court who had featured on Keith Arthur’s radio programme, Fisherman’s Blues on Talk Sport. Bob’s angling exploits as The Angling Apprentice are listed on Steve’s website. Steve suggested that Bob might like to have a day’s fishing with me and after some discussion it was decided that we would go to the river Itchen to try and catch Bob his first grayling and I could teach him a little about small river fishing.

Last Wednesday, after finding a mutually suitable date with a decent weather forecast, I picked Bob up from his home and we drove down to Southampton (stopping briefly for a big boys’ breakfast!) to fish the Lower Itchen Fishery. The day was bright and mild but a stiff North Westerly wind blew intermittently all day making float fishing difficult, especially for a novice. We have to make the best of things at this time of year.

The river was as low as I have ever seen it due to the lack of rain over the winter but it still had an unhealthy grey tinge untypical of a chalk stream. As soon as I saw this I knew that the fishing was going to be difficult but as the fishery closes on 14th February we decided to make the best of a bad job.

I set Bob up with a long float rod with a centrepin loaded with four pound braid and I started to explain the principles of trotting a float on a fast flowing river. He was faced with a steep learning curve because of his inexperience, the centrepin reel, braid and difficult wind but he struggled manfuly despite the past injuries to his spine and in fact made me feel quite guilty about the fuss I have been making about my wrists.

It became apparent that I was right about the condition of the river. We tried several of what I would have considered “banker” swims without result. Bob was beginning to get the hang of trotting but was having some physical problems due to his injuries so I found him a comfortable swim where he could fish sitting down.

A change from red maggot to sweetcorn produced the first bite of the day a brown trout that managed to shed the hook but not before Bob had experienced the shock of playing his first fish on braid. The second trout, a much larger fish, smashed his hook length but he was getting the hang of it and he landed the third fish a fine brown trout, his first on a centrepin.

Bob was beginning to tire and trotting was too painful so I suggested that he switched to legering with a maggot feeder and after a little work on his casting he hooked his first fish.

This proved to be his second trout.

A change of swim and we finally found the target species, a grayling of one pound four ounces. of which Bob was rightly proud.

Bob had done very well on a difficult river in very hostile conditions, he responded well to my instructions and tried very hard to master a tricky technique. He now has a love for fishing running water and is well on his way to being a centrepin freak like me.

A good day ended well.

Update: Bob has written an excellent account of the day - I’m glad you enjoyed the day and I hope this will be the start of many such happy days on a river.

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At last my wrists have healed enough to allow me to have a day’s fishing for myself, the first since October. I chose to visit the Lower Itchen Fishery on the river Itchen near Southampton. I paid over £100 for the right to fish this stretch from October to February and due to my injuries this would be only my second visit this season. As on my first visit, the river was low and discoloured and I could see very little fish movement during my drive along the stretch to the car park.

I had heard rumours of a massive fish kill in the summer due to low oxygen levels during a period of low flows and high temperatures and this was confirmed by the bailiff later in the day. I decided to fish the sidestream at the top of the coarse fishing stretch and this decision was reinforced when I noticed the wind direction. The sidestream flows approxiamately north-south and the gentle breeze was blowing from the south west, this was perfect for my favourite method,float fishing with a stick float.

This was the method I had hoped to be able to employ on my first day back on a river for so long, it involves the ultimate in finesse as far as float and bait presentation are involved and can only be practiced perfectly in ideal wind conditions. Let me explain what I mean. A stick float is ideally fished attached top and bottom with a strung out (or shirt button) shotting pattern which allows a natural rise and fall of the bait when the float is slowed or allowed to run with the current. The angler needs a lot of control of the float to make this happen and to prevent the faster moving surface current from making the float preceed the bait on it’s way down the swim. If the float is in front of the bait then its shadow may spook the fish or make the bait travel unnaturally fast, or cause serious bite indication problems, sometimes all three.

This is prevented by the skilful angler slowing the float down slightly by giving out line at a slower pace than the float is trying to travel. To achieve this the line below the rod tip must be kept behind the float and floating on the surface, the angler does this by constantly gently “mending” the line - that is, lifting the line off the water and laying it back behind the float. This requires a very deft touch if the float is to trot down the swim smoothly and in my experience more often than not the wind will make this more difficult. In fact in a strong down steam wind it is virtually impossible.

The reason I was so pleased with the conditions was that when fishing the west bank of the north-south flowing sidestream, the south west breeze would blow my line back behing the float, on its own, every time I lifted the line off the surface. This meant that I could trot my chosen path down the river without the float being pulled in to my bank by the force needed to mend the line and I was even able to slow the pace of the float considerably if I chose to do so. The bow in the line between rod tip and float created by the wind also caused the float to tend to move toward the far bank slightly to counteract any opposite pressure applied by my braking the progress of the float.

