Back on the Bank down but not out

DOWN BUT NOT YET OUT

Having recovered sufficiently from my muscle wasting problem I was able to go fishing for the first time in over a year. My brother Gary invited me to go with him to his local lake near Bulford Village in Wiltshire. I made the 100 mile journey over to Salisbury the day before and stayed with my sister.

 Gary told me not to bring any tackle or bait with me as he had everything I would need. I felt a bit guilty about just turning up and leaving everything to him so I told him that I would bring my own bait and end tackle with me. I was a bit worried about how I would cope physically, but Gary put me at ease and told me he would even carry me down to the swim if he had to. I laughed and told him I wasn’t quite that bad.

I began to get very excited about the trip the two nights before it was due and I found it hard to sleep. There was a time when I thought I would never be able to wet a line again and here I was, about to go forth once again and continue with the sport I loved so dearly. Lots of fears drifted through my mind, making it difficult to surrender to the sleep I needed. Would I be able to cast okay and would I make a fool of myself in front of Gary?

He would probably expect me to live up to my past reputation as a reasonable angler and how would he view me if I made a hash of it all? All a bit silly really, but I suppose male macho and ego take their toll where match fishing is concerned.  Although we were not going to be match fishing, when you have spent more than half your life in this pursuit everything seems to drive you to compete even though you don’t want it to.

Also in my mind was the last time that I had fished with Gary at a venue called The Viaduct, he had given me a right drubbing on the carp fishery. I didn’t feel like being given another tonking on a different fishery. My pride began to get the better of me and I felt a bit apprehensive about how I would handle the situation.

Gary told me to turn up at his place at 9am. I had not expected that as in the past we had always been up at the crack of dawn and more or less been able to choose our swims being the first to arrive in the morning. When I arrived, true to his word, Gary had everything we needed loaded up in his van.

 All I had to do was climb out of my car and jump into the van. Within 5 minutes we were on our way through the countryside.   I was raring to go and I felt that as each minute went by I was losing the day, but I suppose it was quite sensible really as we did not know how my body would react to this physical activity. The muscles were weak due to be wasted by low activity due to my illness.

 Looking into the back of the van, I couldn’t help thinking how great it would have been when I was well into match fishing, if I had such a van myself. It would have been much easier to have been able to put all my gear in a wheelbarrow ready to carry along to my swim. As it was I had to lug it all over my shoulders and I had to arms like a gorilla to carry the masses of gear I needed.

Sometimes carrying it over half a mile there and the same on the way back. I bet all the anglers of my age are physical wrecks in their old age. It is much different these days, but how they can afford all the gear, I don’t know.

On the short journey through the rural scenery I especially enjoyed seeing the many beautifully coloured male pheasants in the fields. Although I do actually live in the exceptional beautiful county of Devon, we don’t have much in the way of game birds, although we do see the odd one now and again. To see so many in a small area was great, but I felt a bit sad that many of them would probably shot dead in flight, when they looked at their most beautiful.

Anyhow, we arrived at the lake and all Gary had to do with his gear was to roll it off the back of his van and he was ready to walk to the side of the lake.

As rod and line was the lightest of tackle I chose to go with that method. I have always felt most confident when float fishing as I never really got on with the pole method. Poles in my day were all heave and clumsy even when I had no physical problems to contend with. Coupled with the extortionate prices being demanded by tackle dealers, I could only afford the much shorter models.

 Having a family to support, I just couldn’t warrant spending the huge amounts of money required to purchase the longer models. They could run into many hundreds and even a thousand pounds to acquire. I used to fish on occasions with the short pole and long line to hand. This involved laying the long line on top of the water and lifting fish straight to hand. In those days it was a good speedy method for small fish such as dace, roach, bleak and gudgeon. Fished using very light line and really small hooks, it was goodbye if you hooked a larger fish. No elastic in those days I am afraid.

I did and still do, recognise that in the right hands the long pole and short line method can be deadly and in most cases far superior to the rod and float. Not being able to use the long pole is quite a big negative, but I suppose being able to fish at all is in itself a huge bonus for me.

There was an old guy fishing in the bay left of my swim so I had to be careful where I chose to cast my tackle. Being old school and not wishing to upset other anglers around me, I wandered over and negotiated with him how we would divide the area up so we did not interfere with each other’s fishing. The last thing I wanted was to get into any bother.

 As it turned out he only wanted to fish about half way out in front of him and told me I could fish out against the end of the island if I agreed to leave him with the bay to cover. I was very happy to agree to this and we were both happy.

As Gary had all the ground bait, he mixed up enough for both of us and asked me to choose 2 areas initially, so he could put bait in for me, to save me having to throw it in. As my swim was adjacent to the end of the island, I asked him to put some bait just off the end and about 6 feet from that bank. I chose a nearside swim about 10 yards to my left and again, about 6 feet out from the bank. As it turned out later, they were not the best calls.

