JAA's Fishing Diary (2010)

Farewells are, for us normal folk, emotionally draining. Even when the departed is not so close, the whole day is coloured by what, in the end, is a short service and an hour of obligatory socialising with people who haven't seen you since the last time. The day is torn into two halves, the before and the after, with the event itself a kind of limbo. That time, shortened as it so often is by commercial interests and occasionally high-jacked by the self-aggrandising, is still much needed time to reflect and remember fondly. Before that, the preparations, the inability to focus, the importance of everyday things diminished, rightly so. After that, drained, relieved, tomorrow looks good. In the end, all funerals are one funeral.

The plan today was to try new water on the way home. I opted out of 'Ben's lake' at Newbury as I had time to try Golden Pond near Stockbridge. This is pretty and small and I was soundly ignored on arrival by the angler in the first swim and two gents chatting halfway along the bank soundly ignored a perfectly civil "afternonn gents". Spotting the girlfriend on the lounger at the end of the lake clinched it and I decided my money was better off elsewhere. I tried Riverside Lakes only to discover that floater fishing, especially with white bread, is banned. I mooched around the lake for a bit and then decide Horton Lake, a scant 2 minutes away would be more fun. Amazingly I have the whole place to myself and I get as far as the lily patch nearest the car park where fish were tenting and clooping for England.

I sit on the grass and stick up the ESP with some 12lb and dink bread into a pad-gap and 5 minutes later have a 4-5lb fish. 5 minutes later, another. Normally at this point I mooch off for fresh pastures, but despite my best intentions, fresh fish keep turning up so I stay and, as I'd nothing since a coffee at 11am, alternate cups of tea with fish I snatch, haul & drag out of the pads.

The biggest difficulty is Rudd which demolish bread and mixers like piranhas falling on a careless rodent. I stick with the pads, lose 1 or 2 to hook-pulls and try a few mixers further out, where larger shadows cruise. The pack-fish denude any bait cast out in minutes so I keep with the pads and get a couple on mixers, one fish even ventures a whole foot from the cover to snatch the bait.

At this point I perfect my bread technique, which consists of plonking it onto a pad, waiting for the fish to come by and tweaking it off onto it's snoz. It's then mobbed by the ruddettes, pushed under a leaf and I wait for the line to pull...

Then one longer cast floats untouched as the minutes tick by and I know this means the bait is being sized up by something the rudd are not keen on...so it proves and after a clomping take I walk the fish up the bank to keep it out of the trees and the pads.

10½lb. I then start to spoon-feed the trees with mixers and once things are moving, fish bread between the trees and miss 1 and take 2, then switch to the right and take 1 out of some drowned cow-parsley and 1 from under the bank 10 yards up. All too easy and I pack up with 45 minutes of fishing light left, 13 fish to the good. It's now cool and the small technology starts with "Weathercock" as I drive into the coup de soleil's warm glow. Must go somewhere harder.^[C/63/17]

The water was all mine but covered in that catkin fluff. I don't think one end is going to fish better than the other, always fancy the lilies for a good fish, so go to the far end and park myself. I'm immediately mobbed by moorhens and chicks, who've clearly been hand-fed since the last trip. I give up and drink tea until they wander off, essay the odd cast and after a log wait get crust sucked off the hook, that fish never returns but the birds do. I drink green tea and wait and after 1&190#; hours, give up, having only fished for 30 minutes. I headed back to the tree-scene of last week's scrabbles. Inevitably the moorhens follow which made my tactic of trickling floaters into the tree branches less than 100% effective. I fumed. I imagined moorhen a l'Orange. Bu88ers. Eventually, after several near takes from fish nosing among the fluffy floatsam, I miss two as the blasted birds home in on the bait. By now, vey pi$$ed off, so I go for walk around the corner, debating going home. I stand on a cut-swim and a vole runs between my feet and tumbles the 18 inches into the water and I get a freeze frame of it spread-eagled upside-down, then hitting the water it paddles frantically and erratically across the lake. This cheers me up for no good reason so I go back, try a bit of flake suspended on a handy branch and perhaps 20 minutes late a nose appears, checks , swirls takes the whole piece, on a size 2. I bang the rod over, pull hard, got a bit of a lock, so drop the rod to change the angle and the fish comes out and mindful of the right hand side snag, pile in into the net, 9lb of slightly foxed mirror. OK then.

