How to (fish with an angle)

It is worth taking the point of view that you can learn something new from every fisherman you meet. We all of us have our own ways and methods and they're all there for a reason, often after the reason has long departed.

My methods are threaded through this website. If you let me know and I'll explain as best as I can. Having said that, there are few alternative ways to say "first, find the feeding fish, then present them a bait without spooking them, from as near to them as you can get".

For those who are puzzled by modern fishing terminology I've thrown in a glossary.

"If people don't occasionally walk away from you shaking their heads, you're doing something wrong." John Gierach

Fishing Books

Contrary to popular belief it is possible to learn stuff from books. Those who say 'you can't learn from books' should be consigned to the special Hell and its Demons reserved for them, along with those who say "he didn't mean any harm" and "boys will be boys" after some careless and tragic event. Anyone who thinks you can "make more than 100% effort" can fry alongside the former. I'd also personally consign anyone who says they don't need a degree as they've been to the "University of Life". Yeah. I've been there as well, plus I have a Physics & Electronics degree*. Also down there, on a rolling boil, are those who really actually believe "the exception proves the rule", missing the point that in this case "proves" means "tests" otherwise it's cobblers.

Any circle of hell is also too good for anyone who spends 10 minutes (or longer) in a coffee shop queue and when they get to the till start on the "oh er..hm. I wonder what I want" routine. It is indeed fortunate for those with this special sort of selfishness, that when I'm behind them in the same queue, I don't have my cricket bat to hand.

I'm recently reminded to make provision in the fifth circle for those 'well-meaning' folk who insist on asking "How are you - in Yourself?". If I wanted to discuss that you would'nt need to ask. Bu88er off.

However, if you are one of the readers, you can do very much worse than start off by reading these:

(*I'd just like to point out I have no problem with anyone based on their academic qualifications, education or ability. None at all. Whatsoever. Or age, race and gender for that matter.)

'Still Water Angling' by Richard Walker. Publisher: David & Charles. ISBN 0-7153-7074

'When Still Water Angling was published in 1953 it was hailed as revolutionary and has been regarded as the standard work on this aspect of angling ever since.'  it say on my copy's dust jacket. Mine's a 1978 re-print. Even with so many "puddles" with "pet" carp in them, there is much in this book that is relevant still, and will help you to understand and to catch fish.

It certainly forms the basis of my "keep still, quiet, and dress down" method. I also keep my end tackle as simple as I can.

'Walker's Pitch' by Richard Walker. Stacks of blunt common sense by the man himself.

'Drop me a Line' by Richard Walker and Maurice Ingham.

This is one of the best fishing books I have ever read. There is a wealth of good fishing tips in here and this along with the Carp Catchers Club, will show you that there is little in today's angling scene that wasn't considered and thought through in the '50's. A great portrait of the two authors as well and the social mores of the times. Post war austerity was still a factor in everyone's lives and colours the already fascinating dialogue.

'The Carp Catcher's Club' by Maurice Ingham.

A classic, which will never be repeated, now we depend on email. So many of today's carp tactics were thought up within these pages, culminating with the record carp capture at Redmire. If you aspire to carp fishing you simply have to read this.

Confessions of a CarpFisher By "BB".

This book probably did more for the birth of carp fishing than all the others put together. It's variously interesting, realistic, poetic, matter-of-fact and romantic.

Wood Pool by "BB".

An odd little book, being an account of the stocking of a small lake and its emergence into a small carp and tench fishery, with its problems and delights almost equally well described. Worth reading if your dream is to have your own water. Worth reading on a cold winter evening as well.

Be Quiet and Go A-Angling. Michael Traherne ("BB").

This little book has a spread of fishing experiences and in places is mystical and a bit strange, but I think this volume tells you more about "BB" than many of his books. One to sink into.

'The New Compleat Angler' by Stephen Downes and Martin Knowlden. ISBN 0-7481-0088-1

This is really worth reading through as this has the best description of how fish see the world around them (and more importantly above them) I have ever read. An understanding of this is essential for any fisherman. Leading on from that, I believe, that while drab clothing is sensible (full camouflage gear NOT essential in my opinion), stealth, and particularly lack of vibration is a huge factor in keeping fish close to you and unwary. And an unspooked fish is a lot easier to catch...

This is why I am always happier if there is some cover between me and the fish (even screen of reeds is a help), and colour in the water, while it may indicate feeding fish (which is usually good), means they can't see you either. I would add that the deeper the water is by the edge, the happier I am also.

'The Path by the Water' by A.R.B Haldane.

I heartily recommend this. It's what fishing is all about. If my prose was half as good as Mr. Haldane's I would be pretty pleased as well.