Gary put a couple of big balls of ground bait mixed with plenty of hemp into both my chosen swims. Within 5 minutes the swim out on the end of the island was fizzing away like coca cola, with feeding bubbles everywhere. I was almost salivating at the sight and I could see clouds of silt being kicked up by feeding fish. I thought that I had arrived in fishing heaven and I couldn’t attach my end tackle quick enough and get on with it. It didn’t take long as Gary had already attached the float and line to the actual rod and all I had to do was to attach a hook length and adjust the bottom shot.

After adjusting the depth and trying to find any changes in depth I discovered that there was only a shelf close into the island which was a few inches shallower than the rest of my swim. Apart from that I only had a common depth of three and a half feet over the rest of the swim. From past experience I knew that any decent size fish would probably tear off left or right as they had no way of going down in depth. I would also have to stop them trying to go round the end of the island in a mad rush.

With these thoughts in mind I was glad that Gary had put 4lb plus main line on the reel and I had gone for a size 16 hook to 3lb plus hook length. I still had it in mind that if I was to lose a fish that I would up the hook size to a 14 if I had to.

It was now 10am as we started fishing, with me on the rod and Gary choosing to fish the long pole, with short line and elastic. I thought to myself “Here we go again another futile battle against the mighty pole”. I had to cast close to the island and sink my line quickly, while Gary slid his pole quietly and accurately within inches of the island. With both of our swims fizzing away I expected us both to be into fish fairly quickly. I had chosen to fish either sweetcorn or bread as my main hook baits in the island swim and to fish meat or pellet in the nearside swim to my left. With no bites on bread to start with Gary suggested that I tried maggot on the hook. This I did and immediately had bites on the drop.

 After catching a few small roach around the 4oz mark I decided to persevere with the bread in the hope that the size of the fish would improve.  After about 20 minutes I hooked into a bigger fish which lived up to its size by shooting off into the bay on my left. I managed to turn it before it reached the float and line of the angler on my left. I finally landed it and it turned out to be a common carp of about 4lb plus. Another carp soon followed 20 minutes later. It was a mirror of approximately 3lb. After that the bites dried up on bread, so I changed to sweetcorn on the hook.

At this point I stopped looking to see how Gary was doing, but in the next hour I did see him land a couple of decent fish, also he pulled out of another and his tackle tangled round the end of his pole.

The change of hook bait seemed to work and a flurry of slightly bigger roach to around 8oz came to my landing net and a few F1 hybrids followed them. The hybrids were a cross between the common carp and crucian carp, running to about the 8oz mark.

Sticking with sweetcorn on the hook and catapulting a steady stream into the swim I had a good half an hour with 3 larger carp being hooked and landed. They all fought like tigers and the largest ran close to 5lb in weight. My next bite felt much bigger and in the blink of an eye it was round the end of the island. I tightened up as much as I could to try and turn it round to my left, but unfortunately it shed the hook and disappeared in a mass of bubbles and a huge bow wave. I tried to be angry, but I just couldn’t bring myself to lose my temper.

After all I was having a really good time and so far my body was not complaining too much except for my upper arms and my lower back. I suppose the adrenalin was helping to keep the pain at bay a little bit. 

I decided it would be a good time to have a drink of coffee and a sandwich. I felt good as I had landed over 15lb of fish, even though they were not really having it, with bites only coming about once every 20 minutes. Each time I struck and missed a bite I was annoyed as I knew that it would be a while before the next one.

Due to the ultra light Drennan float rod Gary had provided, I was coping with the physical side of the session so far. Also, I was very thankful that during that morning I had gone fish for fish with Gary. I decided to leave my tackle out in the swim while I had a bite to eat and would you believe it, as soon as I went to pour myself a cup of coffee from my flask, away went the float, causing me to strike. As I struck and missed the bite, I nearly fell off my chair and also spilled my coffee down myself. Some things in fishing never change, do they?

I decided to do the right thing and reeled my tackle in. Gary came over and I shared my sandwiches with him.  Unfortunately I discovered that the flask had failed me and the coffee was in fact cold as the thermos had failed. Such is the lot of an angler. The Bailiff came round to take payment for the days fishing and Gary graciously paid for both our tickets.

The bites gradually failed altogether in both my swims, in fact the nearside one had failed to produce anything at all during the session. The sun had pulled round directly in front of me by now and both my face and hands had turned a bright shade of angry pink despite the sun cream on them. Over the next couple of hours I could only pick up a couple of carp to around the 2lb mark and the time crept up to 3pm. At least I had kept up with Gary to this point although he was probably a couple of fish ahead. My bites dried up altogether over the next half hour, while Gary switched to fishing the ledger against the island.