I wait for a bit more and with the light closing, swap the 12lb line for 14lb, re-tie the hook, check the point and wonder around to the narrow cut between two bushes which promises carp for the bold, off the lily-patch edge. I expect 90 minutes fishing and my first bit of floating flake dropped between two pads on the edge sits for 20 of them, before a fish shoulders its way through from my right and gobbles the bread with no preamble. I thump it out the stems and play it to a standstill in an 8 foot circle in front of me and scoop it out, my second 9lb mirror of the day. Better.

I re-bait, wait for a long time and nothing happens so tow in the bread, re-bait and get a succession of interested bumps. These die away, although my heartbeat doesn't. I put on fresh flake and mangle a cast leaving the bait 12 inches from the pads, with one lone pad between me and my bait and on the point of retrieving, the pads start to sway and as it's very dusky, trust the light to hide my line. It does, and after a final wobbles of the green, th e ripples subside and I know the culprit in under my bread and it just vanishes suddenly so I pick up the rod tip hard and have firm tussle in a 10 foot radius all swirls, lunges and dives to the bottom. I get the net out and net the commotion which is the pick of the three, 12lb of common in the flash.

Where's leviathan when you have the hang of it? Too dark now, even for white bread, so last out, but for the bats and Brock, who explains without words the mystery of the gate that clanks in the dusk, but then no-one comes to fish... ^[C/30/8]

It's hot, but not so hot I wouldn't sit in the sun at the lily-peg. Despite swirling cruisers, which I assume are sucking in tadpoles underneath the lily pads, floating baits get zero interest. The water is covered with fluff, looking surface paradise, but fish are not even interested in 'en passent' inspection. I consider a size 10 wide gap, a 7mm corkball and a black marker pen as an ersatz tadpole to prove my theory (I don't have the heart to live-bait tadpoles), but a size 10 would stop no carp by a lily patch. 30 minutes pass with free bait disdainfully left, so I put up the Avon and fish on the bottom with cockles. My hat is carefully filtering the light from the big fusion reactor, leaving enough heat to make seat run down my face and back. I watch the shadows creep left to cover me, 90 minutes pass, during which the underpad waltz on the further lily patch increases in tempo, so I catty out bread, watch the float and look back when the corner of my eye spots the swirl-and-ripples. Oho. I ship the rod in, put crust and a pinch of flake (to cover the hook) on the size 2 and whip it out. The take is violent and I really lean back and drag the fish out of the soft stems and as the fish whirls obligingly in front of me, a good fish, 15lb or so, I reach for the net, it strives sideways right and the line breaks, at the hook knot. 14lb vanish that. Apt. I vanish it into 6 inch pieces and put 12lb stren on. I'm unforgiving about line, that's the second fish flouro knots have cost me this year and even a Palomar is only good to 70% and 70% of 14lb is less that the 11.8lb I get with Stren and a 'uni knot'. Bugger it. I wait for 15 minutes or so, watching my float again, which tantalises once then the lily-pad lambada strikes up again, so I fire out a couple of hints and cast again.

After a short interval, down it goes and I work this once as hard as the first and once under the rod tip, rather more tightly controlled, I net this 17lb common. Annoying though it is to lose a fish, this is bigger and if I'd landed the first I wonder if I'd have taken this second. I've had an introspective hour or to sitting here wrestling with other issues and I take this fish to mean, don't give up and lighten up. Well, it's lame, but a fish can change your entire perspective some days.

Despite waiting, nothing else moves so I go for a wander and with the lake mostly deserted, I try peg 1, which has a tree. I sit, merged into the background 'real tree' and all that and spoon a few JAA special floaters into the branches. After a decent interval, the branches sway, baits are being chased, so I essay three biccies on a size 2 right beside the branches. This is serious tackle by the by, so don't get all wussy on me and mumble about snags. I get a positive take and pile into a fish which tries hard to climb the tree from the bottom up and I win by keeping the rod low and bent double, the fish caves, hurtles out into the lake, swims in circles, comfortable double, then as I pick up the net it nips right and goes solid, not 6 feet from me. Crap. It couldn't be any more solid if it had clove hitched the line on a tree truck and hammered the hook it. One snag to remember for next time.

I break the line and resume trickling the yellow peril until things are active and this time creep forward, swing the line over the thinnest of branches, some 2 feet from the tanglewood, slip back a few yards, pleased with my makeshift suspender and wait. The bait goes and I re-join battle with smaller, but then after hauling away from the tree something odd happens. The fish is tethered to the tree by red mono and in the end with the fish midway between me and the tree, the hook-knot of the red goes, my hook hold goes as the fish suddenly drops and I get the end of the mono, which I manage to get off the tree and send the same way as my vanish. What are the odds? Still, one freed fish, otherwise stuck to the radius of this line. Very odd.

