- December 31st 2008 Gold Oak. Ice fishng.To follow...
- December 28th 2008 Frome Holme Bridge. The pursuit of the phantom grayling. To follow...
- December 23rd 2008 South Drain. Piking without the actual pike. To follow...
- December 21st 2008 Wytch Farm. Ice fishing, no fish but a perfect afternoon. To follow...
- December 19th 2008 Barton's Court. No carp but the amazing tree. To follow...
- December 14th 2008 Breach Pond. Zippo. Blank. Nada. To follow...
- December 7th 2008 Wytch Farm. Home of the now twitchy fish. Should have caught, didn't. To follow...
- December 1st 2008 Turfcroft. Frost on the grass all day, but 20 roach and bream, with one 1½lb roach, plus two stripey's one at 1¾lb. Oh, and a 5lb bream. Could have been worse.
- November 23rd 2008 Dairy Farm. Another cold and hoizontal day, with hail, Nemp's first blank for 21 years and yet another Wheeler-Feynman perch.
- November 15th 2008 Dairy Farm. A nice common and a small perch. Some signs of life and a returning mojo.
- November 8th 2008 Silent Woman II. Top lake still otherwordly, so I caught lots of small ones in the bottom lake.
- November 2nd 2008 Dairy Farm. New, windswept, missed several odd bites on crust.
- October 26th 2008 Silent Woman I. A very odd blank, with Nempster scratching out one rudd. Bizarre.
- October 22th 2008 Ziolona Gora Ephiphany. I'm sitting in an odd little hotel room in the middle of Poland on one of the strangest trips to date. The hotel receptionist needs calling to open the hotel, thankfully the 'driver' did the talking. I say 'driver', heavily built, crewcut, fit looking, well cut jacket and the casual confidence that characterises ex-servicemen. Behind the desk she had a black eye and a snot nosed boy-child clinging, peering fearfully at me from behind a too thin jean leg. Hmm. I've got 6-7 hours to kill with only biscuits and a kettle and half-way though a mountain of email, with runs down the stairs to the only wireless spot in the "dining room". I suddenly realise the club water I've joined is just wrong for me. I'm not sure why I did it, it's been a tough year, but I've been worn down by the sneers, the impossibility of quiet when every other angler goes past you twice (or on one occasion four times) with barrows of gear. When the angler that cast to within 10 yards of me with at least 2oz of lead for the other bank shrugged and carried on when I said "do you mind? The fish that are not wind herded but lured by the sound of boiles fired, that have forgotten there are other foods. Where you rod is judged on the basis of it not having two matched triplets? Sod that.
I met some pleasant folk, I should say, the floater fishing guy who always had a chat, the gent in a bivve that just enjoyed the surroundings and offered me a brew as often as not (I note he was well away from the main thoroughfares) and the man who turned up at sunset one evening with the full pod to be sure, but lightly tackled and softly spoken and was there for the dusk and the bats whatever rig was on the end of his line. The bank-side gun emplacement rows of bivvies. Even if it cost me the yearly fee I resolved right there to never go again. It didn't, generously, grudgingly, but that wouldn't have changed my mind. They even had a carp match. I once chatted with a decamping carper and he'd spent three days in the same spot without a fish. Did he not think to move? The same gent showed me his fly rod, nothing heavy, but with a fluffy imitation dog biscuit. The irony of catching carp conditioned to eat totally unnatural dog biscuits by then using an artificial imitation, makes me smile.
In the morning the hotel didn't take credit cards, or the now seedy male receptionist didn't, despite the booking promise and I have to pay in Euros. I'm sure the driver could have 'sorted it', but I don't mind keeping the cards out of sight. Car hire companies won't let you hire cars in Germany and drive to Poland. So you have your customer hire a car and driver, then you pay them to drive you through miles of dark forests with thin tracks and wooden towers at the end and snatches of moss red brickwork, you imagine grim history, see first hand the grinding poverty of many of the smaller towns and villages, patched roofs, rusting cars and subsistence vegetable plots. It's not all plumbers. I trudge from the hotel to the customers', half a mile, cutting through a pine tree copse to avoid the drizzle, thinking of Hansel and Gretel's breadcrumbs.
- October 17th 18th 19th 2008 La Morinais, Langon.
I had the good luck to wangle a road trip to Rennes in October, not a million miles from L'etang de Morinais. Saturday, I get up with the sun and take bacon sandwiches and fresh coffee (have pot will travel) and sit at the lake's East end with the sun rising over my shoulder and watch the island loom out of the mist ahead, a personal Marie Celeste. I've a float-fishing rod to hand for the roach, carp in absentia, and catch one of 8oz. As the mist clears, I find myself focussed on the orange tip piercing the dark water, which trembles a fraction as the float starts, the ripples frozen for an instant, the point-of-impact pattern on a piece of dark flint, ineptly struck.
I've tried twice to make flint tools and both attempts left me with no more than lacerations and a strong memory of the fire-smell from badly struck stone. The first attempt, in Norfolk, ended with cut fingers and dark shards linked in my mind with Wickenpond. These days I'd 'google it', finding out how in a minute or two, or even buy arrowheads on ebay. Men's oldest tools, traded on men's newest. Ha.