Over the next half hour Gary used the ledgered micro pellet feeder method to great effect. It involved pre-preparing the micro pellet by placing about 4 handfuls into a bait container and covering them with water. They would soak up the water over a period of about 15 minutes to arrive at a consistency which would allow the angler to place his hook bait into a small mould and the actual ledger itself would be pressed into the mould. When extracted it would form a smooth teardrop shape with the bait contained in the centre.

This would allow the angler to cast it very close to the island without any tangles or catching the hook length on the vegetation growing out of the island. The pellets would slowly disintegrate allowing the hook bait to appear in the middle of the pellets. Gary had already soaked the pellets previously, so he was ready to go. I was amazed for the next 30 to 40 minutes as he landed fish after fish on the method, while I remained biteless. He must have caught about 10 carp in this short time, with some bites coming within seconds of casting in.

Being the gentleman he is, Gary walked over to my swim and offered me the ledger rod and micro pellets. He informed me that he was using meat as his hook bait. I was very concerned about my casting ability with the ledger as you had to hit the target very close to the island to get the takes, so Gary showed me how to clip up and work my way closer and closer to the island until I got it right. Once or twice the ledger actually hit the island and bounced off. He explained that was because I kept leaning forward at the last second and that I should keep my body still in the same pose each time I performed the cast.

Getting into a rhythm was the key to hitting the same spot each time. After a few hairy anxious moments with over and under casts I got the hang of it and then I started catching carp one after the other.  I couldn’t believe how easy it was, with the carp actually hooking themselves against the weight of the ledger.  It seemed to me to be a very brutal type of method, with myself only having to hang on to the rod and not having to even strike. There seemed to be no real skill in it except for the actual casting and building up the swim with bait to keep the shoal interested and feeding. Also, I suppose I still had to land the fish with a shorter rod and less control over the fish. In my day we always thought that you had to be so delicate with a sliding type of ledger so the fish would not feel any resistance when they took the bait. It seemed crazy to me that this method turned that theory on its head and in fact made us feel a bit stupid sticking to it for so long.

In that last hour I managed to land about 8 more fish.   Even though Gary had shown me the way home again I did not feel bad. In fact I enjoyed the day very much indeed and cannot thank Gary enough for treating me to a great days fishing.

He took the time and effort to look after me and reminded me there are still some nice and caring anglers in this world that are prepared to give a bit back rather than just take and take from the sport and angling fraternity.

I am very lucky indeed to have a brother like Gary who loves me enough to help me cope with my illness. My body has ached for quite a few days after but I seem to have got away with it. Many thanks for a fantastic days fishing with fantastic company.

     

Gordon Rowland

18^th April 2015

dog or drown?

FISHING MEMORIES

The River Incident

Although this little story is not really relevant to actually fishing, I thought it was worth telling to highlight the real danger that exists at times when we frequent fishing areas. It actually happened in the Autumn of 2013.

For you to be able to understand exactly what happened I need to fill you in about the layout of the rivers around Newton Abbot in the County of Devon. The rivers that run around the town are the Lemon and the Teign. Also there is a Culvert which carries any excess flood water away from the town centre shopping area.

 The town centre has flooded in the past and due to this the Culvert was built and because of this we have not had any bad flooding for many years. The Culvert and the River Lemon flow into the River Teign about half a mile from the town centre at what is called the Town Quay. I live just around the corner from the quay alongside the local brewery called Tuckers Maltings. The brewery provides the malt for many small brewery’s in Devon.

The rivers around town are all affected by the tide as we are less than five miles from the seaside town of Teignmouth as the crow or seagull flies.

The Town Quay is a deep water berth for all types including trawlers from as far away as Norway to land their fish and others to unload their many types of cargoes. The tide can bring up the depths of the river by up to six feet or more so where I live we have to keep an eye on levels at times of high tide and it often comes to within a couple of feet of flooding. We are not covered by the walls on each side of the culvert which protects the main town. Having set the scene I will get back to my main story.

The culvert is as I have said, banked by ten feet high walls in the main part of town. When we have exceptionally high tides coupled with heavy rain draining off the moorland the culvert can go from a few inches in depth, rising to almost eight feet. It can go from just a trickle to a raging torrent which flows so fast; you cannot run fast enough to match the current.

Just outside the ASDA Supermarket the culvert enters a tunnel which goes under the main part of town for several hundred yards and then it flows under a few road bridges, before joining the Lemon and Teign at the Town Quay.

The incident which happened relates to a man walking his dog just outside ASDA and next to the culvert. At that point there is a small slip entry to allow workmen to access the culvert to carry out any necessary repairs. It seems that the dog slipped its lead and jumped into the culvert. The dog was quickly swept away by the current.  Without thinking, the man jumped into the culvert in a bid to save his dog and was, himself swept away.

They were quickly dragged along with the current into the tunnel and under the town centre. The tunnel was absolutely full of water with hardly any air between the surface and the top of the tunnel.

