Andy Spreadbury's Fishing

2009-05-20T15:14:00.000-07:00

Thursday, 7th.May 2009

A day of chaos, changes of plan, and stress.

Nine-thirty at work and my mobile rings – it is Phil. He has been studying the weather sites and is horrified to discover that a deep low is to move into northern France next week and we will undoubtedly be subject to torrential rain and thunderstorms! A change of location is called for and all the plans we have made over the past few months for The River in Picardy are 'thrown out the window' literally hours before we are due to set off. This was a real block-buster of a change for me since we were now travelling several hours further south to the river Saone. What would be required however was more bait as Phil and his friends have learnt over the years that the more feed is put in – the more will be caught. I managed to get out of work in my lunch-hour and buy another twenty kilogrammes of halibut pellets from an out-of-town supplier. I hope this is going to be enough........

Saturday, 9th.May 2009
The River Saone, South East France

Breakfast Time
The drive down from Calais was very long and tedious. Because the ferry arrangements were timed to get us to the River in Picardy we did not arrive until early evening – only to discover everywhere was closed for the afternoon. By luck, the only premises open was a 'Peche Discount' where we were able to get our Carte de Peche so at least we were able to fish legally.

Down at the river, lots of locals were set up after carp and it was quite a difficult job finding a stretch of bank capable of accommodating all four of us – but eventually we were all installed, Gary and I fishing a 'double' swim, Phil, twenty-five yards downstream to our right, and Clive, another fifty yards further downstream.

It was a bit of a scramble setting up bivvies and introducing some bait – not to say an arduous process as Gary and I particularly were dog-tired and desperately in need of some rest. Philip however, keen to get underway was out in the boat after dark, distributing maize and boilies hither and yon, up and down the river in front of us. Knackered, Gary and I collapsed into pits, only to be roused by Phil who was quickly into action with four fish to 23 lb. Plus some unwanted Bream – all on single boilies. I stuck with a combination of boilies and pellets fished as doubles, entertaining several Bream to four pounds or so.

I've got to be honest and admit I just wanted to get my head down and recover from the journey – the real business of the trip being left until early morning.
Phil did some useful work with the echo-sounder, finding a wide variation in depths down to 20 feet. In front of Gary and myself there was a shallow margin which went right down to 14 feet – whereas to the right in front of Phil there was a very shallow plateau of 6 feet, plummeting down to 17 feet a couple of yards further out. Despite this being the major feature in Phil's swim, he picked all his fish up much further out in the river – which just goes to prove that fishing to 'features' is not all it's cracked up to be.

Dawn, we are up and about, re-organising and preparing for the day. Gary is mixing up a 'soup' of Vitalin, molasses, hemp, and anything else he can lay his hands on. This looks to be good carp food and will be a useful addition to the boilies and pellets we have already put out.

8.0a.m. - I have cut down to just 2 rods, both fished at forty yards range, both single boily; I may change this later to drilled 20 mm. Halibut Pellets which (unfortunately) the Bream seem to be very enamoured of. Confidence rising as fish 'lump' out of the water all over the place although things are quietening somewhat compared to last night. Expectant rather than hopeful.

10.45 a.m. - Phil and Gary have gone into town to stock the 'wine cellar' for tonight's barbeque and also to get more sacks of Vitalin to replenish our meagre stocks. We must feed these fish if good catches are to be made.

Phil advises that the carp on this river are notoriously nocturnal and although we may get one during daylight, the chances are much reduced. We will therefore make introductions of such feed as we have this evening for the anticipated night feeding spell.

Feeling a bit more 'into' it now; it always takes at least 24 hrs. to settle in, assess the situation, and make a plan accordingly.

12 Noon – a useful bit of equipment is a walkie-talkie radio. Clive calls me to say that burgers and onions are ready in his swim to eat if I care to come along and get them! Presently, Phil and Gary return from the town bearing Prawns, baguettes, cheeses, and beer to add to our repast!

4.00 p.m. - the previously sunny day now turns overcast with the threat of rain and an eerie quietness forebodes thunder. We hastily prepare for bad weather.