The float, becalmed by sunshine, switches sideways a quarter of an inch causing another nest of ripples in the smooth surface and I get a sudden insight. Space-time ripples are linked to mass but also to magnetism. Simply, if you moved an electromagnet with an alternating current in a coil, the mass is moving, so there must be ripples in space-time. Gravity to you. Aha.
The float sinks to the tip, the strike begets a short tearing run of five heart-in-mouth yards, a Morinais monster on the light gear, oh my word, no sooner the fear crystallised, it melts into the sinuous sandbag of an eel, which takes a little subduing, somewhere between 2-3lbs. I roll it in the folds of the landing net, lay it on its back, tweak out the hook, take a picture and then let it wend back into the water for another 10 years. I chuckle to myself in the dappling sunlight and write it all down. Grasshopper mind. I get little else (a few 6-8oz roach) to stir my baits despite watching the sunset.
The following morning, I've a couple of hours before I lope off up the road for the ferry, so park on Point De Chasse and enjoy the autumn sun. The once or twice the foil rattles about making me start, only autumn roach chasing bait that's only small enough for their large eyes. No carp, but three glorious days of tranquility.
The other thing I've realised this year is why some anglers wear the hat with the wide brim. When it's raining crap, the hat helps to keep it off.
Here's to next Autumn.
- 5th October. Club Water, Dorset. Really nice afternoon. Rumbled it now. Got to hit the twitches...pole floats and holding the rod it is. See, here's the thing - I've seen no one using a float, no one using only one rod, and certainly no one using bait actually on a hook, in 6 sessions. However, I've not spent more than at 24 hours fishing here, unlike one or two 'three day session blanks' I've spoken with.
- 28th September. Club Water, Dorset. Well, with the aid of black-eye beans, I got a lot of twitches and missed my only real bite.
- 27th September. Poole Quay, Dorset.. One of our Sunday morning 'things' is crab fishing on Poole Quay. This morning I brought a pen rod (I'm a sucker for that kind of thing) and while the 'littleanglers' caught crabs, I used the mini rod and a quill to extract a dozen assorted gudgeon-like gobies and blennies plus one small ballan wrasse (I assume, bright green it was) to go in a bucket next to the crabs.
The Quay crabs have wised up in the last year and learning to drop off the bait when out of the water - without a landing net to catch them, pickings can be meagre. Still at least my landing net gets used this way...then off for hot chocolates and black coffee all round. Brilliant fun.
- 22nd September. Romsey Tackle Fair. A place where crusty anglers get their old tackle out. Resisted, thus bought only a few floats and Rod Hutchinson's "The Carp Strikes Back" for £4. Bargain.
- 21st September. Kimmeridge Bay. Dorset. The custom in the 'Anotherangler' household is to have an evening picnic or two at Kimmeridge at the book-ends of the holiday season. By the evening the grockles have packed and left and you have the place almost to yourself. These are informal affairs involving, in no particular order, egg mayonnaise, bread rolls, 'Mrs Anotherangler', tuna mayo, grilled sausages, 'littleanglers', crab lines, various drinks, picnic rugs, fishing umbrellas, 'Cadge the dog', shrimp-nets and buckets.
On a cool Friday evening in September, sitting on the dark shale that is still radiating the soft heat of the west bound sun, we break out the better-for-being-outside finger food. Dining over, crabs are turfed out from under stones, gobies are coaxed into nets and the dog tries to steal any stray sausages as usual. Arming myself with cockles and an Avon (mea culpa, malice aforethought, I'd packed them), I wade thigh deep in the warm water and float-fish the gentle waves for Corkwing and Ballan Wrasse, the 'sergeants' of the sea. I'd have stayed until the water was up to my armpits, but after I snatch five, an "indignity of wrasse" perhaps, the air turns sharply cold, so we all head home.
- 14th September. Club Water, Dorset. Tricky place for fish, this. Some barbed noses as well.
- 14th September. Poole Quay, Dorset. Crabs, more crabs, a careless blenny, a pipefish and hot chocolates. Great fun had by all.
- 7th September. Club Water, Dorset. So close...but no banana. Or carp.
- August 2008. Just an Angler on the edge:
It's always been a source of amazement for me that some folk go fishing on a lake and immediately on arriving and tackling up, hurl the end bits to the far bank or as far across as they can manage. I've been on that far bank when stuff, some of it not out of place in a softening up bombardment on the Somme, 'thops' into the water in my swim. If the other bank looks so good why not walk around and fish from there? It seems there is something ingrained in some psyches about the bigger fish being further out. Bigger is better. Size matters. Something like that. Compensating, I call it.