'By Many Waters' by A.R.B Haldane.

I heartily recommend this as well. Bygone times and attitudes, but the waters are gently evoked. It's enough to make you take up fly fishing...

'Fishing Difficult Waters: Winning Tactics' by Ken Whitehead. ISBN 0-7137-2335-1

All of Ken Whitehead's book are worth reading. He solves problems his own way, and all the better for. A really good angler.

'Ken Whitehead's Pike Fishing' ISBN 0-7137-2335-1

As already mentioned, all of Mr. Whitehead's books are worth reading. It is nice to read books that don't instantly recommend the author's range of tackle as well...much of the reviews and advice on the 'net seem to end with a recommendation for the author's product. Hard to take that advice at face value really.

'Falkus and Buller's Freshwater Fishing'. ISBN 0-09-174067-3

Although orginally published in 1975, this has much useful advice and information on all aspects of Freshwater Fishing - tackle may have changed but the fish are much the same...you'll find a lot of things in here that are being used to day and some that are "in fashion" as it were.

A Ladybird Book about Coarse Angling Yep really. This is a classic. I include it here because of the interest it evoked in me as a nine year old (1970), with terrific colour pictures of tackle and fish. Special mention must be made of the picture of a boy fishing a mill stream with a bamboo cane for a rod. And where else can you see folk fishing with a tie on? Wonderful. Oh yes, and it did also have some good basic information for those starting off along the path by the water, with knots and how to set up tackle and advice on your actual fishing.

'Carp and the Carp Angler' by George Sharman.

This is a great book for any thinking angler. This excellent and thoughtful book has never really had the plaudits it's deserved due to it unluckily being in the shadow of a duller but more contreversial book released in the early seventies. Yes, I mean Carp Fever.

'The Carp Strikes Back' by Rod Hutchinson and friends.

A terrific tale of carp obsession that dives into the despair and climbs to the elation and along the way teaches you a lot about carp and how to catch them. A great book for any carp angler, or for any angler of any sort really.

Angling Glossary

Words have great power. What you call something can change the perception of it in a quite startling way. For example "wind farm"…you're no doubt thinking of lush grass waving gently in the wind while silent and elegant turbines rotate in the rural background while sheep graze. "Wind power station". Now what are you thinking?

See? Well, fishing has similar examples and frankly some are worse. Some are confusing. Some words have changed their meaning altogether. Some mean different things depending on who you are. I offer up my own explanation for the old and the new and also those words for which the meaning changes according to the user.

Anglers and fishermen often ascribe different meanings to the same word or phrase. Confusing? Not any more.

A  B  C  D  E  F  G  H  I  J  K  L  M  N  O  P  Q  R  S  T  U  V  W  X  Y  Z

"A"

• Angler: someone who fishes with an angle, as opposed to a fisherman, which is someone who just catches fish.
• Anti-eject: euphemism for "self-hooking".
• Anti-eject rig: a cunning device which allows fishermen not to have to bother about working out when to strike, or indeed, even needing to be there at the time.
• Artificial Sweetcorn: a cunning method of getting money off one who hasn't considered that a whole tin of real sweetcorn can cost less than one grain of the artificial sort.
• Artificial Bread flake: a cunning method of getting money off one who hasn't considered that a whole loaf of actual bread costs less than a piece of artificial bread. And the loaf makes a handy snack.
• Artificial Maggots: a cunning method of getting money off one who hasn't considered that half a pint of real maggots can cost less than one artificial maggot.

"B"

• Baggin': like match fishing but with none of the grace or charm.
• Bait boat: forerunner of the spod and these days a useful target for sustained catapult fire.
• Bite Alarm: Noisy ill-named device, which might be renamed "self-hooked fish finning it to the horizon" alarm. When used with the anti-eject rig, enables fishing to be carried out from your mate's swim on the other side of the lake. It's a wonder they haven't fitted GSM modems to them so you can get a text on hook-up and then you can pop home between fish, avoiding all that tedious sitting on the bank.
  (If you think that's extreme a carp can reach 30mph. That's 44 feet per second. If your bait is less than 44 feet from a snag and you're more than 1 second from your rod, you don't deserve the fish and all the 'safe rigs' in the world won't stop the fish getting snagged.)
• Bivvie Peg: A handy device for ensuring that even if you are fishing 70 yards distant, dressed completely in 'real tree', you can make enough noise and vibration to scare those far away fish as well. And as everyone knows, the further you cast the bigger the fish are.
• Bivvie: a tent-like device for containing all the comforts of home for those who fish to get away from it all.
• Bleeper (serious fishing): Electronic bite indicator, used at maximum volume, allowing the user to hear it from variously, 50 yards up the bank where they were having a chat, the next county, the car park or the pub. Also used for waking them and everyone else on the lake from sleep and scaring birds. See Bleeper (angling).
• Bleeper (angling): One who uses an electronic bite alarm. See Bleeper (serious fishing).
• Boilie: a hard round lump of high protein food that can be readily bought in copious quantities and flavours for anti-eject fishing. The consistent way carp are continually and repeatedly caught on baits of the same size and shape, does tend to undermine the assertion that they are really cunning. "As cunning as a fox". Yep, seems OK. "As cunning as a carp". Hm. Needs work.
• Bolt Rig: Anti eject rig used with a heavy weight so the fish hooks itself with no further interference required by the fisherman. In other words a self hooking rig, removing most, if not all of the skill. Of course no-one does that, because there would be no point to it.