7.00 p.m. - Gary and I spend an interesting hour, bird-spotting, catching sight of a Cuckoo, Barn Owl, Goshawk, and what we suspect is a juvenile Eagle. Gary refers to his bird book (he has an extremely keen interest in birds of prey) and it is definitely nothing like any of the others in there.

Weather has turned fine again and the threat of thunderstorms has faded. Big bait-up with balled-in Vitalin, boilies and pellets of various types. It is clear we are well short of what is required to do well on 'The Mighty Saone'; it is such a shame we had no time to prepare for this venue properly.

8.00 p.m. - Gary picks his rod up to reel in and check the bait and out of the blue finds himself attached to a fish which screams off downstream, unstoppably! This fish roars off like a jet aeroplane straight downstream and Gary can only hold on and hope it eventually comes to a stop! Kiting in to the bank, the fish rubs the line on the steep bar in front of Phil's swim and the line parts like cotton. A sad loss.

We speculate on what the fish might have been – probably a catfish we had been sitting out there in front of the bait which when Gary started to reel in – made a grab for it and got hooked. Who knows?.......

Sunday, 10th.May 2009

Up 'til late with the barbeque – what a night!

Sitting out with good friends drinking wine, grilling steaks, kebabs, and sausages. Tall stories and smelly farts, laughs, and a few regretful recollections. This was the french fishing experience at its best. Never mind what we'd caught or were going to catch, the whole ambience of the occasion was pure magic!

It started to rain as the last dregs of wine were being downed from the wine glasses and we all repaired to our pits to prepare for expected catches. The rain got heavier and heavier and a few claps of thunder were heard in the far distance. Batten down the hatches and hunker down.

Suddenly, the middle rod is away and a powerful fish is ripping line off the clutch! These river Saone carp are tremendous scrappers and have me all over the place. Eventually however, a fish of about thirteen pounds graces the net and I have my first look at a Saone common – long, slim, and built like a torpedo.
This proved to be my one and only fish of the night although Phil had another good common of 24 and Gary lost a tremendous fish which shot off downstream like an Exocet missile!

At last I drop off to sleep, exhausted.

8.30a.m. - an early morning 'Council of War' between Phil, Gary, and myself. We decide Phil is catching more because he is fishing further out than either Gary or myself. Fish have been seen moving at longer range than we have been casting and we conclude we must get our baits further out. Because 5-6 ounce leads must be used to hold out in the current, the distance we are able to cast them is naturally restricted. By dropping down to 4 ounces a lot more distance can be achieved – the down-side of this of course is that we cannot hold out in the flow. Phil's answer to this is to use a back-lead to keep the line down to the bottom to reduce the pressure on it and when we try it, it works, giving us much needed yards in range.
Confidence rises again; the only issue we have yet to resolve is how to feed the stretch we are fishing. Phil is distributing Maize over a wide area in front of him and this is contributing greatly to his success. We don't have any and we have to make a plan with what we have – mostly Vitalin and Pellets...

Suddenly, we see Phil out in the boat making his way over to the far side of the river. He seems to be attached to a fish which has mysteriously run right across to the other side without him knowing. Sounds like he must have had a buzzer failure whilst he was in our swim talking to us.

Phil manages to make contact – the fish has swum into a tree island and he reports, has straightened the hook! Another 'One that Got Away' story!

2.00 p.m. - Gary and I spent the whole morning trying to come to terms with our situation. We knew we needed to be further out – where the fish were – but couldn't hold with the 5 ounces we had on. I put back leads on to try and keep the line low to the bed of the river but the only effect this had was to pull the lines down into snags which on reeling in I became irretrievably hung-up in. Phil went and got his boat and we went out to get above the obstruction. Horror of horrors – my mainline became entangled around the outboard propeller! A right old mess ensued and despite heaving mightily, the rig just wouldn't free itself until I gave one last hand-line haul and straightened the hook. Just as this came free, one of Phil's buzzers came to life and a rip-roaring take ensued! Line could be seen pouring off the reel and Phil went into panic mode trying to get back to the bank to get to his rod.