The truth of the matter is that the fish go where the food is and where conditions are appropriate for consumption - in nearly every water you can think of, the banks on all sides are high on that list. I freely admit this marginal addiction is partly born out of a dislike of ledgering in general and fishing miles away in particular (I don't count free-lining as ledgering). So although I prefer to fish on my side and with a float or nothing else on the line at all, this is tempered with a healthy perspective on the advantages. In many waters the major source of natural food is from the bankside flora and fauna, fish know this. They also know that huge bipeds clumping about are a bad sign. So they hide, fading like the Cheshire cat but taking the grin with them, often with little indication they were ever there. This excepts of course those waters where 'natural food' is mostly angler supplied, leaving the insect life amazed they get about with so little trouble.
Actually margins are often a good source of non natural food - when evening arrives, many fisherfolk pack up before the best two or three hours (?) and chuck in their leftover bait. (I'm "careful with money", I refreeze mine). One lake I fished often for six months, often had the 'best swims' occupied (funny how they are usually the ones near the car park), until that hour or two before sunset and then abandoned. If I'd not had a bite for a bit and with the 'all-clear' sounded by the slamming of car doors and fading engine noise, I'd sidle round and catch several.
Amused am I (turning into Yoda am I), when visitors to a lake make a point of standing at the front of every swim, hands on hips, sky-lined and wearing spottable clothing, knowledgably scanning the far bank for life. And then go around the other side and repeat the exercise. Those of us who've snuck in, have only a few inches of rod tip poking through the edge-sward and are resolutely drab in appearance (some would say I don't need the fishing clothes for that) chuckle to ourselves or seethe when signal-shirt and wavy arms clumps up behind to ask if you have caught anything. Not now mate. Luckily, the die hard clumpers and peerers seldom seem interested in information from the actual anglers. I've had trolleyed up serious carp boys walk past me while I had a fish on without even breaking their chat. Amazing. I can't do that, even if I was just to watch. Still, I've experienced being told across the water I can't fish that swim as they've baited it, so it's theirs. Luckily there still are good uses for butt spears and .45" lead bullets (drilled or otherwise) that are not mentioned in Still Water Angling. Although one of them is mentioned in 'Drop me a Line'.
I digress. The margins. I prefer them for many reasons. The fish tend to prefer them. I don't have to cast miles. I find it no hardship to keep still, avoid sudden movements, keep off the skyline and avoid things that cause waterborne vibration in general and I catch fish there regularly. It seems to work. By and large I fish over depth with small floats and braid hook-lengths and get sail-away bites for the most part (of course I fish a lake where I don't get positive bites, but I do catch the fish anyway). It all comes down to 'Still Water Angling', which impressed upon me the need to keep out of sight and sound. It also sold me on braid hook lengths which I started with in 1985, 1 foot lengths of 11lb Milward Black Spider, varnished and water knotted to the mono. I fished for wildies under my rod tip with a 2 No4 crystal canal float in 10 feet of water with 1BB on the trace and Size 8 hooks (which turned out to be a Jack Hilton) obtained when I went into a tackleshop in Newbury and asked for carp hooks. Oh yes and sweetcorn. It worked and I averaged two fish an evening, 5 evenings a week for 5 weeks, best 8lb 14oz, but by golly did they motor. And a 6lb tench and a lot of surprised roach at the 1lb mark. I had to train several of the visiting anglers to crouch, walk gently and speak softly and most did. I never did train the bailiff though, who wore size 12 army's and a white T shirt. Many trembling floats he stilled.
So it works (for me) and returning to those roots in 1998 or thereabouts, I kept the Milward on the line and with 8lb mono bagged some impressive roach and a 13 tench haul at a local lake. Amazing how you don't need fine tackle sometimes. I've moved onto specialist hook lengths these days in nice sensible breaking strains. But 8 squid for 20M of hook length, when Milward was a fiver for 100 yards? Daylight robbery lads, for sure.
The compulsion to fish by the edge remains, and given freedom from the clumpers, the semaphore artists, the disinterested, their hulking barrows and the rod artillery, I find I can catch quite well. It's sobering to get the full rush of a big double picking up under your feet.
So if you happen upon a drab-dressed sloucher with a rod barely over the edge and possibly a small float 3 feet out from the bank, crouch, walk softly, speak softy, and you'll discover some of us are quite sociable. And if you sit long enough you may see why it works. And if you don't see a fish before you leave, someone leaving the bank will often encourage the really shy ones...so I'm never too sad when folk move on.
- June 29th 2008 Milton Abbey
- June 20th 2008 L'Etang De Morinais
- June 16th 2008 Fiddleford Mill and Canford Ponds.
- June 1st 2008 Highbench
- May 26th 2008 Arfleet
- May 23rd 2008 Arfleet
- May 18th 2008 Arfleet
- 17th May 2008. East of Omaha.
- May 17th 2008 Arfleet
- May 8th 2008 Arfleet
- May 4th 2008 Arfleet
- May 2nd 2008 Arfleet
- May 1st 2008 Milton Abbey
- April 26th Arfleet 2008 Arfleet
- March 24th 2008 Milton Abbey
- March 16th 2008 Milton Abbey
- March 10th 2008 Breach Pond
- February 23rd 2008 Milton Abbey
- January 12th 2008 Milton Abbey
- January 5th 2008 Revels
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