Of piscatorial parsons

The title of the blog kind of "gives the game away"- I'm a Vicar, and I fish, but I'm far from the only one. In fact, if you stretch the definitions a bit it's a tradition that goes way back to 30AD when the first disciples were called by the shores of Lake Galilee, a point Isaak Walton ( himself not a clergyman, but close friends with many, including the poet and Anglican Dean John Donne) was always keen to make. Famous fishing clergymen have included Charles Kingsley, author not only of "The Water Babies" but also of a fly fishing work entitled "Chalk Stream Studies" and Francis Kilvert whose country diaries remain popular to this day. Probably the greatest of all angling Vicars was the Rev EC Alston who died in 1977 aged 82, who for a while held both the rudd and tench records simultaneously, the rudd (which weighed 4 lb 8 oz) record lasting for over half a century before it was finally eclipsed. Perhaps the best known angling minister around at the moment is Stewart Bloor, pastor of a Baptist church in the Midlands whose weekly fishing blogs, Facebook and Twitter feeds are followed by an army of loyal fans.
Why so many piscatorial parsons is a mystery, perhaps it's because we only work one day a week and so have plenty of time to pursue our quarry,but I'll leave the last word (as I so often do) to that great Christian, churchman and friend of the clergy, Walton who wrote of fishing this:
"We may say of angling, as of strawberries: doubtless God could have made a better strawberry, but doubtless He never did, and so -if I may be judge- God never did make a more calm, quiet, innocent recreation than angling."

Caught on the horns of a dilemna

I've just returned from the estate lake where I was watching Roger, a friend from church fishing for the ubiquitous crucians that are the lake's main attractions. The fishing was slower than it can be, but Roger managed to tangle with three of the lake's crucians as well as an assortment of roach and pretty little perch, but the fact has to be faced that my son, myself, Roger and two other angling friends from church, Dave and Anthony have all fished the lake (in my case with reasonable regularity), have all caught crucians, but have none of us come anywhere near the 2 pound target that I set at the beginning of the season. I've only managed a couple of crucians over the pound mark, with my son managing one of around the same weight. The average stamp is around a quarter of a pound, with a fair few in the half pound range, but (although I have seen a genuine photo of a 2 pounder caught from the lake) it's becoming clear that it'll be a matter of both luck and wading through vast numbers of smaller fish before I'm likely to tangle with the "dream fish."
 So, what to do?
 Do I persist with the quest till October turns my seasonally affected attention to pike fishing, or do I take a "time out" and spend the odd evenings or mornings that make up my current fishing opportunities stalking carp with floaters at another local lake?
 As yet, I'm undecided, but I'm leaning towards continuing the pursuit of the crucians; after all, they may be small, but the lake is tranquil, the fish breathtakingly beautiful, and there's far more to fishing than the mere pounds and ounces to which we often reduce our noble quarry.
 So, will my next trip be with dog biscuits and controllers or pole, maggots and pellets? Watch this space and I'll keep you posted.

Roger with a typical crucian.

Meanwhile, back at the Estate Lake

The respite that the month of August brings to the usually hectic demands of a busy church, meant that I could sneak a couple of hours this morning and renew my acquaintance with the Estate Lake and its finned inhabitants. This time I went not to fish, but to watch my son fish, chat to him, give him the benefit of my advice (mostly ignored!) and to enjoy his company. Perched on his seatbox and using a short elasticated whip he fished the edge of a reedbed, sparingly feeding maggots and concentrating hard. The fishing was not quite as prolific as it can be, but he ended up after a couple of hours with a nice mixed net of 13 fish, with most of the fish being either perch or crucians. There was one unexpected bit of excitement when a large carp took the bait and tore off accross the lake, pulling elastic out of the pole to alarming proportions before the inevitable happened and the line broke at the hook-link. The best fish that did find its way into the landing net was this hybrid of about a pound, which although mostly crucian clearly had far more than a hint of "ornamental fish" about it, with its large fins and fan-tail. All in all, an enjoyable session, and a pleasant change to be fishing without being rained on.

"Red letter days..."

I sometimes wonder if I go fishing for fish or for memories. Like many anglers I generally take a camera with me, and like every angler my head is filled with recollections of trips from days gone by, some as clear in the mind now as 30 years ago when they were happening, others half-remembered and perhaps distorted by time, but all part of a stream of consciousness that trickles and runs through the mind like a mountain stream.
The other day in an idle moment I was trying to decide which were my top three angling memories, and was surprised by two things. Firstly, despite the fact that I look back on my teens as the halcyon days of my angling life (partly because so much of them was spent fishing) none of my top three memories were from that era- perhaps you have to be older to really appreciate things, after all they do say that "youth is wasted on the young". I've got some great memories from my teens: my first ever fish (a perch) caught at the age of 13, my first ever pike caught on a cheap plug in January 1982, the October half term when my two brothers and I fished every day and I caught my first ever 1 pound roach and one of my brothers caught a 3 pound carp which to us, in those days was a monster. I remember with affection my early forays into the worlds of carp and night fishing, and Southlake,the club lake I fished (five minutes walk from our house- how fortunate was that!) and Dinton Pastures (our other main venue) remain indelibly etched on my mind. But for all of that my top three memories are all from within the last decade, and- strangely- only one of them involves a personal best fish, and that a very modest one. So here they are, my top three "red letter days":

