Armchair angling

 

 

 

 

It's been a fortnight now since I last trod the banks of lake or canal with angling intent, a sorry state of affairs caused by a busy period at work and a number of family commitments. However, I have promised my son a perch fishing trip next week, so there is an end in sight to my current piscatorial inactivity.
My solace has been "armchair angling" (although even that has been metaphorical rather than literal, as there's been no time to sit in an armchair, and all the reading done has taken place late at night in bed with a dim reading lamp designed not to wake my sensibly sleeping wife).
Fortunately I have a reasonably extensive angling library, and- being an inveterate list maker- have decided to catalogue here my top 5 fishing books, so from 5 to 1, here they are:

(5) "Somewhere else" by Charles Rangely-Wilson; a wonderful, eclectic collection of fishing essays, well-written, evocative and catholic in the range of subjects covered: travel angling, pike, trout and even tope.
(4) "Trout at 10 000 feet" by John Bailey; similar to the above, but with none of the crude turn of phrase that occasionally unecessarily finds its way into Rangely-Wilson's writing. As much a travelogue as angling book, John Bailey taps into the adventurer that hides within all of us, and leaves us envying his global angling experiences.
(3) "Confessions of a carp fisher" by BB; a classic about carp angling that's outdated in every way except for the masterful manner in which it captures the very heart and spirit of what compels us to pick up rod and line. Illustrated by the author's own scraperboard art, a book that thoroughly deserves its enduring fame.
(2) "Death, taxes and leaky waders" by John Gierach; as only a very occasional (and terrifyingly inept) fly fisherman it's testament to Gierach's incredible prose that this book comes in at number two in my all-time favourites list. The book always gives rise within me not only to a yearning to fish, but also a more general yearning for the outdoors itself, and this is a part of its genius. Blessed with a witty turn of phrase reminiscent of Bill Bryson at his best, Gierach's short essays bear constant re-reading, so well are they crafted.
(1) ....... and my overall favourite is: ............ "How to fish" by Chris Yates. No other contemporary author compares with Yates for his ability to pen words that remind us of what it is we love about our chosen hobby. This book, while in many ways a collection of musings on life and an anthology of random thoughts, is ostensibly about the pursuit of my favourite freshwater fish, the enigmatic perch. If I could only take one angling book with me to the ubiquitous desert island, this would be the book.

So, there it is: my personal top five.
There are some great books that narrowly missed out (including Walton's "hallowed tome") and others such as Tom O Reilley's "The Spirit of the pond", Robin Armstrong's beautifully illustrated "Dartmoor River" and a couple of lovely American coffee table books that I regularly peruse: George Kramer's "Bass fishing: an American tradition" and an anthology called "Ode to bass and trout" edited by Alan James Robinson.
.... and here's the best bit: in less than a week I'll be swapping the books for a rod and line, and accompanied by my son I'll be "gone fishin'", but until then I will be (in the words of the song) "just a wishin' " ............ and reading.

"Signing off" at the Estate Lake

This morning my son and I packed our tackle into the car knowing that it would probably be our last trip of this year in pursuit of crucians. The siren call of old esox is getting louder and pulling harder by the day, and we'll soon be into our autumn/winter pike campaign.
We arrived at the lake early and chose a swim large enough to accomodate us both, and giving both of us a good reed bed to fish to. We fished in what has become our usual style at the estate lake, short poles, light lines, small hooks and maggots fed "little and often."
The weather was kind to us, offering the sort of sunshine that wasn't much in evidence this summer, and the fish were in obliging mood. As the morning wore on the bites slowed, but by the end of our four hour session we had around fifty fish, mostly crucians in the keepnet.
We even had a visit from my teenage daughter and a friend, and I surrendered my pole to them for a while, with them managing two fish apiece, which for my daughter's friend were the first two fish he had ever caught.
So, how to evaluate our summer on the Estate Lake?
 Despite coming nowhere near our target of a 2 pound crucian, there really can be no complaints. The lake itself is enchanting, the crucians beautiful , every session has been a pleasure, and it's been a welcome change from what had become the tedium of sitting behind buzzers endlessly doing the same thing.
However, although the crucians have pulled the elastic a bit, there have been no epic fights to remember, and so it will be nice to tangle with a few pike (hopefully) as winter sets in.
So, until next year, it's farewell to the Estate Lake as the Canal and a winter spent chasing pike beckons enticingly.