No-one could get anywhere near the man while in the tunnel and it was impossible for anyone to run fast enough to get to the end of the tunnel before the man was swept out or not. By some sort of miracle, the dog survived and got out of the culvert. The man, however, was swept the half mile downstream by the current, until he came to a stop just upstream of the Town Quay. He was stopped by the bushes and branches growing on the side of the bank.

From what I have since learned, he was still alive at this point, but his body was all battered and bruised by the many obstacles he had encountered along the way. By the time his rescuers got to him he was unconscious and although they fought to keep him alive and used the Devon Air Ambulance Helicopter to get him to hospital, he subsequently died from his injuries.

Rivers can be a source of beauty and tranquillity at times. They can be enjoyed by everyone at those times. They can also be a high source of danger at other times, especially when tidal. I think back to the many times I have heard of dog owners jumping into water attempting to save their pets and subsequently dying themselves, while their dog manages to get out and save itself.

This was indeed one of those sad occasions.

Gordon Rowland

19^th March 2015

2nd postscript

SECOND POSTSCRIPT TO FISHING MEMORIES

I truly thought all good things came to an end for me in fishing terms but it seems that I was indeed wrong. Exactly a year after packing up my gear and almost taking the action of selling all my fishing equipment, the medical world did me a huge favour and discovered that my Fibro-myalgia, which has no cure, was indeed a form of the disease called Poly-myalgia.

The medics informed me after a series of blood tests that this was so and that they could keep it at bay with Steroids. They prescribed a product called Prednisolone.  They informed me that I would know within a month if the product did the job or not and so I agreed to give it a go. They also informed me that it had side effects which would have to be dealt with to enable me to go on functioning as normal.

The main problem was that steroids tend to soften the bones which support the joints and so I would have to ensure that I took a fairly high dose of Calcium in the form of tablets on a daily basis to help counteract the steroids. This was to be supported by a tablet of Alendronic Acid once a week.

They started me on a fairly high dosage of steroids and the idea was to arrest the chronic muscle and joint pain and subsequent wastage due to the low usage of these over time. The specialist was of the opinion that I should drop the dosages down slowly over a period of about nine months until I got to the point of taking just enough to keep the disease at bay. With a bit of luck the disease might burn itself out over time.

 Within three weeks I was indeed free from most of the pain and I considered it to be a bit of a miracle as I was able to sleep for the first time in many months. Over the following year 2014, I tried dropping the dosage lower and lower until I was on about a half of the original dose. I attempted to drop it a couple of milligrams more and then it started to come back again, so I had to go back up again to keep it at bay.

That is the dosage I am on at present and it seems to do the job for now. Although the muscles have built up again, they are only about two thirds of the strength they were before I fell foul to the disease. I am not sure whether I could play and land a big double carp but I feel sure that I can land smaller ones. I just don’t know whether or not I could fish the river holding a float rod for a long time or not. The only way for me to find out I suppose, is to give it a try.

With regard to the stroke I had a couple of years ago, I seems to me that I have recovered from it, but I have to take an Aspirin every day to ensure I do not get any more blood clots.

It is now March 2015 and I have renewed my fishing licence for the year, but I have not joined the local angling club in Newton Abbot as I don’t yet know what my capabilities are when it comes to getting my gear to the bank side. There is not much in the way of river fishing down here in Devon but there are a fair few lakes about. I miss having a fishing mate to share my time with. I really enjoyed fishing with my brother Gary and miss those times very much.

 I know that he is not too well himself these days. It feels that us old boys of the eighties and nineties are simply fading away one by one, so I just cannot give in and I am determined to get back onto the bank one way or another.

I know that I will never be the angler I was in the old days and that the world of angling has moved on these days to loads of lakes filled to the brim with ever hungry carp to massive weights. I cannot really handle long poles and I will have to rely on the good old fishing rod and reel to realise my dreams in the future.

 The wonderful rivers that we enjoyed as young and middle aged anglers have declined and seem to have gone forever except for a few fortunate places in the South. As I have said, I am determined to carry on and perhaps there are still a few more angling adventures in store for me yet. I hope that the first might be in this fishing season of 2015. Watch this space.

Gordon Rowland

18^th March 2015

POSTSCRIPT TO FISHING MEMORIES

I suppose all good things must come to an end. Unfortunately for me, after over 60 years of fishing, my lifelong adventure with angling has indeed come to an end. Today, August 15^th 2013, I have made the ultimate decision to hang up my fishing tackle. I know that many, many, anglers, continue to enjoy their fishing well into their seventies and beyond. At the age of 68, unfortunately, due to ill health, I will not be one of them. I am afraid I do not have the body strength or will to carry on the pastime which I have loved. My decision has been made despite joining my local fishing club, Newton Abbot Angling Association, only a week ago.

