Traditionalist tendancies

 

 

It will come as a shock to the congregation of my church, where despite the theology being orthodox the culture is guitars, drumkits, bands, screens and informality to discover that there lurks within me a traditionalist gene.

Most of my fishing is done using modern tackle and methods, but every now and then I can't resist the temptation to get in touch with my "inner Chris Yates" and fish in time honoured styles with either genuinely old, or modern "faux vintage" equipment. The photo above shows some of my traditional float collection (some of which were made by me, others by float-makers who peddle their wares on the internet), lovely tactile floats made of goose quill, porcupine quill, peacock quill, sarkandas reed, cork and balsa and finished off with a few coats of yacht varnish. More resistant than a pole float by a mile, but far more pleasing to the soul!

The centrepin reel in the photo is an aluminium "night shift special", knocked up by some factory worker when his boss wasn't looking or some old chap in his shed, and has caught me fish up to around 3 pounds in weight. I've also got an old Inteprid fixed spool reel, which has manfully exerted its ancient slipping clutch to play double figure carp.

 

 

My Mitchell 300 ( purchased with my first wage packet 28 years ago) is still pressed into occasional service when fishing floaters for carp.

I own one cane rod (not the rod in these photo's- it's a carbon rod designed to "look" traditional!), and my son's first proper rod was a 9 foot cane "boy's rod" which I found on e-bay and on which he caught scores of fish up to around a pound in weight, and one of my best ever birthday presents was the ancient wicker seat basket that my wife found for me (again on the ubiquitous hi-tech car boot sale that is e-bay), and which I "brought back to life" with a couple of coats of linseed oil.

I'm not a "dyed in the wool" trad angler, or a manic "split cane fundamentalist", but if you've never tried fishing with a centrepin reel and some beautiful craftsman made quill floats, then I do feel confident in asserting that you've missed out. To feel a carp (even a small one) pull line from a centepin where the only clutch is the pressure applied by your palm is one of angling's great pleasures - why not get out there and give it a go!

 

 

 

 

 

The perils of pioneering

 

 

Here's a stat that makes sorry reading: the fish I'm holding in the photo is one of only two pike I've caught since moving to the East Midlands nearly five years ago. Now- to be fair- I've only been piking half a dozen times in that time period, and therein lies the problem.
How do you go exploring and learning new waters in a new area, miles from where you've ever lived before when your fishing (for good family and work reasons) is limited to a few hours once a fortnight?
The only way to get to know a new water is by fishing it, and that takes time. I've quickly managed to find myself a few places to catch decent rod bending sized carp (although I must confess to being bored of carp at the moment- I spent the best part of a decade until our move to the Midlands fishing for nothing but carp) , and have loved this spring and summer's crucian fishing on the estate lake, but the best piking around my way is to be found on the miles and miles of canal, and you don't get to know miles and miles of canal overnight.
Perhaps it's just a composite picture that'll take years to build up, certainly internet searches haven't helped much in trying to discover "hotspots", but I'll be out next month having a couple of attempts, "fishing blind" and hoping to "get lucky".
Oh, for the long gone days of endless school holidays, and seemingly endless time to fish- the irony is that I'm a much better angler now than I was at 15, but if I was 15 I'd have put the hours in and caught dozens of pike by now!
"The grass in the other field ....."

Fun-free fishing

 

 

 

I knew there was a reason why I had to sit through all those hours of lectures on pastoral counselling at theological college: it was to ready me for this moment, the moment when I (as gently as possible) dispell an illusion that a number of more recent converts to the "gentle art" might have been labouring under.
Here's the thing: forget what the great angling writers tell you in their gushing essays of euphoric prose, forget the fridge magnet stuff that proclaims that "a bad day's fishing is better than a good day at work", sometimes, dear reader, fishing just isn't much fun. Sometimes fishing's capacity to delight is matched only by its ability to disappoint.
Take this morning, for instance.

Up with the lark, off to the canal, and before I'd even reached the towpath things had started to unravel. I inexplicably drove past the turning to the canal. I've fished it half a dozen times previously, but found Nicky Campbell making George Osborne squirm on the radio so diverting that I missed the road, requiring a detour I could ill afford on what was always going to be a short session.
Eventually I arrived, and set about my "plan A", so named because I had no "plan B". Plan A involved starting off by fishing one bridge which has always been beneavolant to me in the past, then walking about a mile to the next bridge, catching several perch at each bridge, and then wandering back to the car park casting wherever I fancied with the unhurried ease of a man who's already caught his fair share of perch.
I started under the first bridge, using a lovely new "bottletop" spinner made for me by an American friend, Don, who runs a custom rod building company called "Rattlesnake Rods" in the US. The lure looked great in the water, spun nicely, gave off a nice flash- everything was right about it, only today the perch didn't want it. I persevered with it because it looked so right, but after fishing both bridges I'd had not a single take or follow.

Disconsolately I tried the less feature-filled stretches as I worked back towards the first bridge, which was to be my last hope. I changed lure (probably half an hour later than I should have done), and put on one of my "banker" Rublex Ondex lures, which I promptly snagged in some tree roots. I set up again, by now thoroughly fed up, walked round a bend and saw a magnificent heron standing on the far bank. I dropped to my knees, got my camera out, framed the shot, prepared to take the picture that would have made the morning's misery worth it, and just as I prepared to "shoot" the heron took off!
I trudged back to the first bridge, and half-heartedly cast another ondex under the bridge, and there it was - the tug of a small perch, I swung the fish in, removed the hooks, released the fish, and realised that catching it had made me not happier, but even more miserable! It was as if catching the fish had made things worse because I now felt slightly less justified in feeling so fed up!

I didn't bother fishing after that- sometimes you just know that it's not your day, and so I returned home to fill the rest of my day off with jobs and chores.
But here's the strangest bit: despite the fact that I hadn''t really enjoyed today at all, I can't wait till my next trip .... funny old game, isn't it?