I resume my lily patch at the far end for a bit, but the willow fluff surface film is static, so I try the corner as well but the fish won't play far enough from the trees and the trees here are too far off to be creative with the branches. After perhaps an hour has passed I go back to the spot of the two odd losses, feed again and eventually, fish move so I wait and then try a suspender branch. A more cautious animal eventually takes my bait after three inspections and a nudge. There is NO WAY I'm losing this one and it's bundled into the net, 10lb on the scales, never leaving the net, returned. Aha. I sit quietly, flicking baits with the spoon, although it take an hour, and some chasing of a 1lb carp which likes the bait but can't get it down, I eventually get another rise and bundle this 6lb fish into the net as well. OK, honours even, but very strange day. 17lb always good. 14lb Stren next….

It's not yet dark but I quit while ahead, despite a few fish still bumbling under the tree, I've tested my luck enough. JAA special floaters are a hit though, must make more...^[C/27/7]

Otterbourne Church is very old school, borderline pre-reformation with its cruciform decoration - I'm early, of course, so I pop into the yard, pay my respects to 'Old Bob', then walk up the hill. Halfway up, a jay skips across the road in front of me, so I scour the path for forest sapphires, there are none, although I take the carrier of the riches as a good omen of sorts. Just before the woods proper start, there used to be a resting place and a bench that overlooked a field with horses and in the distance the old churchyard and the Itchen at Brambridge, but the bench has gone and the woods are stealing down the hill, which is not a bad thing in the end. I feel like I know every bluebell, fern and the Shute's round pebbles. The Roman road south out of Winchester cuts across here, but not many folk know that. At the top of the Shute on the rabbit-mown grass of the common are three large of the same, who all stop to look at me, 40 yards off, not remotely worried by a person without a dog. 'Old Bob' had a soft spot for rabbits in general, despite a realistic attitude to any specific rabbits' worth, which is about half a good pie (two wood pigeons being the other half) and like many real countrymen knew them for what they are, furry locusts. Nevertheless, he once said to me that he liked to see them about and I'm the same. The common is the same now, at least the half backing onto the oak-woods, as it was 40 years ago, probably more than that. I walk across the springy turf, on which I've variously played cricket, lounged and courted and stand for a while watching the cottages and what used to be the Welstead's Store. And then it's time.

I descend the Shute, resisting an urge to cut diagonally through the woods down the path which actually comes out nearer Brambridge than Otterbourne and meeting some of the others at the Church, I go in to bid my farewells.

I go to Beeches Brook with two four-piece rods on the way home, where I plan to clear my head, my Kung Fu is weak it seems and although I catch rudd to 1lb easily enough I miss several carp on the float and despite enticing two surface takes from very decent fish, lose them both, to a leader knot and a hook pull, so in the end, as the dusk settles like a cloud, the day really didn't pick up at all. I choose a playlist on the small technology for the car, getting 'Rock Island', apposite and then "She Said she was a Dancer' which makes me smile and then "Mountain Men" which is about right and I coast home in the dark. Sometimes I would drive all night in the dark with just my record collection. But I don't this time.

I take a spur-of-the-moment half day holiday and bundle a loaf into the bag and tramp across the fields to the lake with a floater rod, a flask and a 'pin to go with the Avon. My plan was to fish on the bottom and divert for the fish on the top.

I settled on the south bank in front of an evergreen, keeping me off the skyline and even without bait the fish are poking around in the weed and the 50p sized embryonic lily pads. I stick on a size 6, 12lb through and skitter two carp out around the 4-5lb mark, skull dragged through the weed. Half an hour in and two up. Despite the bundle in the margins, fish are still about despite the very hot sun, so I try to the left and after some delay and two missed takes bank a couple of fish in the 1-1½lb bracket, setting a pairs pattern for the day...I go right again and miss several takes on bread, partly due to the curst crust on the loaf rendering the bread soluble in 5 minutes and partly the thick weed, which has the fish munching at the beard, seeming not able to get a clear run at it. I try further to my right, against a small path of vegetation with clear water around. I get a take right away, and the fish power dives into the bottom and the hook hold goes. I mutter something rude, try again and the same thing happens. All in pairs today.