"C"

• Cautious fish: fish living in a pressured water. Avoids mentioning why they are so "cautious". "Perpetually nervous about eating at all" would be more accurate.
• Cr*p: Anagram of Carp.
• Crucian Carp: Smaller cousin of the Common Carp, this has the good luck to be too small for "serious" carp fishermen and the bad luck to be descended from Goldfish. The casual disregard for fish movement means that many of the pure Crucian carp in the county are now hyridised with goldfish and their various relatives. Another species on a knife-edge. Well done everyone. If you know where there are any Crucians, keep it to yourself.

"D"

• Double (serious fishing): the only carp that count.
• Double (angling): a more generous than usual measure of Glenmorangie or Talisker. I recommend the "Glenmorangie Quinta Ruban". Laphroiag is good, as long as you like alcohol strained through burnt seaweed ash (I do).

"E"

• Eel: an almost eradicated species with one of the most fascinating live-cycle of any fish, which has the bad luck to not look as cute as Pandas, baa-lambs, fluffy-bunnies or otters, although it may outlast the panda, a devolved carnivore that's backed itself so far up the vegetarian alley it can barely find the energy to mate. Way to evolve. Odd though, as the radical vegetarians I've met are rabid sociopaths. Or pathological idealists. So hard to tell them apart isn't it?

"F"

• F1 Hybrid: colloquially a cross between a common carp and a Crucian carp retaining the streamlining, stamina and raw power of the Crucian and the impish character and gilt beauty of the common carp. Luckily it can't breed.
• Fisherman: someone who catches fish. Inshore netting, drift netting, trawling, long lining or harpooning. All fishing.

  "G"

• Gudgeon: Gobio gobio. A small bottom dwelling river fish, which is easy to catch, beloved of all young anglers because of this and ounce for ounce has to be one of the hardest fighters in the water. A fish which embodies the spirit of angling. Isaak says. See Gonk.
• Gonk: Slang name for a gudgeon. See Gudgeon.

"H"

• Hook (angling): what you put the bait on.
• Hook (serious fishing): what you tie the 'hair' on.
• Hook (tackle industry): device used to persuade serious anglers to part with their cash, in exchange for this year's fashion. Like the not really necessary move from 3/8bsf to 10mm threads, meaning everything has to be changed. Then 2 rods to 3 rods, everyone buys another rod and reel, then going from camo rod pods to stainless steel. Ooh ooh, must have a spod rod. Ooh and a special marker rod. Change tackle again...good game, good game...ker-ching.

"K"

• King Carp: as in, "Have you had any tench?" "No, just another 'king carp."

"L"

• Lefty: nickname for a careless spodder. See Spodding (serious fishing).
• Long-lining: is a commercial fishing technique. It uses a long line, called the main line, with baited hooks attached by means of branch lines called "snoods". A snood is a short length of line which is attached to the main line using a clip or swivel, with the hook at the other end.

"M"

• Match fishing: like angling but with only half of the grace and charm.
• Margin fishing (serious fishing): Fishing one of you pod's rods' bolt rigs in the margin of the water, 50 yards down the same bank as you are. As opposed to the margin 80 yards across the lake.
• Margin fishing (angling): fishing under one's rod tip relying heavily on stealth and quiet to avoid scaring fish which may be only a few feet from you.
• Method feeder: a way of combining a dustbin full of fish-food with an ant-eject rig and bolt rig into one big splash. Baa-doooosh! Yeah. Big. Grrrr...and only 50p a cast.
• Midnight Mass: a quiet libation, usually a double (angling) to celebrate another fabulous dusk by the water.
• Moorhen: an aquatic bird that's so stupid even the swans and carp have noticed.
• Mug Fish: A carp that's so stupid, that even fishermen have noticed.