He picked up his rod and landing-net and jumped into the boat, my role now changing from that of passenger – to boatman. Now I have very little – to – no experience of handling an electric outboard motor and boat although I did my best to steer in the direction of the fish. Phil meanwhile worked himself into a right old lather, berating me to “no! Not that way – the other way!”, and “faster – no, slower!......no, not like that!” Afterwards, he apologised for getting himself rather over-excited but at the time, his chastisement did nothing to improve my confidence or understanding of boat-handling technique!

We got the fish – a nineteen pound common, so the panic turned out to be a waste of energy with what was not the monster Phil thought it was !

Back at camp, Gary and I continued to wrestle with the problem of holding in the flow. Gary lent me a couple of six-ounce weights and currently I am trying to fish with these although the distance is a lot less than I would like and I still can't seem to hold. I decide to have a bit of feeder fishing and give the matter some thought.

6.00 p.m. - things reached a bit of a crisis point this evening with all sorts of problems and difficulties casting an air of despondency over things. Gary had to go out in the boat to un-snag Clive's line and got the line caught around the prop. of the boat! This caused no-end of problems – not to say leaving Gary in a foul mood. The extra water in the river because of the rain leaves me struggling to hold bottom and I am just not happy with the short distance I am fishing – I am no-where near where the fish are. Phil suggests I up-sticks tomorrow and offers to take me across to the island where I can fish on my own.

10.30 p.m. - Gary and I had a really nice evening, eating baguettes, cheese, and bacon, and drinking an exceptional Cabernet Sauvignon. We discovered we have much in common in our backgrounds and life experiences. Later, we repair to Phil's camp for a four-way social and spend a very enjoyable couple of hours chatting and drinking wine. At the end of the proceedings, Phil gets a screamer on one of his rods and lands a fish of around twenty pounds. We are so relaxed we don't even bother to photograph the fish. It is enough to just enjoy the ambience of the place.

Monday, 11th.May 2009
2.0a.m. - High excitement in the dark......... Phil continues to catch fish – so many in fact he is on occasions down to just a single rod. We cogitate in his swim about what the reasons might be why he is catching so many and we catch nothing and decide that the only thing we can do is for me to imitate exactly the rig he is using. It is nothing secretive or fancy – just a simple running rig with a backstop. No fancy gizmos or do-dads on the end, just a simple knotless-knot to a longshank hook about 12 inches long. I hasten me back to my swim and tie this rig up and cast out. Phil calls me back to his swim for a cup of tea for he has landed yet another – he has now had so many he cannot remember just how many!

Ten minutes into the tea and suddenly my buzzer is screaming with a 'one-toner'. I run/hobble/limp/stumble back to my rods and the taking fish is going like a steam train! I lift into it and am hit with a series of terrific lunges – the fish is like a Lewis Hamilton with a rocket up its backside! It must have run a good forty-to fifty yards while I have been attached and is so far downstream it is well over Phil's lines.

inevitably, one of Phil's buzzers then goes off, signally an impending nightmare and he curses and swears at me for allowing the fish to cross his tackle! Back in his pitch he can now see the fish on the surface in the margin in front of him and is able to step into the boat and net it from there.

The fish turns out to be a magnificent common of 29 lb. - the biggest of the trip so far. Clearly however we are unable to all fish the stretch of river so close together and Phil resolves to move over to the island opposite, on the 'morrow.

5.00 a.m. - Fishing just a single rod (to avoid foul-ups with other anglers) the buzzer is screaming like a banshee again. As soon as I hook it, it absolutely flies downriver........ this fish goes like the Orient Express, a feature it seems to share with all the Saone fish. I can do nothing but hang on as the rod is thumped down in a series of frantic lunges. Eventually it comes to a stop and I make line on it all the way to the net – yet another common, this time weighing 28¼ lb. Magic......

7.00 a.m. - I recast the rod and I doubt it had been out ten minutes before it was off again, this time the culprit being a little nine-pounder.