There is a story attached with my demise. Thinking on it, the start of the demise came about a year and a half ago. I had a stroke about that time and although no major damage was done to my main organs, it weakened my body’s ability to stave off other conditions. Very soon after the stroke, I developed the shingles virus which attacked the nerves in my head. Normally you get the blisters with it which are very painful. The condition which I had diagnosed was that the nerves in my scalp were attacked, but no blisters. It was and is still quite painful, especially when I am under stress or I have concentrated for a long time.

Over the last year I have also suffered with a muscle wasting disease called fibro-myalgia in my neck, shoulders and both arms. The left arm has been affected the most and at times I have great difficulty lifting anything except the smallest of weights. Over the last six months I thought it was improving but it is back again with vengeance, especially in the mornings when the muscles are cold. Because of this I have had to keep my fishing trips to a minimum of only twice in this time. Because of the weakness, I have found it gradually harder and harder to carry fishing tackle and hold a fishing rod for any length of time. I find it hard to get to sleep at night and have to take pain killers to do so. I find myself feeling more and more tired during the day.

I did not want to admit to myself that I was not capable of continuing to go fishing so I decided to find out what I was capable of doing. Earlier in the spring, I decided to go on a fishing weekend with my brother Wilf.  We went to a well known carp lake which advertised 30lb+ fish to be caught. I had never caught a carp of that size before, so with my brother at hand, I thought to give it a go. Just our luck, it seemed that the carp chose that week to spawn and we blanked. Being under canvas for 2 days and nights took its toll on my body and although I had my tackle taken to my swim and even had my bivvy put up for me, I suffered badly.

 I had a job to drive home and it took me a whole week to get over the experience. I suppose I felt pretty low as we also blanked. The whole session was a gross waste of money and did me no good at all. I did know by then, however, that I could not go night fishing, or do long stints on the bank side any more.

That was over two months ago and having rested up I thought maybe I might be able to do short stints for silver fish. I decided last week to join my local angling club at one of their come fishing open days. The club had a number of “Fishing Buddies”, who had their tackle set up and you could spend the hour fishing with them. It was mainly for young kids and an introductory to fishing for them, but they were happy to let me try.

 I quickly found out that I had a real problem with landing the fish as I had no strength in my left arm to lift the landing net with a fish in it. The anglers around me came up with several ideas as to how I could get over the problem. The best one was to set up the landing net in the landing position at the start with the tip of the net just under the surface. The idea was for me to play the fish over to the net and to just lift the net up just enough to stop the fish swimming out, but not taking the full weight of the net plus the fish.

The problem we had with the method was that the landing net would continually slide down into the water. What it needed was an attachment like a hook on the butt section which could be hung onto a bank stick with a rod rest attached to the top of it.

I thought that I would see just what I was capable of and arranged a day’s fishing at the lake, on my own, for the following Wednesday. That was yesterday. I took plenty of time loading my gear into the car the day before and intended to go early morning for my session.

I arrived at the lake just before 6am. From the car to my swim was a journey of some 60 yards. It took two return journeys to get my gear there. Even though I had left all my bulky carp equipment at home and only planned to do silver fish angling it was a bit of an effort to lift it all. It left my shoulders and arms aching and it took a lot out of me. When I finally sat down after erecting my angling chair and adjusting the legs, I had to rest for nearly half an hour before I could think about tackling up.

 I managed to tape the metal hook onto the butt section of my landing pole and I set about manipulating the net into position so the tip of the net was just below the surface and within the reach of my left arm. The hook linked onto the bank stick, stopped any sliding into the water. It was about 8am before I made my first cast.  The whole landing net set up worked a treat as I played a 6lb+ bream over the net and by just holding the net above the surface, I was able to drop my rod onto its rod rest and use both hands to slide the landing net up to my unhooking mat.

A further bream of around 3 and a half pound followed after about another hour. During the session I did lose a large fish which tore off to my left in a bid for freedom. I managed to stop it, but after tearing off to my right and under an overhanging tree, it escaped. Two other tench didn’t though and found their way into my landing net. I did manage to also catch about a dozen roach and rudd up to about the 8oz mark to complete my session haul. After about 6 hours fishing my whole body was aching and I had a bad headache. My arms hurt and felt like they were dropping off.

I packed up my gear and started the first trip to the car. By the time I reached the boot I was really aching badly and sweating. I found it really difficult to carry the fishing box and chair on the 2^nd journey and when I finally got to the car I could hardly walk and I had sweat running off my head, down my neck. After loading my tackle into the car, it was all I could do to plop myself down into the driver’s seat position.

On the way back I had to turn the cold blower on quite high to cool me down, but still having to continually wipe my face and neck to soak up the sweat. I arrived home and I was dreading having to carry up all my tackle to our flat on the first floor. Even though my wife, Glenys, helped me with the carrying, I was a real mess by the time we had finished. I remember thinking that I would have to do this every time I went fishing and was it really worth it, especially if I got worse.

