JAA's Fishing Diary (2010)

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 and the temperature sinks 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 present 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, 1.5lbs 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.