8.30a.m. - a fidgety take to my one and only rod out produces a small fish of 7 or 8 pounds. Rod is recast before the first of the commercial vessels comes through; this is a tandem jobby pushed along by a barge. The wash is tremendous, swamping the boat moored in the margins.

We have acquired a new friend – Eddie The Eagle who comes soaring along, high on the thermals. Gary has never seen an eagle in flight before and is as pleased as punch with all the birds of prey we have seen – Red Kites, Sparrowhawks, and Barn Owls.

12 Noon – while Clive and Phil go off to the shops, Gary and I spend the morning sitting in the sunshine, telling stories and watching the comings and goings of the eagles soaring on the thermals overhead. Gary is beside himself with pleasure as the birds of prey are as much an obsession with him as carp-fishing.
It has now turned hot and sunny although there is a cooling breeze to keep things refreshed. We contemplate the hard work of this afternoon's activities for we must prepare the feed for tonight.

8.00 p.m. - a day of activities. Gary and I went into town to get some provisions and try and buy some Maize for soaking tonight and boiling tomorrow. We realise the last minute change of venue has left us unprepared for this river. Fishing this particular one requires simply huge amounts of bait compared with the River in Picardy. Phil, who knows the Saone better than anyone asked us to bring as much bait as we could, but little did we realise the industrial measures which are required – dustbin size containers of Maize and Vitalin are just for starters! To witness Phil out in the boat, criss-crossing the river, throwing scoops of feed in all directions is not only an education but also a culture shock in comparison with the relatively meagre quantities used for 'normal' carp-fishing.

All this 'prepping' and hard work under what has been a hot sun has been exhausting and I long to just flop into my pit. I am so tired my eyes are stinging really painfully and are a sure-fire indication I desperately need to rest. This branch of carp-fishing is certainly not for the faint of heart or weak of limb. The more I get older, the harder it all seems to get.

Tuesday, 12th.May 2009

2.00 a.m. - a screamer is off and away, once again going like an express train. Unlike any of the other fish it ploughs upstream across one of Gary's lines causing consternation and strife. Eventually it is landed (after breaking Gary's landing net) and weighed at 15:06.
Meanwhile, Clive comes along the bank calling for the boat. Out on the island, Phil has hooked into a fish so large he cannot land it! Gary and I wait with baited breath to see just how big it is........

3.30 a.m. - a 13:12 common in identical fashion. I reeled in the other rod to have a sort out and yet again lost the lead and rig on a snag. This river is totally snag-ridden seemingly and an endless supply of leads is an absolute requirement. Really becoming sick and tired of this aspect of it though.

8.00 a.m. - another night of lost rigs and bad weather has left me in a depressed state – so bad in fact that I'd be quite happy to pack up and go home. Most of this demeanor however is probably due to the fact I have not taken my medication (anti-depressants) since I have been out here. This must obviously be remedied – I'll dig them out and take one. We are still catching carp and Phil must be 'over the moon' with his giant fish which turned out to be a catfish weighing a colossal 82 lbs.!

Gary is obviously disappointed with his relative lack of success and is in the advanced stages of 'writing the trip off'. We have both had lots of problems to deal with and this seems to be part and parcel of this sort of fishing. Our efforts have left us wearied and despondent and we both need good fish to give us a 'lift'. Because of the snags, the strong current, and the presence of Gary's rods in the swim I am down to just a single rod (which I have confidence in) provided the fish are there. Gary is struggling and I am concentrating on offering all the help I can in getting him on to a fish.

I don't think many anglers have the faintest idea of what is demanded to come down to France and fish the rivers. Even your average carp angler has no idea of the huge demands made on the individual to fish 'properly' under the conditions. Managed fisheries and certainly commercials (including french commercials) cater well for the angler in terms of facilities, comfortable swims, and managed stocking levels. Where we are here on the river Saone there is nothing provided by Man – we are in a totally wild environment. The plus side of this is the 'connection' with wild Planet Earth which is an inevitable result of such encounters – the wild life, the wild fish etc. the downside to this is that Mother Nature provides nothing in the way of comfort – no neatly cut, conveniently accessible swims, stocking levels managed to provide a good days sport, and close proximity to domestic needs. All the problems we have encountered on this trip are a natural result of connecting with the very thing we have come out here to enjoy – wild fishing.