I think that my body wouldn't be able to cope with more of that sort of punishment. Today I sat on my settee and made the decision to stop fishing. I am feeling really old at present and I thought this day would never come. I would be one of those anglers who would probably die on the river bank. I don’t know what I can do to replace the gaping hole that not fishing will make.

Well here we are and I suppose that I will still have my fishing memories to look back on.    

So to that last cast into the Sun before it all ends.  Thanks for the memories mate, irreplaceable life experiences for me, it's been an honour Ed or Gary.

The Match Angler’s Leveller - River Huntspill and King Sedgemores Drain

 

This will be the last of my short stories. It is aimed at all the ordinary match anglers who never seem to make it big in the fishing world and probably have a low opinion of themselves. I found myself fishing the National Angling Championship. I can’t quite remember if it was for Andover Angling Club or the Pewsey Angling Club, but it was one of them. This was in the late 1970’s and over 30 years ago so forgive me my memory.

The match was being fished on the River Huntspill and the Sedgemoor Drain in North Somerset between Weston Super-Mare and Bridgewater. The lucky anglers got to fish the famous Huntspill which normally produced the National Winner from the equally famous Gold Corner. A really large catch of bream comes from one of those swims. Unfortunately, I was one of the unlucky ones who was drawn on the other venue, the Sedgemoor Drain. 

  

The drain was a featureless scar across the countryside and was used to take the excess water from the Huntspill and the surrounding hills when a lot of rain entered the system. When it had rain, the drain usually had a bit of a flow on it but when I fished it, the drain was almost still with very little flow.

My team had just about afforded to get the money together to buy the bait we needed and to get us there and back home. We had no sponsors and had to pay for ourselves. We could not afford to go up and practice on the Sedgemoor Drain but a couple of lads had made it to the Huntspill the week before and gleaned what they could from bank anglers and local angling shops. None of my team had even seen the Sedgemoor Drain until match day, so we were in the position of knowing nothing of the venue.

I got dropped off with two of my team to walk to the three sections in this area. I was directed by a match official towards my peg with the warning that if I moved away from my peg at any time during the match I would be disqualified and any fish that I caught would not count, and also my team might also be disqualified. I remember thinking, “What a nice man and what a good start to the match, not”!!

After walking half a mile I got to my peg. As I sat down to recover from the trek, I looked up and down the drain. Every swim looked the same. What a featureless scar on the countryside it was.   Nothing like the beautiful mature stretches of river I was used to in Hampshire with overhanging trees and bends.

It was straight for what seemed like miles and when it did bend, it was only slightly. I never saw one fish rise anywhere and it did not fill me with confidence at all. I glanced over to the swim to my right. I recognized the angler by sight, but did not know his name. (after conversation with GR I am almost certain this angler was Mervyn "Topper" Haskins , he of the famous loaded river float design Ed).

I did know however, that he was the captain of the Bristol A team. It did not take me very long to set up my float and leger rods, followed by a pole that one of my mates had let me borrow.

When I was ready, I looked round at the angler to my right again. I could not believe my eyes at what I saw. He had a vast array of armour on show. He had about 8 different poles with different tips, 5 different float set ups and the same amount of leger rods of different lengths. Moving on to his bait. He had as many as 14 bait containers around him. Together with a massive umbrella, I began to wonder how he had managed to stagger to his peg with all that gear. He must have been a very fit and healthy guy to do that.

   

I also wondered what he would be like by the time he got to my age. All in all he must have had 20 to 30 thousand pounds worth of kit at his disposal and at least 3 hundred quids worth of bait with him. Obviously he and his team were heavily sponsored. This turned out to be the case as he was sporting a waterproof jacket with a famous angling manufacturer’s name emblazoned on the back. Two other sponsors names appeared on his hat and on the side of his expensive tackle box.

He was fishing in a different world to anglers like myself, who were living on the breadline. All his kit looked brand spanking knew as if it had just been provided for that one match only. Don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against the angler myself and you can’t blame him for accepting the sponsorship. They had probably used all the backup teams to practice on all the sections and shared the collated information at a couple of team meetings before the match. Good luck to him. It does show the vast gap between us two different anglers fishing the same match though.

I knew that the Bristol boys were absolute magic on the Bristol Avon and were rarely beaten on their home waters. They were all excellent anglers and deserved what they had become. Again, I could feel more of my confidence evaporating as the start grew nearer.  The sheer size, location and cost of fishing such a big match makes it impossible for our small teams to compete against the giant teams of angling.Sorry cant make this any bigger but its the all conquering Bristol team from 1971Ed 

Until a few years before this match, they used to award places based on weight. This did give the small teams a chance, but the change to points had taken quite a bit of magic away by making it impossible for the small team to win the team trophy. The only chance we now have is to be lucky enough for one team member to win the individual trophy. I wish we could go back to the old days when every team had a chance to win this once a year match.