I put on mixer biccies with added hemp and in the same spot get two in quick succession which got the full Monty strike, both about 1½lb...then takes tail off and after a bit I put 0.24mm on the 12lb main and get two takes which I miss, so I up the hook to a size 4, and get two about 5lb. Two by two...the sun is dipping a bit and the biccies are hard to spot so I put three floaters on one hook and then miss take after take for two long, so I call it quits, and head for the east end to fish off the bottom. I don't of course, fish are about so I put on a lump of bread and fling it right, watch it for a long 15 minutes then it bobs several times, vanishes and as I lift the rod the line is arrowing off. This fish, free of weed, bore into the middle pulling 12lb line off a clutch set at 3lb or so for 30 yards. Then it swings about and I'm dingbat winding, then to the right, more line torn of the reel. At the end of a violent five minutes leaving bits of weed and boils of silt all over the water in front of me I net a thrashing common, a little over 10lb. Pick of the day.

I ought to bottom fish the dusk but with enough movement on the top to entice, I try again, a bit further out and the next take is like the first, but this fish fights harder than the first, blistering pace and extraordinary power and after the dust settles, the fish is not even as the previous, a lean mirror of 6lb, but I've had less trouble with fish at twice the weight. Amazing. Lacking perspective now and spurred on by the big double that stands briefly on its tail before slooping into the middle, I fish the disintegrating bread until it's too dark...I manage a few cups out of the flask, remembering it only in the last hour.

With hindsight I must have lost 4 with hook pulls and missed as many as I banked, but here you are plagued by small carp nudging and nurdling baits, some over 1lb can take bait, but are hard to hook with baits meant for their grandparents and great-grandparents. I MUST bottom fish the lake for the bigger fish, before it's boilie bu88ered.^[C/21/4]

Due to a sudden vanishing of the brood I find a few hours to take half a loaf, bread-bin sacked, for a quick walk around the lake. Two residents are installed when I arrived, the inevitable double rod emplacement in the swim nearest the car park and a chap fishing in the swim the furthest away, both of the above lit up by bright blue, white and red clothing. Whatever happened to 'keeping out of sight'?

I try look at a swim on the way around to the far side and spot a carp under tree branches, so I don't linger but get on behind the tree, tackle up with the 12lb and a size 4 and drop the insouciant blimp a bit of crust, which lands more or less on it's nose, but it doesn't seem to mind. I keep back behind the branches and brambles and wait. Five minutes saunter past and nothing stirs, but for a large tail that signs a big "V" to me from the middle of the open swim. Eventually the fish of my desire sucks gently twice at the bread and then sinks down a few inches, sulking. I waited (see the return journey of the 'Victory' carp) and when it was clear it wasn't going to play I remove my bait spooking Mr. Indifferent and free line cockles while trying to lure the bigger fish out from under the tree with pineapple dog biscuits. This doesn't work so I head for the far side where the fish are playing, stopping at the other visitor and finding him fishing floating crust on a waggler, a good wheeze. He's had one 5lb or so. I move on round, slip as quietly as I can into a swim and flick a few baits in under the trees, carefully position a crust by flicking the line over a bare branch (careful with this, strong tackle required).

The grass snake is about as usual and the sun is warm on the strong-tea water and the fish are moving. Three doubles pass me and after an eternity of sitting immobile with my hat pulled down a big head looms out of the depths, sucks inquiringly at the bread and then sinks again, leaving my heart pounding as it's comfortably north of 15lb. Two other commons turn up moving horizontally this time, and one trys for the bread and I wait for it to go and move too soon leaving the bread for the fish and I wait for it to be mopped up before removing my hook from the tree.

(Tip 1: get one of those weed cutter blades and a gaff-head. With those and a 12ft landing net handle you can retrieve almost any line up a tree. The other good trick is to get the hook though the rod tip ring. You can usually draw it toward you, snip of the hook, and the line will nearly always pull through the branches without a hook on it.)

I try again, ignoring the fish clearing up the bait to my right. I could get bait in but there's a pliant cage of green wood which would make extraction impossible without a 7 foot whopper stopper and 17lb line, neither of which I have to hand. Another wait and a cream flank goes past just of the bank and presumably doubles back under the tree and pulls at the bread once, twice and under and I managed to hook it this time, and it tries very hard to get under the tree to my left and this is where a 12ft x 2½lb rod comes in handy, and then after a few runs and lunges I scoop it out, bite the line, 10lb perhaps, although I leave the scales in the bag.

So, missed one hooked one. I put on some pineapple floaters and wait for a bit on the same branch, but the ruckus has cleared the area so I make my way to the corner, (grass snake again, where is the camera?), and drop bread under one tree with 4 fish, which they ignore, and then try for one of the two upper doubles cruising in the branches on my right. I flick out some bread, not perfect, but it'll do and I wait. The fish mooch about, seemingly not spooked. I glance under the tree to my left and a loud 'thoop' tells me I missed a big positive take...