Spinning for stripeys

Perch are my favourite fish, more for their beauty, spiney swagger and attitude than for their size or fighting prowess. My first ever fish was a perch, and whether floatfishing or spinning they never fail to delight. I stole a morning session on a local stretch of canal this morning, choosing to take a break from the crucians to enjoy a leisurely stroll with a lure rod in the sort of balmy sunshine that has been a rarity this year.

 

Second cast of the day, using a very small red-spotted silver spinner, I caught this game little, fellow, all bristling, spikey indignation.
The sun beat down and I decided to walk on beyond the area of the canal that I'm familiar with and explore what lay beyond my normal beat. I allowed myself to be guided by the maxim WWCD (what would Crabtree do), and to fish only the perchiest looking spots.
Two more perch followed, both caught fishing around bridges, classic perch territory, and certainly swims that Mr Crabtree would have had a cast or two in. The second perch came to a red and yellow Panther Martin spinner, the final fish (on the final cast- how's that for "living the cliche!") falling for my all-time favourite perch lure, a Rublex Ondex.
It may have been more of a stroll in the sun than a serious fishing session, but when the mood takes there's little better than walking out with a rod, reel, net and small bag of lures.

Angling's common language

It's been three weeks since I last fished, although I'll be remedying that sorry statistic tomorrow. The combination of a week on our church's youth camp followed by a two week family holiday in France ruled out any piscatorial possibilities, but while in the lovely Gers region of France I purchased a copy of the second best fishing magazine I've ever read. Now, I'll be honest with you, excepting the always excellent Waterlog, I'm pretty bored with English fishing magazines. I still buy them, but much in the same way as I used to buy cigarettes when I was a smoker - not because I enjoyed most of them, but because I was addicted! They just tend to be the same old articles and thinly disguised product promotions from sponsored anglers coming round again and again like some printed version of "Groundhog Day".
 I stumbled on Le Pecheur de France in a small newsagents in a little bastide town and read it avidly for the rest of the holiday. My basic French, a bit of guesswork and the context of the articles meant that I could read and get the sense of most of what was being said, and it presented a winsome portrait of fishing accross the channel. There was lots about lure fishing, including a fascinating article about using surface baits for perch, some lovely photo's, quite a bit from a match angler called Jean Jaques Chaumet who sports the most prodigious of handlebar moustaches, and even an article on roach fishing "English-style"" (ie with a waggler and running line and reel) entitled "gardon au ble a l'angaise".
Not only did the magazine give an insight into fishing in France, but it served as a reminder that wherever anglers hail from, and however they choose to fish the fundamental attractions of the hobby are commonly owned ... a love of beautiful places and the challenge of fooling a living creature in its natural environment, before lovingly returning it from whence it came.

My "must have" lure

Ever since I first flung a plug (more in hope than anger) on a January day in 1982, I've been a devotee of lure fishing. I love the mobility, the collectability of the lures, the feel of actively hunting the prey, and the toothy critters themselves, and if I had to choose just one plug to use for the rest of my fishing days it would be ......... (wait for it) ... the Shakespear Big S. Now, I know that these days everybody is chucking Bulldawgs, Alien Eels, Replicants and 101 other soft plastic or rubber shad variants, but for over 30 years I've always had a space in my lure box for the Big S. I understand that it's no longer in production, which is a shame, but thankfully I've got half a dozen old stagers that should last a while yet. I have no doubt that a lot of the modern lures are superior, and I own and use  many of them, but there's something about that provocative wiggle just under the surface that gives me immense confidence in the Big S - that, and the fact that over the years I've caught scores of pike on them. It's only a couple of months till I get my lure rod out again for my autumn piking campaign, and, sooner or later, that means that one of my Big S's will come out of the box, be fixed to a trace and propelled into the canal. Other plugs may come and go, but for me the Big S is the "must have" plug, and I'd be far less confident setting out on a days piking without one in the lure box- it's a classic of the plug maker's art.

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.