It remains one of angling's most endearing qualities that even when the fishing is poor and the challenges posed frustrating, that there is still much pleasure to be had and memories to be made. The first weekend in September saw me join my brothers Andy and Tim for our annual fraternal fishing weekend. We had chosen a small lake in Gloucestershire which was advertised as being home to about 70 carp, most of them doubles, a few twenties. We weren't expecting it to be an out and out "runs water", but it seemed to present itself (with its log cabin, exclusive one party booking etc) as typical "holiday angling"- difficult enough to be worth the effort, but easy enough to provide a few reasonably sized carp to experienced and competent anglers.
We arrived on the Friday, with Andy and Tim ensconced in swims of their choosing by late morning, and me arriving slightly later, in the early afternoon. There were a couple of islands, a pretty uniform clay bottom and depth (Tim did a bit of exploring with a marker rod and bomb), and a number of margin features (bushes, overhanging trees etc), and commonsense suggested that feeding a few spots, casting to features and fishing methodically and neatly should produce a few bites. It did- but not the sort we wanted.
Single bleeps and little pulls on the line that didn't even register audibly on the alarms were almost constant, and after half an hour a boilie had been whittled away to almost nothing. A quick trip to the onsite tackle shop and a conversation with the guy working there (whose slightly vague, distracted and distant demeanour suggested his regular daily intake of "Bob Marley cigarettes" might be higher than even the average consumer of weed might view as sensible) saw us leave the shop with a number of plastic baits and the assurance that "there aren't crays in there, pal, it's small fish doing it." A piece of bacon in a landing net placed in the margins soon confirmed our suspicion that his explanation was spurious producing in a few minutes a more than decent haul of American invaders, as did the few crays that went to the length of resolutely hanging on to the hooks and being swung in to the bank throughout the course of the weekend. "This place is worse than the East End in the 60's" I quipped, leaving Tim to finish the sentence "... yeah, it's ruled by the crays (Krays)."
We persevered doggedly throughout the afternoon, with no runs to reward our efforts, fishing to spots, feeding sensibly, experimenting with plastic baits, returning to boilies, trying popped up baits, but all to no avail. The highlights of the afternoon were watching an egret alight on a branch of a fallen willow just to the right of where I was fishing, and being treated to a couple of fly-pasts by a kingfisher, a blur of vivid electric blue, and a thing of true beauty.
An early evening barbecue provided respite from the fishing, with brotherly reminiscing and story telling covering half a century of shared experiences interspersed with tactical musing on the unexpected problems the lake was providing us with. Plastic baits were remaining completely untouched, boilies and wafters destroyed in less than no time by the voracious appetites of the marauding American Signal Crayfish, who were doubtless also hoovering up our feed with indecent haste. We hadn't reached the first night yet, but by early evening had all come to the conclusion that, in fishing terms, we were in for a grueller and our definitions of "success" would have to undergo rapid redefinition.
As night fell we recast, and faced our second plague of Biblical proportions. The three of us have all been fishing for enough years to be reasonably nonplussed by the ubiquitous presence of rats, but this bunch of resident rodents were something else. Roaming in groups like ill-intentioned louts on a rough estate, they knew no fear, and as the darkness intensified so did their nerve and inquisitiveness. I sunk into my sleeping bag, pulling it right over my head, closed my eyes and waited for the morning. The night, predictably, proved run-less.
The following morning, I decided that wandering around the lake and dropping into swims with a float rig and sweetcorn might prove an alternative to sitting behind bite alarms fishing half-chewed boilies, so I grabbed my 2lb TC barbel rod, a reel loaded with 8lb line and set up a simple float rig with a 2BB Norfolk Reed waggler. Within seconds the float had dipped under the surface, but the culprit was only a small (but beautiful) mirror carp. Loosefeeding sweetcorn, a few pellets and some mixed particles, saw almost every drop in resulting in a small carp ranging in size between about a quarter of a pound and just under a pound. Andy was soon joining the fun, our hope being that a larger carp might be attracted by the loose feed and the activity of scores of small carp feeding and bully its way to the hookbait. Such an eventuality, unfortunately, failed to occur but catching small fish in the sunshine proved an enjoyable diversion from the hard slog of trying to bypass the crayfish to get at the larger carp.
Tim and Andy were still trying all manner of schemes to fool the bigger carp, while I was reconciled to catching innumerable small ones and hoping that a larger specimen happened along and succumbed to the allure of my bait. Andy dropped into an area near one of the islands and cast tight to it, and was as surprised as the carp he hooked when his alarm sounded. A brief tussle resulted in the weekend's only double figure carp falling to his opportunism.
Saturday night was, predictably devoid of fish, although a couple of pleasant hours were spent in conversation around the fire pit before another night spent sleeping to the accompaniment of the incessant nocturnal scuttling, rustling and pitter-patter of rodent feet.
Sunday morning saw a leisurely pack up before departure. We said our goodbyes, agreed that the fishing had been poor but the company excellent, and wended our weary ways back to Leicestershire, South Wales or Hertfordshire. We did, however, before we left lay out the now dead form of one of the American Signal Crayfish ( "there aren't crays in there, pal") on the "Welcome" mat of the log cabin, and balanced another on the gate at the entrance to the lake. The owner may have taken our money, but we owed it to ourselves to let him know that he hadn't taken us for fools!