A deep breath...I re-bait and spend the next 20 minutes trying for a re-take without a nibble and then only a few feet in front of me a snout materialises out of the brown water and sucks gently at a catkin. I flick the hook out of bread, replace it and drop it 4 feet to the right of the vanished fish and wait. I don't have to wait long and up it comes, takes the bread first time and I wait until it turns and blows a small cloud of crumbs and strike hard and away from the branches. It dives hard, I hang on letting the rod absorb the repeated jags for the woodwork, then it goes slack and my hook pings into the tree behind my left shoulder. Bu88er. No time left, so a good time to mooch off.

(Tip 2: If you are really quiet and wear some real tree type jacket, olive everywhere else, pull yer hat brim down and keep still you can catch carp 6 feet from you. It works even better with a net over your bonce [bee keeping veil in black or an old round landing net mesh], your hands out of sight from the water and no rod hanging over the edge.)

Note to self, need stout stalking rod just like an LRH No. 3. Oh, wait...^[C/11/3]

I have a "eff 'em all day" and take myself to Arlfeet to sit in the sun and shade...I arrive at the back pit three-ish and at the bottom end the fish are about, taking in the sun. I slide into a spot over a rod length back from the bank with clumps all but hiding me and flick in a few pineapple floaters (supermarket mixer soaked in pineapple juice). These go, despite some nascent edginess and I delay a rod for a picture and miss by a shutter the adder that swims across the group of fish nearest me. It sussurates into the reeds on my left. Uh-huh.

It is idyllic with the place to myself, there is more wildlife that you can shake a stick at, the water is cool and deep, concealing immoveable snags and legendary disused clay pit workings. The water is always thick enough to hide the biggest fish, not often seen or caught.

I try, entranced, to catch the surface feeders. Wiser than they look, despite taking free bread and floaters all afternoon, my baits are nudged, ignored and abandoned. I drop down to 6lb line with size 10 hooks and a single floater. I try big bolts of flavoured bread, plain bread and semi-zigged floaters (a single size 6 shot 3 feet under the floating bait) and in desperation a suspender float. I may have had a rise on crust at one point. Nevertheless, rapt from the fish that variously weave, porpoise silently and cloop all afternoon, I persist, hearing only distantly the scrit of the squirrels, the yaffle, the deer picking their timid way through last autumns leaves. I assign every rustle at my feet to the snake and assume my near hypnotic state is a by product of the lazy buzzing of the early bumblers. I glance at my watch once at twenty-to-six and then, as the temperature falls, again at five-to-seven and I gave in to the inevitable, which the limbic brain flagged some time ago.

I remember my tea, meander to the lower lake, sit on the new bank drink several cups of the previously forgotten EGrey and watch my decoy crusts along the reed margin for 40 minutes and as the light leaks out I stroll to the monk with my flake, lob it into the scum in the corner and as I watch a big fish, nearer twenty than 15, dibbles in the water 10 feet from me.

I reel stealthily, lose my bait and of course the loaf is 15 yards away. I walk as quietly as I know how to get more bread and of course the fish is gone when I return. By now the light is cobwebs in my face and wanting to brush it away so I could see, I realise it's time to go.

This is a rare treat, an almost virgin water, although I paid for this chance with a day or two of painkillers. I set up on the South bank, it's sunny, warm enough for early spring and a good south-west breeze but not a strong one and there's shade from the late morning sun. I try a float with lobs and maggots working on the basis that the un-fished lake will respond better to natural baits. Nothing moves or looks likely for an hour save for a single twitch. I wonder around to the west end, the inlet and shallow end and spot a carp head down in the silt. I slide back to my float road, grab the worms and slink back and spend about an hour trying to get a catch one of what turns out to be three or four fish shovelling in the silt. I try big lobs and maggots with shot to mire the bait in the ooze, but whether the fish couldn't find the baits or they were preoccupied I couldn't tell. I go back to the original spot and miss a bite, then get a succession of denuded hooks without a hint of float movement, whole bunches of maggots stolen away one by one. Odd.

There's a movement in the west corner of my eye - I see a slow rolling fish's pectoral in the shallows. Hm. I decide to try bread, despite reservations the fish have never seen any. I fire crusts and after some inspection fish take them, so I take the floater rod back west and moving under the high bank, sit halfway down the tussocks and flick out a bait, which is ignored by succession of fish, including 2 ghost carp. Eventually, after several tries, I put a piece of bread right on a patch of weed and flick larger bits around it. As tradition dictates the loose offerings are cleaned up one at a time until the bait remains, but it is taken, boldly in the end, by the larger of the ghost carp and although weedy, it's shallow and I've got 12lb line and a 12 foot rod...9lb perhaps.