As the match progressed I kept seeing bank runners out of the corner of my eye to the right. They were obviously updating the captain on how everyone else was progressing and what baits were working in what circumstances. He still didn’t look to happy whenever I caught his eye.

At the end of the match I had not caught or even seen a fish caught around me. It seemed to me to be a barren ditch in the ground. Was it polluted or something? There were blanks for six anglers to my left and also the same to my right. This included the illustrious Bristol A team captain with all his backing.

To all you ordinary club match men reading this story in the knowledge that you too have blanked in important matches, I have a simple but true message to give you. I bet you have beaten yourself up, thought you fished rubbish and felt weighed down with guilt as you approached your team mates. Hold your heads up high and remember this. It doesn’t matter how much bait you have, how much gear you have at your disposal, how much practice and back up support you have. If there are no fish in your swim, you can’t catch them.

Although I was a bit sad and annoyed that I had blanked, 

it was tempered by a slight smile in the knowledge that the crack match man to my right, probably felt far worse about blanking than I possibly could. The next time you blank, don’t feel quite so wretched, have a little smile and remember what I have told you. There is always tomorrow and another chance to bag up.

Gordon Rowland                                                               29^th July 2013

FOREWARD TO MY FISHING MEMORIES

These are stories about my most memorable fishing memories covering more than 60 years of my life. They are written from my point of view and from my opinions about fishing. They are subject to my thoughts and memory. I have written them down because as each year passes my memory fades a bit more and I find it a bit harder to jog my memory. I want my stories to be as factual as I can get them.

If you recognise yourself in any of the stories and feel the facts are not quite as I have written from my memory, I urge you not to attack me, but to sit down as soon as you can and to get your own fishing memories down on paper. In this way the young anglers of today will get to know what fishing was like before they were born.

The old methods we used and how they came about, will be interesting to them I am sure. I have tried to make my stories interesting, entertaining and above all, not boring. I hope I have achieved that.  I did have it in mind to go back and fish the places in my stories one more time, but having done it for a couple of them, I was so saddened by the poor state of the venues and the drop in standards of the catches, that I couldn’t bring myself to carry on doing it.

It seems to me that normal types of fishing venues have been let go and the angling scene seems to be vast lakes of easy carp fishing for fish artificially fattened up with boilies and pellets. It’s not for the likes of me thank you.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank the main players in my fishing life. The likes of John Stephenson, Brian Duckett, Gordon Tedd, Fred Bradbury and Tom; and not forgetting the most important fishing buddies of all my two brothers, Wilf Rowland and Gary Williams.

Finally, I would like to thank my wife Glenys for putting up with me over the fishing years and for allowing me to hog the lap top over the last year.

Tight Lines to you all,

Gordon Rowland

River Avon – Pony Fields above Christchurch Harbour

  This will be a short story about one of the lowest points in my fishing history. I had always thought that I knew my fish having caught just about every type of fish swimming in and around our river and still water systems. It just goes to show you can’t be too careful when identifying a species as it could be the difference between life and death for them.

One of my fishing mates, Brian Duckett and I were doing a practice session for our next Winter league Match to be held on the lower Hampshire Avon between Ringwood and Christchurch Harbour.

 We had already practised in the harbour and just above already, so we thought that we would try fishing the Pony Fields sections of the river. This section was located about three quarters of a mile upstream of the harbour. There were a few swims on a very deep and acute bend on that stretch and we thought that we would find out what they were capable of producing in the way of species and weights. The bends obviously forced the flow from one side of the river and then forced it back over to the opposite side. This caused a number of deep holes where the flow had scoured into the side of the banks and causing undercuts.

These areas had the ability to produce some good specimens and were home to some quite big shoals of roach, dace and chub.  On our walk to our swims we had noticed a huge shoal of mullet making their way upstream from the harbour and open sea. I know we would be very happy to draw one of these swims and thought they would be reasonable candidates for section wins and even an outside chance of the whole match if they fished to their potential. We both caught good bags of fish and were drawing near to the end of our session.

With about half an hour left and the light fading, I hooked into a heavy fish on my hook baited with bread flake. I saw it break the surface and I felt sure it looked like a mullet.

 I landed the fish and weighed it at just over 5lb. I thought to myself that as it was a sea fish and not a freshwater species, I would take it home to eat. Just as I was about to dispatch it with a heavy bank stick, Brian came over to see what was happening. When he saw me about to kill the fish, just about threw himself on me to stop it happening. He shouted at me “ That's a massive chub, you idiot”!! When I looked down at it a bit more carefully I could see that he was indeed right. It was a chub. I felt really sick and very guilty at what I had almost done.