The result was perfect float and bait presentation and I would have been satisfied to fish like that without catching fish, it is so rare to be able to do this on the rivers (west to east flowing) that I normally fish.

The only disavantage was that the sidestream was quite clear and I would have to fish with light tackle to fool those wary chub so I set up my drennan stick float rod with a light weight, free running, centrepin reel loaded with two and a half pound line. I tied on a two pound hook length and a size 18 carbon chub hook. Single red maggot was the bait and I intended to feed a little hemp and a few maggots every cast. I moved quietly into the first swim and introduced some hemp and maggot with a very small baitdropper which also allowed me to plumb the depth at the same time. It was about three feet deep and there was only slight turbulence, this meant that my choice of a 4 no.4 wire stemmed stick would be about right, the current and the turbulence it caused ruled out a cane stemmed stick which I would have prefered.

I sat quietly for about ten minutes and fed the swim constantly by hand while I had a smoke and then put on a single red maggot. First trot down the float hesitated and disappeared about three quarters of the way down the swim and on the strike I thought I had hooked the bottom at first. The fish then realised it was hooked and bolted down steam towards some tree roots on the far bank. It took five yards of line before I could stop it which I managed to do just before it reached it’s sanctuary despite the fine hook length.

The sidestream is only four yards wide at this point so as the fish hung in the current just short of the roots, as if it was thinking what to do next, I started to bring it gently upsteam back towards me. This sort of situation is the reason I prefer to use a centrepin, reeling in allowed me to apply a constant relentless but gentle pressure on the fish that brought it round to my way of thinking without startling it by varied pulls and jerks. It was soon out in front of me and well away from the snags and although my injured right wrist was aching quite badly I soon had it in the net. It was the fish I was hoping for a four and a half pound chub although one a pound bigger would have been even better.

I caught three more slightly smaller chub that day but only a couple of grayling, the biggest of which was a little under two pounds.

The fish kill in the summer must have been very serious indeed because normally one can expect anything up to fifty grayling from this river in a day. Nature will recover from this and probably quicker than we think but I ‘m afraid this is probably the end of an exceptional fishery for a couple of years.

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Thursday 27th October will live in my memory for many years to come as the best day’s pike fishing I have had with any group. Three lads and a key worker fished from about 11.15 a.m. until 2.15 p.m. with one rod each and landed eleven pike to ten and a half pounds. None of the students had ever had a fish over two or three pounds in weight and only one had ever caught a pike before.

I had obtained special permission to take the group from PAYP Slough to the predator lake on the Wasing Estate, the scene of the two great days on Monday and Wednesday this week. I had told them about the fish we had caught but had warned them not to expect too much as this is the nature of the sport. Only three of the young people were able to attend so I asked the key worker, Imran, if he would like to fish just to make up the numbers.

The only problem that clouded an otherwise wonderful day was that my digital camera gave up the ghost and I could take no pictures. I took a few on my new mobile phone but I’m having trouble downloading them. At least the students were able to do the same with their phones and will have a pictorial record of the day.

What a hectic time I had - still suffering from my sprained wrist, I was finishing unhooking one fish in time to supervise the netting of the next one and at one stage had two fish on the unhooking mat at the same time. I wasn’t able to finish a hot cup of tea all day (those who know my love of tea will understand the trauma of this…).

The students had a great time and I think I have converted at least one potential carp fisherman. Once again the lads were able to see the techniques of handling and unhooking pike demonstrated repeatedly and are now aware of the dangers to themselves and the pike.

I am left with a badly sprained right wrist and my left wrist is very tender as it was over-used to compensate for my lack of strength in my right. I had been advised by my GP not to go through with the course but some of these young people have been let down throughout their lives by adults and I had no intention of adding my name to that list.

Hopefully the four days this week will have made a little difference to at least one of their lives and if that is the case then that will be compensation enough for my discomfort.

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Following my last two days coaching when very few fish were caught I was in desperate need of a few fish for myself and a bit of tranquility. The Kennet is always the answer at such times and the main reason I belong to the Wasing Estate syndicate is to find this peaceful environment. Although the Kennet is a shadow of its former self at the moment I still love this river and often seek sanctuary on its banks.

So Wednesday found me on the Warren beat with my Drennan Super Stick float rod and trusty lightweight centrepin looking for the roach and dace. I had purchased a lot of cheap casters from Vince at Davies Angling and with about half a gallon of hemp I was able to feed heavily all day. A size 18 hook to a two pound hook link was suspended under a lighter avon style float than I would use in this swim for barbel and I proceeded to catch a fish every cast, all day.