12 Noon – spending the day cooking Maize for introduction into the river tonight. It is a ball-aching job and I could do without it – my thinking is that the pellets are a more usable and practical alternative. What is key is that it is how it is distributed into the river that makes all the difference. Up to now we have been putting out time-bombs (hard Vitalin balls) and other stuff in a line downstream.

In this situation, the scent trail and food source is a relatively thin 'corridor' travelling downstream with the current, whereas a line going across the river makes the trail wider.

As I'm cooking up this maize, I'm pondering the problem of distributing it across the river without the aid of a boat. I don't want one myself – I hate the damn things, they have a mind of their own and never seem to go in the direction you want them to. So how do you get enough feed in a line across the flow in sufficient quantities? The carp angler's mainstay is the spod for getting out this sort of mass bait which cannot be catapulted, and for still water situations this is a good option. What about the sort of industrial quantities we are talking about here though? A spod, though theoretically feasible cannot ever compete with the boat and scoop – it would take hours to reproduce the sorts of quantities we are talking. One alternative is to use the catapult and use something catapult-able such as pellet, tiger nuts, or Chic Peas. Tigers are very durable and are known fish catchers and could go a lot further than maize. Hmmmm..... it's a problem.

One solution might be to choose a location adjacent to a bridge; you use the bridge as an elevated platform from which to distribute the feed. This restricts you to downstream areas of bridges only, to places you might not want to fish.

6.00 p.m. - I have previously described the problems of toileting whilst away on these french trips and this afternoon I was once again called upon to move a stool. So remote is this location that there is no difficulty in finding a suitable spot – in this case, the bottom of a shallow gulley surrounded by trees. No sooner had I dropped my shorts than thousands of mosquitoes took to the air homing in on my nether parts, sinking their fangs (or whatever it is they use) into my bottom. I strained furiously with all I was worth, desperate to move the resistant stool, but no, it just wouldn't budge.......eventually, with the job half completed the squadrons arrived, stinging and biting every exposed inch of bum flesh! Ouch! Ouch! Ouch! Pain, strain, grh.......... then finally, a quick finale with the toilet paper and then it was up with the shorts and off and away! I didn't look back but I suspect I was pursued by a black mist of midges, teeth bared, baying for already-tasted blood!.......

Back at camp I had an opportunity to examine my tenderized posterior – it looked like I had contracted some dreadful disease – my skin was pock-marked with raised, white nodules which were now beginning to itch like Hell! To say this would be unpleasant in the warmth of the sleeping bag is an understatement; only those who have suffered the torment of itching mozzie-bites will appreciate the depth of the horrors such afflictions present!

6.45 p.m. - we manage to get a lot of maize, pellet, and tiger nuts out before a colossal barge comes through. Hopefully, the water movements caused by such a vessel will help to spread the feed out.

Wednesday, 13th.May 2009

8.00 a.m. - nothing to report from a night which was very quiet from a fishing point of view although ideal fishing weather – overcast, warm, and sultry. At one point it was so sultry, lightening rent the darkness and distant rumbles of thunder were heard.

This morning, Phil reports the back-channel is full of carp feasting on newly-cast spawn from masses of Bream, coursing in and out of the beds of lily-pads, their mating activities attracting large marauding catfish.

11.00 a.m. - just got back from the island. Clive and I went over in the boat to see all the activity that is going on over there; what a sight! Large Bream up to 6 or 7 pounds are like 'alpha-males' attacking smaller fish seek to join in the orgy – the large fish attack the smaller ones and drive them away; whether this is to guard the fertilized eggs that have been lain to prevent other fish from eating them I don't know – but there is definitely some sort of Bream-on-Bream antagonism going on. Chub also lurk around and these I suspect are intent on eating the eggs, but at the top of the food chain are the large catfish of four, five, and six feet long which slink along tight to the margins. Curiously, the Bream don't seem afraid of them. Whether they recognize somehow that the catfish are not in attack mode I don't know but the Bream are happy to swim with them and the catfish make no attempt to attack or eat them.