I don’t quite know how long a chub lives to attain the weight but I knew then it was the biggest one I had caught in 20 years of fishing for them, so I felt really bad about the situation. Since that catch, I still haven’t caught a chub bigger than that in a further 30 years of trying. Food for thought I am afraid.

Christchurch Harbour Mullet Fishing

A good friend of mine, Dennis, who I worked with, invited me to fish from his boat in the Estuary at Christchurch. I am not sure which of the two great rivers, the Avon or the Stour it was, but I think both rivers entered the sea very close to where we were heading. Dennis told me that the place we were to wet a line was just past the Christchurch Yacht Club.

I sat in the little car park at 5 am having got up in the middle of the night and traveled down from Salisbury in Wiltshire. Tried to keep my eyes open and looked around, expecting to see his car and trailer, with a boat loaded on it. That didn't really happen. I did not have to wait long before I spied his car entering the car park by the river. The car was minus the trailer and most important, it was minus the boat that we needed for fishing.

I needn't have worried though. He drew up alongside and opened his back doors and the boot. He then proceeded to extract two oars, two rowlocks and a small heavy little anchor with a chain attached to it. It all became clear when we carried the stuff into the small marina by the riverside. Dennis pointed to a small boat which was lying overturned on the bank. I suppose it was left like that so it would not fill up with water if it rained. Dennis unlocked the chain which was securing the boat to a thick cable attached to a concrete bollard. We turned the boat over the right way up. Dennis attached the rowlocks to the boat and fitted the oars into them. After stowing the anchor onto the back end of the boat, we carried it to the riverside and dropped it into the water, taking care to tie it up so that it did not float away. We then went to fetch our fishing tackle from the cars and stowed it all onto the boat.

 I sat in the back, in charge of the rudder, while Dennis manned the oars. I was glad about that because I had done little in the way of rowing and there was a bit of a current flowing. I had expected him to have an outboard motor to fall back onto if we got into any sort of difficulty, but no.

He told me that the species we were after was mullet. I don’t know which type, only that they went up to about 4lb in weight and gave a good fight on light tackle. Dennis had managed to get a couple of packs of ragworm for us the night before. How he got them and how he had stored them I didn't know and didn’t particularly want to know either. He had told me to bring a light leger rod with me and a couple of small silver spinner spoons with small trebles on them. He showed me how to apply the ragworms to the spinners so that they trailed behind when you reeled in. The ragworms were savage little creatures with little nippers that came out of their heads when you handled them and stabbed you on your fingers if you weren't careful.

Dennis rowed us along the estuary and we anchored the boat just past the yacht club on the opposite side. The idea was to cast across towards the pontoons outside the club and to let the current pull your spinner round slowly. The spinners had to be tried at different levels to locate the shoals. They seemed to be deeper if it was sunny, but higher in the water if it was cloudy. Obviously it was something to do with the light levels and the fishes eyesight. For the first hour we didn't have even a nibble, but Dennis told me to be a bit patient as the tide was soon to change. After a while we began to see fish following our spinners in but then shying away at the last minute. It was exciting to see the little submarines appearing behind our baits. All that was missing was the big dorsal fins sticking out of the water, like sharks, but then I’m fantasizing again.

I decided to change my spinner to one with a little red eye shape on the spoon and that seemed to spur the fish into attacking it. We were pleased that the shoal had chosen to be there for us and I found it exciting actually being able to see the fish have a go at my bait. We found the answer to catching was to fish at one depth for a few yards and then to change depth, therefore covering more water on our retrieves. We starting hitting into fish, but unfortunately, because the mullet had bony mouths, we would lose half of the fish we hooked before we could net them.

We had loads of strikes at our baits and even though we lost quite a few fish we had a hell of a morning. The fishing gods had really shone on us that day. The mullet ranged from a couple of pounds to the biggest weighing around the 4lb mark. By lunch time I had caught 15 fish and Dennis had 10. I think he caught the biggest on the day. It was in our minds to keep the fish and put them in our freezers for eating over the next few months. We really felt good when we rowed back to the marina. We decided to split the catch in half and placed them in black bin liners ready for transporting them back to the cars when we docked.

Just as we were climbing out of our boat feeling very proud of ourselves at being able to bring home the bacon as it were to our respective families, we told a bloke on the bank of our good fortune. He looked at us and said “ Eat them mullet at your own peril me mateys”. “There was a sewage leak a few days ago upstream and some others who have eaten fish from here have been very ill”. Well. What can I say? What the fishing gods have given, they had decided to take away.

We were absolutely gutted. Was the bloke lying because he was jealous or was he indeed, telling the truth? We just couldn't take the chance of all our families throwing up all over the place could we? You would have thought that the harbour authorities would have put some sort of notice to warn us about the pollution. I suppose they didn't want to put people off and give themselves a bad reputation for pollution. It was a pity though, as if we had known we would have put the fish back to fight again rather than having to throw them into car park dustbins.