"You little Tinca ..."

"Regrets, I've had a few" sung Frank Sinatra, and who hasn't? Perhaps my biggest fishing regret is that I've spent very little time fishing for (or catching!) tench over the last few years, and, on cold December evenings like tonight my mind's "wishful thinking" transports me to lazy summer days, lilly pads, and pin prick bubbles fizzing around my quill float. It's been way too long.

My teenage years saw me avidly catching tincas from my local club lake in my hometown of Reading. Lovely olive green or brown fish with little pink eyes that fought doggedly and took my sweetcorn, worms or the then "new fangled" Ritchworth boilies with seeming abandon.

 

This last year although I have caught tench, it's mostly been my angling companions who've slipped their nets under the flanks of summer's most archetypal of fish. These handsome specimens being held by Pete and Greg being typical of the fish I've had to behold, and sometimes capture on film, but that have rarely been captured on my hook over this last twelve months.

 

 

 

As with all fish I'd rather catch a big specimen than a small pup, but rather like pike, tench seem to be at their very prettiest when small. Fish of less than a pound, like the one Greg is holding in the picture below, don't pull your string too hard, but have a charm and beauty that their more impressive larger brothers and sisters can never quite recapture. The smaller they are the softer and silkier they seem to the touch- perfection in miniature, and what's lacked in stature is compensated for in style.

 

 

Perhaps, as we enter a new year, one of my resolutions should be to spend a more of my time in the warmer months intentionally pursuing tench (the tench I did catch this year were never my target fish, and were all accidental captures). No fish is more redolent of all that summer angling signifies, and it's almost a crime that these paddle tailed beauties have slipped under my radar, if not over the rim of my landing net, with any regularity of late. Misty dawns,  lilly pads, centre pin reels and quill floats may have become a tench angler's cliché, but it's a cliché I intend to insert myself into more frequently in 2017.

 

 

In former times the tench was held to be some form of underwater physician, the thought being that its thick coating of slime contained healing properties and that fish of other species would rub their flanks against those of the tench to avail themselves of the efficacy of its healing balm. This led to the tench becoming known colloquially as the "Doctor Fish", and although it's now believed that there is no scientific evidence for this piece of angling lore the nickname has stuck, and is still sometimes used. True or not, I hope to see "the doctor" several times next year to remedy a growing longing for "all things tench".

 

 



 



Another Year in Retrospect

In Simon and Garfunkle's song the "bookends" were two old timers, sitting on a bench and looking back on the old days, for me 2016 was bookended by the only two pike I caught in the calendar year. The first a, sadly, un-photographed and un-weighed river monster of around 16 pounds, the other this small, photgraphed but not worth weighing, scrap of a jack that graced my net on my final trip of the year.

In between these two pike most of the coarse fish species that grace our island's freshwater ponds, lakes, rivers and streams came my way, longstanding water's edge friendships were renewed or continued and new ones forged, and more fond memories were slipped into the "keepnet of my consciousness."

The first fish of any quality to come my way  were perch, and the brace that I caught on the Oxford Canal in the company of Pete, Roger, Greg and Keith were the finest looking fish of my season. Peas in a pod, both tipping the scales at exactly one and a half pounds, and caught on a frosty and finger numbingly cold day, these were fish to savour and prize. Not the biggest perch I've ever landed, but good fish in anyone's book, and each as handsome as any fish that swims.

 

 

 

 Early Spring saw my church's fishing club, embark on our first trip of the year, a "multi-fish challenge" match, where the prize ( a handmade, feather inlaid float from Ian Lewis) was not for the heaviest weight nor the largest fish, but for the angler who caught the most different species ... in the event I tied in first place with four different species, but was adjudged to have finished second on a "tie break", as Graham, who also landed four different species, caught more fish in total and was rightly crowned winner of the prize. Among my catch was the chub I'm netting in the photo below, the only one of its kind that I landed in 2016.