I tried to take some photographs of all this but the water was very coloured and the shots were disappointing. A key to our lack of carp action for the past couple of days was the sight of fish grouping in threes and fours. These fish were having what I call 'practise spawning', not so much getting on with it, but going through the motions of keeping close physical contact and engaging in vigorous shaking of their bodies in harmony with their sexual partners. For students of fish behaviour this was a fascinating and informative experience.

5.00 p.m. - decided to move and have settled in to a very nice swim about a quarter of a mile downstream of the others; although I am a long way away I have the walkie-talkie and can keep in touch. Just about to have a shower and a clean-up after the toil of taking down my dome, moving, and setting it up again.

Incidentally, I have now abandoned the 'Camp Shower' I have used previously on trips – a more effective and practical solution is to use the kettle with warmed water and just stand on the unhooking mat and pour it over the head; a good lather can be generated with the increased water and it is both cleaner, more practical, and takes up no room in the kit.

7.15 p.m. - baiting-wise, I have gone for the big hit, scattering 20 mm. Boilies, 20 mm. Halibut pellets, and 12 mm. Halibut pellets right across the front of the swim.
The current is peculiar; down at my feet the water seems to be moving upstream to my left – against 'the tide' as it were. I see I am on the beginning of a bend so I guess there may be some eddying going on somewhere.

The Buoys in the River. There is an orange one and a green one and heavy barges and the like must stay between them if they are to ensure they have enough depth below the keel if they are not to touch bottom. This I guess is about fifteen feet or so; they are a useful indicator of river depth however. Vessels must not stray bank-side of them so I think it safe to assume this is where the shallower water is.

The orange buoy upstream of me is some way out from the bank so I guess the water in front of me is relatively shallow; hence I deduce I am fishing in about 8-12 feet (compared to the centre channel which is 20 or so).
My current GPS is:
N **.*****° E *.******°

8.30 p.m. - a dropped take on the rh rod and some fish activity (albeit from small fish) has raised my confidence somewhat.

Thursday, 14th.May 2009, The Last Day

6.30 a.m. - very successful night and once again an endorsement for the scent-trail tactics. On the face of things, there didn't seem to be many fish here – certainly no outward signs of rolling or splashing fish. Into the evening and there's a dropped take on the bait fished to the tree. A funny take this – a running fish but a bit half-hearted in some respects.

A bit later and this time a 'proper' take ensues, although not the one-tone screamers I have now come to associate with the Saone carp. The fight from the fish although hard, was not protracted too long – fortunate this because it started to rain quite hard. In the dark however I could see the fish was not a carp but one of the Saone's famous catfish! My first one ever! I was delighted with this and got him up the bank and on the mat as quickly as I could.

My first ever face-to-face encounter with a European Wels Catfish – like some primeval creature from the Black Lagoon, a throw-back, a monster from the Dark Age, baleful eyes and an ugly, sinister countenace. These are fish from pre-history and are the most foreboding looking blighters I have ever seen out of freshwater. Weighing just sixteen and three quarter pounds it was but a kitten, but for me, a quite memorable capture.

It was like a Tolkien-esque equivalent of a Balrog (read the book).

Back out with the bait and a series of tweaks and lifts indicated interst from fish and I had Bream and Roach/Bream hybrids on a number of fidgety takes. Then there followed a quiet spell resulting in a typical Saone screamer – a carp this time weighing 12 lbs. Back out with the bait and there was further interest (although not enough to strike at), followed by another carp take and this time the fish was off and away like a train in typical Saone fashion.. an intense but not protracted fight ensued resulting in a 22:12 fish – like all of the Saone fish I've had, another common.