I try for a while for another without success the fish having bolted from the disturbance. However they started to play in the weed on the south bank, so I go back around the long way, get my gear and set up camp in the shade of the leylandi-lites (which in a perfect world would be yew) and drink tea while the fish liven up.

I then get two fish on bread quite quickly, one, 3lb, 10 minutes pass then the other, more like 7lb. Quiet then, for a spell, so I fish the float for a bit and get a bold bite and land a scrappy fish about 1lb, which I return unsnapped. After a while I pick off a larger fish, 8-9lb maybe, towards the islands, which burrows into the weed and silt but I keel-haul it out and after an hour passes, this smaller fish, at about 5lb, again bullied out of the silt and weed stalks. I decide that is a good return and with the light diluting, I tramp back up over the fields.^[C/8/1]

Before 8am I sit in a coffee shop (where have all the caff's gone?) with what passes for breakfast, an ersatz fry-up toastie plus coffee (Italian for coffee? Go to Italy, they have the mutt's knuts coffee wise) and look at the décor, a basket of baguette slices and think, "they'd make good floating baits". In some Cambridge industrial estate, from the customer's coffee room, I look into the lake, clear water and leave hooks in my conversation for the other angler's and get a small bite, tellling me there's rudd and a few carp, but the other lake in the middle has even more rudd and they're worth a look from the ornamental bridge. Always good to hear about rudd...

...behind the Holiday Inn in Basildon there's a lake and 10 minutes into a completely dud meeting, I'm struggling not to watch the right sort of warming wind chopping the water against the far left hand corner, where I know there'll be something to catch...

...on the A34 at Beedon just off the southbound exit, there is small water hole, storage, irrigation, something like that, years old, 20 at least. I'd always wondered about it holding fish and even at 1am, as I pass it in the dark, I wonder still. The Kennet at Newbury then, Stockbridge, with its Test threaded pavements and bread fed illegal immigrants. Then the Bourne, the Avon, the Ebble, the Stour, nearly home...

...my day's guide and myself leave Santiago and it's statue of Cervantes and due to a refuelling detour, we cross the Rio Minho at Valença by the old international bridge and my guide is telling me about how his parents used this bridge when crossing when he was a child, and how there used to be a street market at the bridge end, I store this for later while I'm really looking at the river and wondering about the swirling possibilities below. The fortress with its thick-faced walls and banks though is both extraordinary and imposing, built to withstand and repel, an impassive 'by invitation only' statement for the Spaniards of old...

...at the regular restaurant, well past lunch hour, someone else's phone call meanders, so I lean over the car park dry stone wall and on the other side at the bottom of a cut is a familiar pond, but today earth is being bulldozed towards the water, which ripples as dry soil slides down the new scree-slope. When the dump-truck departs for more infill and the sliding mass skitters to a halt, the reeds still flicker and wave, panicking fish in a shrinking world, buried before the end of the day.

Dropped at Oporto, time to squander in this most sterile of airports, I walk outside, away from the terminal and lean against a concrete bastion, one end of the half arch/half beam that supports the roadway above and let the sun warm my face. It's not quite spring, in the UK at least, but in Portugal it's warm and the roads are green lined and I don't need much of a leap to imagine a favourite swim with long grass, a fresh green smell, a slightly metallic scent of budding blackthorn either side and new pads swaying with heavy shapes below them. I'll overtake Jack-o'-the-Green on the flight back though. After a while I go back into the glasshouse, start up the big technology and fill out a holiday form. Warm enough before the close season for a couple of days among the spring shoots and the early risers, after Jack's been around the lake to wake it. Yeah...

...on the metal tube home, the first track out of the small technology is J.J.Cale's "The Old Man and Me". What are the odds? (1 in 1852).

Cold. 25 perch, roach and rudd. Some odd carp observed. More to come...

As it's warmed a bit I take some maggots to Silent Woman, for an unabashed dibble on the small lake for the carplets and rudd. It's almost impossible to miss out here and I just fancied a light rod, the Chapman 500, and a small pin (I admit to a Kingpin Regency in Bronze, recently purchased and loaded with 4lb Maxima) and some gentle snatching (steady matron).