"P"

• Pellet: Like a boilie but a different shape. Clever. Might fool the really cunning carp. Luckily a lot of reared stock fish were fed on pellets so they tend to work really well.
• Perch: the small perch is the young angler's first catch, mostly. Despite the elegant theory expounded in "On the Origin of Species" (C. Darwin) and years of natural selection 'by worm and boy', the Perch has not yet evolved sufficiently to recognise that hooks=bad. Just as well. See Stripey, Sergeant.
• Plastic Hemp: Sorry, words fail me on this one.
• Pleasure fisherman: a term of veiled abuse used to describe anyone who isn't "serious" enough about their carping to use 3 matched state-of-the-tart rods and rod pod, a bivvie and various self hooking rigs and remote alarms. On the upside, it suggests the serious fishermen are not having much fun, which is something pleasure anglers can live with.
• Pressured water: a water where all the fish have been caught so many times the only way to catch them easily is with anti-eject rigs. On top of that the "natural" food for the fish is now almost all boilies. So: twitchy fish that are scared of boilies, which are now their staple food. Nice. Well done everyone.

  "R"

• Real tree: An amazingly effective camouflage pattern, which means that when you are fishing at a distance of 70+ yards, you can't find anything you just put down.
• Rod hours: how long it took me to read "The Carp Strikes Back".
• Ron Thompson: A totally ficticious angler used as a brand name for some budget tackle. An excellent example of a hook (tackle industry). Almost as good as "stones".

"S"

• Safe Rig: a bolt rig designed so that if the line breaks, the weight comes off so the fish isn't towing around the big weight. Well that's all OK then, perfectly sporting.
• Sergeant: affectionate name for the Perch. See Stripey.
• Serious fishing: fishing with all the latest gear in decent water with proper laid out swims with none of that undergrowth stuff and annoying weeds, with three matched rods and reels and all the latest gear as well as those new rigs for the most cunning carp. Or possibly the latest 38 meter carbon composite baggin' solution (a bargain at only £1,999) with special 'grunter' elastic for match fishing.
• Silver Fish: term used for all those confusingly similar and unworthy non-carp fish that clog up your hook when you're trying to 'bag up'.
• Spodding (serious fishing): A way of casting huge amounts of bait in a small plastic medium range ballistic missile ("spod") accurately (more or less) to distant parts of a large water. Used in conjunction with special 'spod-rods' (more tackle, kerr-ching) and with fine diameter braid mainlines they can also be used to remove troublesome fingers. Handy.
• Spodding (angling): as in "Spodding hell, here come the serious carp anglers, let's go somewhere quiet."
• Stripey: affectionate name for the Perch. See sergeant.
• 'Stones': a special fish-tricking ledger weight made to look like a stone. In fact one range are, er, stones with a hole drilled in them and a swivel cemented in. I'm pretty sure I can buy a 50lb bag of pebbles for the cost of half a dozen of these and a tube of araldite and swivels plus a small masonry drill for about the same. £1.25 for a pebble. Almost genius. Describing then as environmentally friendly is good as well.
• Swan: a large white, outwardly graceful aquatic bird the basis of countless poems and pieces of elegant music inspired by its apparent beauty. Cobblers though. A more ill tempered, mean, aggressive, stupid and vicious bird has seldom been seen on the water. Talk about judging a book by its cover. Even the childless and jealous Aiefe turned Lêrs' children by Aebh into beautiful swans because she was jealous. Then again, perhaps she was smarter than the legends say.
• Swan shot(1): large split shot, so called, as this was the pellet size originally used by wild-fowlers for shooting large aquatic birds.
• Swan shot(2): a good result, some might say. I wouldn't, obviously.
• Swim (serious fishing): All the water between yer margin rod's line and the two other rods' lines that have baits in the water at various and extreme distances from you, whether you have paid for all the pitches you are taking up or not.
• Swim (angling): the water from you to the midpoint between you and the next person fishing.

  "T"

• Traditional Rig: when the bait is actually on the hook and you pay attention yourself.
• Traditionalist: a convenient label of veiled abuse used by long-liners to denigrate anyone who thinks long-lining is not angling. This avoids considering the possibility that it might not be and further convinces yourself that the rejection of the method is based on it being 'modern', as opposed to it being, for example, 'soul-less trapping'. There are very few actual traditionalists and why not? There are quite a lot of anglers as well.

"V"

• Volume control: redundant knob, usually at the rear of a bite alarm.

"W"

• Watercraft: the almost obsolete art of sizing up a water and the prevailing conditions, factoring in the previous weeks weather, the highest DO, your own experience and working out the best place and method to fish today. Of no use at all in places where the sound of food hitting the water brings the fish scampering over for a bit of a free feed. Or the sound of specially designed splashy floats for that matter.
• Whacker: A slang word derived from the verb whack, colloquially "to masturbate".