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
18th
April 2015