 

 As Spring meandered towards the balmy days of Summer I managed to sneak a few short evening sessions with my son, most of which resulted in him catching more or bigger fish than me, often as a result of bonus fish that took a liking to his Method-fished "sleeper rod" that had a habit of pleasingly disrupting his pole or  float fishing escapades. These after school "Dad and son" trips were the season's most special sessions, and on one we were even joined by my daughter who, nine years after her "retirement" from angling, discovered that catching small perch and rudd can still be fun even when you're old enough to drive a car, vote and have a boyfriend!

 

Summer saw me having plenty of fun, fishing with the "usual gang", but although my floats dipped regularly and I caught consistently, the fish, though welcome, were mostly unremarkable. I caught a few rodbending carp, which is pretty standard for the time of year, but irrespective of my target species, I seemed cursed to permanently catch skimmers (30 on one frustrating day when crucians were the intended target!), and the only individually noteworthy fish of the warmer months was this golden orfe, which, although I didn't bother to weigh it, was by some margin the largest ever of its species I have ever seen as well as caught. By the end of the summer I suspected that even if I fished in the ocean I'd probably end up catching some hapless skimmer that had got hopelessly lost finding its way onto my ragworm on a size 2/0 hook- if I never catch another bream in my life few tears will be shed! However, the lack of individually memorable fish failed to detract from a summer when the pleasures had as much to do with the beauty of the bankside environment and the quality of the company as with any fish that happened to get caught.

The highlight of not only the Summer, but the whole year, was our first ever Christian Anglers weekend retreat. Camping, a pub meal, barbeques, cooked breakfast, Bible study, two trips to charming day ticket waters, plenty of fish, anglers joining us from four different counties and a monster bonfire .... what's not to like?

 

 

Early Autumn saw the odd trip to the canal in pursuit of perch, but the highlight of the "season of mists and mellow fruitfulness" was, without doubt, the Christian Anglers fish-in at Marsh Farm in Surrey. Arranged for us by Angler's Mail journalists Bill and Virginia Rushmer, the day will live long in my memory despite the fact that the venue's famous crucians were in shy mood. We had the use of the Godlaming AS clubhouse, and after Bill had introduced us to the tactics likely to succeed and shared the story of how he, a scientist, became convinced by the complexity of the natural world that there must be a God, we went to our swims to engage in a battle of wits from which, on balance, the crucians emerged victorious. However Bill had a brace of nice crucians, I also netted a good fish,my biggest ever crucian at a pound and a half, and while Jez caught the only other crucian, several nice tench and a smattering of roach and rudd kept the Christian Anglers, who had travelled from Yorkshire, Oxfordshire, Bristol, Sussex and Leicester, busy, although there were two dry nets.

 

 One of the realities of being a Vicar is that December is a month when very little fishing is likely to be done (I took my first Carol Service on December 2nd!), and this year it seems highly unlikely that I will wet a line all month, which means that November's trip to the Fens, organised for Christian Anglers by top Fenland angler John MacAngus was to be my last of the year.

I fished slightly fewer times this year than I did in its calendar predecessor, with the regularity of my trips tailing off in the Autumn and Winter, largely due to the fact that not only were my own work and domestic arrangements squeezing out time for fishing more than they had twelve months previously, but also because my regular fishing companions Pete and Greg were facing similar pressures that reduced their ability to "down tools" and "hotfoot it" to the lake, river or canal.  However, despite, having fished less often than I would have wished, the year will be stored in my memory as a good one. My son and I fished together more than in the previous year, which was a treat in and of itself, seeing my friend Paul returning to angling after a 20 year break (and netting  a pike for him 50 years after he last landed one!)  was a real pleasure, fishing three times with my brother Andy and twice with his son was a real bonus, and any time on the bank with Pete, Greg and Roger is always time well spent. Add to that the St Luke's Church club trips and the Christian Anglers fish-ins and Retreat and you have a year that succeeded admirably in putting the "pleasure" into pleasure angling.
Out with the old, in with the new ..... here's to more of the same in 2017.