Number 3: August 2006
Not a spectacular day's fishing, but an immensely satisfying one. For a ten year period most of my fishing was for carp,some "overnighters" but mostly day sessions, sneaked into otherwise busy weeks. I fished with a good circle of friends from church, and there was something beguilingly benign about this particular day. The weather was hot, the fish were co-operative, the company congenial, and without fishing too hard my companion , Mark, and I caught 11 carp in about 5 hours, none giants but all respectable fish. We chatted about life, fishing,work, church, God, family and probably a dozen other subjects too. A day which for no particular reason other than its pleasantness sneaks in at number 3.

Number 2: November 2009
This does include two personal bests, my own personal best zander, and my brother's personal best pike. My two brothers, Andy and Tim started fishing at the same time as me, and throughout our teens we were inseperable angling partners. Adult life (and the fact that we're dispersed accross the British Isles) means that opportunities for all three of us to fish together are strictly limited, and therefore intrinsically special. This was a trip to the Fens, where on a small fenland river my brother Andy had 3 pike up to 19 pound 14 ounces and one zander, my brother Tim had two pike to 15 pound and I had two pike (largest 11 pound) and this zander of just under 6 pounds. The weather was unseasonally sunny for November, the "old firm" was reunited and the toothy critters were obliging- what more could we have asked for?

Number 1
A bit of a "cheat" this one, but anytime, spent fishing with my son. A fisherman since he was 4, any occasion on the bankside with him qualifies as a "red letter day". Hopefully the sessions we have now will, in adult life form a part of his stream of angling consciousness, they're certainly a part of the ongoing building up of mine.

"Laughing in the face of fair weather anglers..."

There are times when pleasure fishing almost crosses over into a form of attritional angling. I've just returned from a short session at the Estate Lake (it's more a pond than a lake, but it is on an old estate and is venerable in terms of age, so is worthy of the title) on a day when the TV weather forecasters cheerfully informed us that we were due for a month's worth of rain in a single day. This wasn't just the constant drizzle that's marked this summer so far, but the kind of downpour that sent Noah scurrying to the ark in the day's of mankind's infancy. As ever, the target fish were crucians and so with the rain hammering down I set up a pole rig, dropped it into the margins and tried to convince myself that this was going to be fun. Sport was initially slow, but after about an hour the fish started to respond to my steady trickle of loose-fed maggots and I started getting bites. I sat grimly underneath the umbrella for about two and a half hours and ended up with this netful of crucians, two or three small roach (which were returned immediately) and a solitary perch.
Each fish felt like a minor triumph in the face of adversity, and while I'm beginning to doubt if the lake will provide me with my hoped for two pounder (it looks like I'm going to have to catch a lot of smaller crucians before I get lucky), once again the lake fished well.
On the way home, sat in the car and soaking wet, I saw a couple out jogging in the rain ..... now that really is silly!

"Born-again" pole fishing

You get to see quite a few new converts in my line of work, and their "bright eyed and bushy tailed zeal" is always a tonic.
As in church, so also in fishing:
 I'm currently undergoing a "newly converted" phase, as after years of antipathy towards ridiculously long internally elasticated and reel-less lengths of carbon, I'm now a fully paid up member of the pole fishing fraternity; in fact, my current hunt for a 2 pound crucian is being almost exclusively conducted using a margin pole.
I guess my previous enmity towards pole fishing dates from the formative years of my angling youth. Back in the day, when I started fishing as a 13 year old in 1982 you had to choose. You were either a specimen hunter, a pleasure fisherman or a match angler. I aspired to be a specimen hunter, and in those days only matchmen used poles and I clung tightly to this creed for years after the distinctions between the different tribes of angler got blurred. These days it's not unusual to see a specimen angler like Martin Bowler sitting on a continental style seat box (I've got one of those now, too) floatfishing for large roach or rudd, nor to see match anglers chucking method feeders and using hair-rigged mini boilies.
I taught my two kids to fish using poles ( my daughter started fishing aged 6, my son when aged 4), catching tiddlers on little whips with flick-tips, but it's only this season that I've discovered myself what a great method the pole is. Anyway, time for me to go and sort out my winder box and get some rigs ready- I've got the day off work on Friday, and I'll be back to crucian hunting ..... on the pole, of course.