Now I never use a keep net but had I done so this day I would have been unable to lift it up the high bank I was fishing from, it would have been so full of fish. I wish that some of the people who say there are no small fish in the Kennet could have seen all these fish. The biggest dace was about ten ounces and the roach were no bigger, but a wonderful day’s fishing.

I was embarassed once by a barbel of unknown size who intercepted my single caster fished off the bottom and proceeded to smash my two pound hook link on its way to the nearest snag. I was not after barbel that day, although they are probably my favourite fish. I needed to catch lots of fish, without any dramas, using the sort of finesse that comes with light trotting and that is just what I got.

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I do not consider myself an expert pole angler but over the last year or so I have been learning how to pole fish in order to broaden my skills base and be able to teach others. After my recent successes at Marsh Farm I decided to take my pole there and practice on the tench and crucians. I have a Shimano Technium Competition 1250 and I am told it is a good pole at a reasonable price and as I have no intention of fishing matches, £200 is enough to spend.

On Thursday 21st July I arrived at Marsh Farm and trundled my trolley around the back of Richardson’s Lake to the swim I had fished last time, as I knew it was ideal for the pole. I caught a few small tench and crucians but pulled the hook out of some big fish after playing them for five or more seconds and I went home puzzled and disapointed. I asked several of my friends what I was doing wrong and received many differing answers, none of which seemed to be quite right. I knew it wasn’t the hook as I have every confidence in the Kamasan 611 and had even changed up to a size 14 and the elastic wasn’t too tight as this was the first thing I checked.

I mentioned the problem to Stuart at Davies Angling in Staines who is an excellent pole angler and he asked me what pole I was using. When I told him, he explained exactly what was wrong. The Shimano Technium is supplied with top two sections not top three like many other poles and this means that the elastic on my pole only went through two sections. Stuart demonstrated how with a bigger fish the short elastic soon loses it’s stretch under pressure and stiffens up enough to cause the hook to pull out.

I have ordered three number three sections from Dave Higham at Oham Lakes and I will run all my elastic through three sections and hopefully will have solved that particular problem. That is the wonder of this sport - it is so varied that there is always something new to learn and someone more experienced than you who can help you. That is what the PAA should really be for, not just training coaches.

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On Friday Les Weller and I decided to have an evening session on the river Kennet and to fish a couple of hours into dark for the barbel. Les is now a member of the Wasing syndicate and so we decided on the Dalston beat.

We met there at 3pm as arranged and I started to put some feed into my chosen swim, only to realise I had forgotten my bait dropper rod. I then decided to use a Bob James stepped up specimen rod I had bought last summer only to find that the screw reel fitting was too small for the foot of the Relum centre pin I was going to use. This is obviously why this normark rod was reduced from £250 to about £80, I ended up using this rod for the bait dropper with a fixed spool reel. I put in about four pints of hemp and small pellets and went for a walk. I have never really explored this beat before and I discovered some really attractive swims which I will try in the near future.

I started to fish at about 5pm with my favourite hexagraph rod and centrepin reel, I legered a medium pellet on a lead core leader under the far bank bushes. The lead core leader prevents fish around the bait swimming into tight lines and getting spooked, it does this by pinning all the line above the leger weight on the bottom and I have a one ounce flat lead sliding on the main line above it.

Les caught one barbel early in the evening and a small chub a little later but I was plagued by crayfish and was never certain if my bait was still on. We fished until about midnight and I ended up fishless but the company was pleasant.

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I have just got home after a morning on Teddington weir with Chris Clark in his new inflatable boat. I was a bit dubious about lure fishing from a blown up plastic boat but the fabric on Chris’s boat is very thick and is inflated in panels. This means that if an accident happened and a treble hook did penetrate the fabric only part of the boat would lose bouyancy. We only took two rods and a small box of lures, this meant a very stressful evening yesterday as I went through my massive collection of lures trying to decide what to leave behind.

We arrived at the weir at 6.45am and were fishing by just after 7. The boat is blown up by a small hair dryer like device and is just big enough for two anglers. I had my biggest Thames pike on the second or third cast, it was about fourteen pounds and took a silver Shakespeare big S plug. Not a very big pike but my best from the Thames after hundreds of pike up to about twelve pounds from this river.

I caught one more about four pounds and had two more takes one on a large silver spoon fished deep and Chris had one about five pounds on a large pike coloured Creek Chub Pikey plug. All fish were not weighed but unhooked outside the boat for the safety of both ourselves and the fish.

A very pleasant morning’s fishing and home by lunchtime.