I sit on the East end of the lake, which I have to myself, as it's the least water-logged and just fish a pole float and a size 14 with two maggots and loose feed a little hemp, maggots and corn. In between doses of fresh brewed coffee laced with Quinta Ruban and slices of a most excellent Turkey-and-cranberry pie, I manage to catch a dozen or so rudd and small common carp in the 2-4 ounce range and then switch to a 12 and a big bunch of maggots and alternate this with corn and bread flake. Mid afternoon the grey clouds change direction and the wind veers around to the North, the temperature slinks and it gets slowly colder, noticeable only when you move stiffened limbs. I keep score in my head and manage 16 carp, 15 rudd, with one nice one of 6-8ounces perhaps and three of the carp go 8 ounces maybe. I get one larger one at about 2lb on corn which gives an average account of itself, but at least it pulled of line against the ratchet. I've had worst days fishing mid-winter and I finish my reinforced coffee and squelch back to the car in daylight, warmed by the walk and grounded for another week.

I took myself with over to DSW#3 on the basis it had thawed a bit and there might be a chance of a winterfish, a cold water carp. It was balmy, relatively, considering the prolonged frost, and had been for a week, but the water was still half-iced on the south side, the side of the least sun and after a moment or two I opted for the north corner swim as it would get sunlight all day and has lily beds, although they've died back and the long fallen autumn the leaves don't accumulate here, as the east bank gets most of them…but it was taken so I opted for two swims down the bank, NNE if you will. I passed another angler on the east bank, who was enjoying the sun, but had tried both flavours of boilies and even popped one up without even a touch. Hard going then.

I opted to put some cockles in the lee of a leafless alder on the right hand side of my swim, a modified pole float and 10lb line with a braid hook-link, 2 feet of it, blacked to match the winter bed. After an hour a big fish rolled under the ice fringe, 50 yards distant, creating a small symphony of creaks intermingled with the muted jingles of broken ice. It nosed up and down the melting fringe, perhaps picking off falling food. I'd like to have twitched a bait off the fringe, but anything heavy enough to get to the middle of the lake would have punched a hole in the ice on landing, and while it might have been possible to get a bait over from the ice side, retrieving the fish presents a set of challenges I declined. Ba-doosh! The boilie chap is casting every 35 minutes and is nearer my swim than his, but I'm just around the corner, so out-of sight etc.

Oh well. It's mostly millpond still, with the occasional cold breaths spinning up a few indolent water devils, but then for about 2 hours midday my nerves tingle and I keep the rod across my knees, hand clamped on the pin rim. The float wanders a bit and at one point something plucks the water surface almost directly under the float, leaving a spreading ring of slow waves. But despite this, nothing else approaching a bite and as the best part of the day recedes, I try bread, maggots, a big bunch to see if anything is feeding (it isn't) and luncheon meat fried in tikka powder. As the slight warmth sinks into the ground, I remember my flask and chain drink my Talisker-butressed Earl Grey, eat some of the bread and catty a couple of bits of crust toward the ice rim. Well you never know, but they drift untouched, Celeste like. Nothing doing and even the ice-breaker has vanished into the deeps. One by one the other souls depart, all as fishless as me, and I pack up with the float pulled into the margin where I can see the tip, black against the dusk sky's reflection, as I sort and put away. Last out as usual.

For some of us past a certain age, amongst our first set of meagre tackle there were only a few floats, if you were lucky...but how many do you really need? Unencumbered with the today's mandatory profusion of wagglers, puddle chuckers, dibbers and duckers, it's a miracle we caught anything.

In the olden days I had three (floats). A spectacular black painted 9" antenna, for proper fishing, the big porcupine quill and the small porcupine quill. For 2 years that was it. The small one was used for almost everything and took about one No 6 shot. The big quill looked fine, but I never cast that far and as for the antennae, well, it was really to look at and dream.

The small one, battle-scarred, fished with me for years and still is one of the many I keep around the place. The top was ORANGE. That's like orange but really loud. I know jolly red tipped quills are the thing for some, but all my early 'porcys' were ORANGE, so I stick with it. Fished 'top-and-bottom' with a float band it caught fish in streams and lakes with equal luck. For perch I fished near the bottom but if I had a few maggots, then solder wire (liberated from Dad's toolbox) around the quill base made a self cocker. I'd cast 25 yards (the furthest achievable with my 7' solid glass rod and Intrepid Challenger) at rising rudd in White House lake in Anglesey. These impossible jewels, compared with our bog standard 2oz perch, were never large, but still felt more of a prize. More worthy, almost proper fishing.

The same float caught my first tench, 1½lbs of stunned tinca, yanked Polaris like, out of the reedy margin of Carnau Lake, (the only tench caught that year by anyone in the club). Also my first perch, roach, rudd, eel, brown trout, sea trout, stickleback and flounder. Very possibly my first gudgeon, ruffe and bleak as well, but it's hard to recall.