Out with the bait yet again – to the same spot just in front of the orange buoy, and it's a further hybrid followed by another fish of 12:00. there was then another relatively quiet spell which ended with a fish of about eight pounds which gave a most Bream-like bite; no doubt due to the massive amount of feed I had put out. Still, another Saone carp under my belt ending a very profitable night.

8.30 – just done a big bait-up with boilies and pellets and it all seems to have gone quiet. Phil had a 30 and one other from his pitch on the island and Clive also had a fish or two. Poor Gary still struggled and only had one Chub I think plus, he lost 2 sets of gear picked up by a damn great 20 foot x 1 foot diameter tree, floating down in the current. Fortunately, Clive got his three sets of gear out of the water – but only just in time. Over the walkie-talkie network they warned me it was coming although being so far downstream it would take a while to get to me. I stayed up until nearly 1.00 a.m. Keeping a look-out for it but it never did arrive as far as I could see; I suspect it drifted out into the middle of the river.

10.00 a.m. - collecting all the non-essential pieces of kit together today; we have to load as much as we can in the truck tonight for we have an extremely early start tomorrow.

The Session Wine Choice
Very lucky with the wine choice this time, it is:
Cabernet Sauvignon, vin de Pays D'oc by Pierre Charnau, about eight Euros for a 5 l box; better still is the one costing nineteen Euros – absolutely superb. The cheaper one I had is still very drinkable; it is a tough, fruity wine – a man's wine!

1.00 p.m. - i've kept piling in the feed (boilies and pellets) and there is no doubt that the 'Ronnies and Reggies' are having a field day whittling the baits down. These baits have not been hardened by air-drying so it's not surprising.

I've had one or two abortive snatches so I'm wondering whether there is so much bait out there now that the fish are eating it 'on the spot' without moving along the bottom. What I'm going to do is fish one back-stop long (about 12 ins.) and the other short (about 3 ins.) and see if there is a difference.

4.00 p.m. - people are beginning to converge on my swim for the farewell barbeque and sleep-over. Phil has moved off the island and has boated all his equipment down to my swim. He says he is just going to put up an overnighter and sleep, but I suspect he'll have a craft rod or two out!
Clive has gone into town to diesel-up and he too is moving up to my swim to do the night so that makes all of us gathered together for the final few hours.

5.00 p.m. - I've managed to get some 20 mm. Pellets into the boat channel (but only just) I think it would be sensible to fish one this side of the channel and one in, the boat channel tonight.

7.45 p.m. - the evening kicked off with Phil and Gary arriving and setting up their sleeping quarters for the night. I had withdrawn my third rod because there'rd be less to pack up in the morning because of the very early start, Phil however kept on and on about putting a bait out to the right – under the branches of an overhanging willow and I eventually gave in, re-instating the rod I had previously withdrawn.

Upstream, I scattered some freebies and set the rod in its rest, this rod had been out about ten minutes before the now familiar screamer ensued and a hard fighting common thrashed about in the lilies in the margin. Momentarily, the fish got stuck and I had to haul it a bit but eventually Phil put the net under another twenty-pound common – twenty-two dead.

Friday, 15th.May 2009 – Departure Day

The planned farewell barbeque in my swim didn't happen unfortunately because incessant and persistent rain had begun to fall, it didn't however prevent a communal cook-up and wine-tasting session among the part and the occasion was no less enjoyable.

My scattering of 12 mm. Halibut pellets up and down the margin had unfortunately attracted a shoal of Roach/Bream hybrids which were making a thorough nuisance of themselves, the bobbins bouncing up and down and the buzzers going off at frequent intervals. They were an especial nuisance to Philip who was intent on a good night's sleep for the long journey home and he less than politely invited me to “shut those f******s up!” why yes Philip, I could perhaps invite them to partake of something tasty elsewhere?

The night was very unpleasant, cold, and wet; just before dawn however the bait placed under the tree to my right (where I'd had the previous fish) was picked up and an identical fight ensued, culminating in the landing of an 18:12 common. This turned out to be the last fish of the trip; I withdrew all rods as Phil needed to sleep and I hunkered down, waiting for 5.00 a.m. A wet pack-up, and off to Calais.......