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I had a busy day yesterday and spent the afternoon an evening in my beloved Kennet valley without even wetting a line. The Wasing Estate syndicate had their AGM in the evening, more about that later, and I wanted to look at a fishery in Kingsclere in the afternoon. I have been asked by Connexions e2e to provide four days coaching in May for a group of young people and as they are based in the Reading/Newbury area, Twynersh is to far to travel.

I found Frobury Farm S.C. in a free fisheries guide I got from Improve Your Coarse Angling magazine. I had a bit of trouble finding the place but then I am not familliar with the area. It used to be a farm but it has now taken on the appearence of a rural industrial eatate with a rather nice house in the middle. It is owned and run by Paul ‘Alfie’ Oldring, British Champion and ‘British Mini- Commonwealth’ Gold medallist clay pigeon shooter. He has represented England for 26 years, competing in European and World Championships for Great Britain for 15 years. No shooting is done on the site and it comprises seven ponds, the largest being about one acre.

Mr Oldring was out when I arrived so I had a walk round and completed my risk assessment. It is not a pretty place and I would not normally fish it myself, but it fitted the bill perfectly for my proposed purpose. It has plenty of space for coaching, lots of fish of several species and easy car parking. Several carp were caught during my visit.

Speaking to several anglers and to Mr Oldring I heard that large quantities of roach, rudd and small tench are also present. Just what I need for the young people.

In the evening I made my way to the Liberty Ballroom in New Greenham Park for the AGM. This place used to be the base for the american cruise missile in the eighties and I have memories of being bussed down from London to assist the local police to “control” the “peace women” who were camped here in apparent squalour as a protest. All this has changed and our american cousins have gone home and all that is left is a large sprawling industrial estate.

I have one fond memory of this place from my time in the police force. When we were sent away from our usual station, the regulations required that we were given a meal to prevent us from claiming expenses. Since the quality of this meal could vary from average to dreadful and was not something you looked forward to, these meals were refered to as “force feeding”, i.e. being fed by the police force. Often the more obvious meaning was closer to the truth.

The first time we were sent as “aid to Thames Valley” as it was called, we were surprised to be taken to Newbury Race Course at lunch time. Here our hosts, unfamilliar with feeding large numbers of visiting police officers, had laid on private caterers. In their inexperience they had presumably booked the caterers usually used by the race course and we were fed like kings. I remember in particular one meal of braised steak casserole with onions and vegetables. The steak was so tender you could eat it with a spoon and the taste stays with me to this day.

As you can imagine, everyone volunteered to go back again next time but after about a week the finance department must have received the bills and, surprise, surprise, the Metropolitan Police started to supply their own caterers. All good things come to an end.

Anyway, last night’s Wasing AGM was held in a ballroom built during the American era and the toilets were still marked “GI Joes” and “GI Janes”. After an introduction and reports, presentations were made for specimen fish caught in the previous season. Next followed a talk and slide show by the current British barbel record holder, Tony Gibson.

This guy is not just a barbel fisherman and some of the slides he showed of the other fish he has caught were almost as impressive as the one above. This fish weighed twenty pounds six ounces, that’s huge when you think that fifteen years ago the record was fourteen pounds six ounces and that had stood for a hundred years.

After an excellent buffet another talk and slide show was given by Martin James who I know from the Barbel Society. As well as being a highly respected author and broadcaster, he is also a great raconteur. Crownmead Angling Centre from Thatcham were also in attendance and managed to get me to part with some money for blood worm hook pellets which I will try for the tench next week, if it warms up a bit.

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I had a day on the Old Lake at Bury Hill as the start of my tench fishing season. Unfortunately the weather has not been kind and the tench have not quite got into full swing. I did manage one tench at seven pounds but was plagued with tiny bites all day.

On this water (which has a good head of carp and some big tench) it does not pay to fish too light. I like to fish with a centrepin reel wherever possible and on this occasion had coupled a 3 3/4 inch JW Youngs Purist with a stepped up Harrison float rod, 6lb main line and a five pounds hook length. Just before dusk I switched to the lift method with half a lobworm and hit the first lift of the float.

I thought I had hooked a small common carp and leaned over the edge of the fishing platform to unhook it in the water. I was soon grasping for the landing net when I saw it was the biggest crucian carp I have ever seen. It weighed three pounds fourteen ounces, just eight ounces short of the British record.

To satisfy the doubters I took several photos from different angles to show all the fins and the mouth. Eric, one of the bailiffs, arrived and identified it as one of the original stocking of true crucians. Photos were sent to the Anglers Mail who failed to publish it as it wasn’t a fat twenty pounds mirror (a much lesser specimen) that they seem to favour.

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