This one in fact, the eye formed with wire scrounged from a junction box. I repainted the tip a bit back, but it's retired for now.

This was my staple float, but I used a home made sliding 'porcy' to catch my second, third and fourth tench in 12 feet of water with a 9 foot rod. Then in 1979 I read 'Stillwater Angling' and I may be wrong, but the great man panned them as overrated. So I put them aside and used 'proper floats' for some time. But the old habits of youth have a way of embedding life-long and I kept a few, bought a few. And then I thought, well, 'Who cares? I like them'.

I admit that 'porcys' fished 'top-and-bottom' and flayed at the horizon, do tend to tangle. They're not good river floats, except for gentle gudgeon swims, unless you stick a cork around the middle or make a tip with a goose quill and they are not good shot carriers, being quite dense.

On the upside, they are pleasing to look at and robust and cast well with little shot. And, much, much more to the point, I like them. When I've got fiddling-time, I strip, whip, paint and tinker. I've no idea why. If you like, you can overcome the downsides with inserts. I've made 'porcys' with toothpick and carbon antennae, carbon stems, and a few upside down ones, which are as sensitive as any pole float. I've even whipped the tips with bright thread in lieu of paint. OK, I admit I could get out more. But really, you can't have too many. Can you?

And while they're not always the best float for the job, unless they are the worst by some margin, I find myself reaching for one as I tackle up...

So I give you the porcupine quill float.

Many fishermen's first float. Many first-time fishermen's only float. The float of day-dreams.

I took the day out and arrived here at midday, and despite being below zero, the sun was out and in my eyes and the water in the club lake was as clear as gin. At the car park end I could see the fish, lolling in the sun, some carp some black-tipped chub. I could have charged down to the waters edge, but I take stock, set up by the fence, 5 yards from the water's edge. I sit down, put on a hook and flick curst into the water. Well you never know. A carp takes a bit after a nuzzle in front of me but the fish then vanish and the rest of the bread-flakes drifted down the lake to a weed bed where they collected. And with a swirl one vanished. I cast one a few yard short, to drift under the breeze, with 7 yards of line lying across the grass and 15 yards on the water. Nudge, nudge, swirl and fish on. Not a carp, leaping suddenly and then led to my already stiffening net. So a chub.

I move down to the edge, part screened by a grass-clump and continue to fling crusts about and the odd one goes, no pattern to the takes. I get a big swirl in front of me, but the bread bobs in the ripples untouched. Fish are still moving down the lake and I lob a crust down there after 30 minutes, miss a take, try again and get a second chub, this one's bigger, maybe 3½lb. I wait, drink enhanced coffee and wait some more. Swirls to my right, just the other side of the weed, a pool of sorts where the spring runs in. I flick bread over the edge of the weed, and it barely drifts into the greenline and down it goes so I get on my feet to lug the fish out of the weed, and it's another chevin 3¾ perhaps, feeding ahead of the carp. Well it's winter. I try more coffee, bait a spot with hemp, flick a few crusts about and after 30 minutes the surface starts to pucker again and I stroll around the end of the pool to watch and sip coffee. I wander back to get my rod, net and bread and sit on the platform at the end and wait for another swirl and when it comes I flick a piece of the crust 3 yards past and leave it. Despite bright sun my hands sting in the cold air.

A dark back surfaces suspiciously and appears to envelop the bread at the second attempt. I bang the rod back to keep it out of the weed keel haul a leather into the net, 8lb perhaps. Ok then. Half the day is gone now and I muse of staying put of setting up on the far bank and fishing on the bottom and after Christmas cake, do just that. I spend 90 minutes fishing with maggots and get a perch and this roach, a hybrid maybe, but it's slow and the jetsam of bread dotted in the weed is dimpling away a piece at a time. So I get back on the floating bread. In January in a -1°C.

I miss at least three, get one fish on after it's third run at the bread and the hook comes away, cold fingers and arms not striking properly. Self inflicted. With 30 minutes of light and 3 cups of coffee to go, I get a small leather, 3-4lb maybe, lynched out of the weed and skimmed across the top of it.

I drink in liquid warm as the temperature falls, the net is stiff, the line freezes in the rings and still the fish are rising. I try for one of the bigger swirls and get a kink which turns into a gnarly ball on frosted mono, and I realise I'm doomed with that one and give in with the light fading and the thermometer at -2.5°C. The landing net sections are frozen together and I finish my coffee standing by my car. Raw, bright, rimy fishing. Great stuff. ^[C/2/0]