2009-01-18T01:50:00.000-08:00

Saturday, 17th.January 2009

Winter for me, used to be a grim time in the fishing year. Sitting behind a pair of carp rods, week after week, freezing cold, bored, frustrated at the lack of action, and thoroughly fed up with the whole thing wondering what the hell I was doing there. Then I discovered Maggotdrowning.com. With the discovery of this band of lunatics came new friends and a window on a world of Angling I had hitherto had scant knowledge.

First the pole, then the waggler on the many commercial fisheries in the South-East became my winter interest and I am happy to say that through Maggotdrowning I have had some not only really enjoyable sessions in terrific company, but I have learnt an enormous amount – mostly from the Master of the Poles himself – our very own Sir Peter of Morton. It was with Sir Peter I was fishing one of my favourite places today – Match Lake 2 on the Monk Lakes complex near Staplehurst, known to all Kent anglers. It's always a Grand Day Out with Peter and today was to be no different........

The Session

I left home in a downpour and things looked decidedly grim – Monks is very exposed and the combination of high wind and rain can make a session on there arduous to say the least! We decided to go for pegs with the wind at our backs and this proved a wise decision as the wind really got up on occasions during the day.

Straight out of the rod-bag it's my brand new Shakespeare 13 foot Match Lite (£85 from Devon Angling and price matched by the excellent Invicta Angling of Ashford). This was its first outing and I was really keen to see how it would perform; this was teamed with an old Shakespeare 'Powerplay' rear drag jobby filled with 3 lbs. Line, the rig terminating in 0.1 Preston Powerline and a size 18 Tubertini.

First up and it's a little Chublet for me, closely followed by Peter with a hard-fighting carp of three pounds or so. This was going to be a very good day, marred only by a family of mental retards fishing the far bank, shouting to one another in what can only be described as 'ape language'. The dad seemed to be permanently turned to maximum volume and appeared to have the intelligence of a Geranium. Peter asked me if I had a gun as he wished to put the poor man out of his (and our) misery!

As usual, Peter's catch-rate began to exceed my own and I sat there scratching my head wondering what it was he was doing that I wasn't. I thought I'd got a grasp of the basic principles (acquired during previous sessions with Peter) of Feeding being the key to success, the Little and Often principle applying to pole and waggler fishing in general. I was obviously not doing it right and it was not long before Peter had spotted this too and stopped fishing to come to my aid....
“Lets have a look at your rig Spreaders”.

I willingly offered up my end-tackle, thinking “he won't find much wrong with that; a bulk around the base of the float and a single number eight, nine inches from the hook acting as a tell-tale. Peter grasped the line, screwed up his face in disgust and pointed to a single shot I'd got a foot below the float,
“What's that doing there?!”
“Erm; it's a shot to take the float down a bit – I had too much sticking out of the water”

Peter had an 'Oh my God' look about him as he made lots of adjustments to my shotting.

“You need to stabilise the rig in this wind as there's a bit of tow on today; there's four shots tapering down to the number eight, up from the hook and the locking shot are closely tucked up at the base of the float”.

This was an altogether better rig which on casting felt a lot better, it didn't drift so much on the tow, away from my feed. Ah feed. Now that was another disaster.

“Cast out and fire out six maggots around the float”

I grabbed what I thought was a small pinch and fired them off in the general direction of the float, the strong wind unfortunately taking them several yards away from the float, (well that was my excuse anyway!)

“Andy, the general idea is to actually feed where the hookbait is – not five yards from it. All that will happen is the fish in the area will go and eat the feed there rather than where your hookbait is! And I did say half a dozen not half a bloody handful!”

On paper, Little and Often sounds as easy as anything, but how many is Little, and how long (in time) is Often? Here was the answer – six maggots every minute and a half and they have to be spot on around the float otherwise you'll just end up drawing the fish away from your rig rather than to it.

After this I spent the rest of the session trying to get these few basic principles right – and how difficult it proved to be. Granted, the wind didn't help although on the day it was a useful training aid in practicing skills with the catapult, but for a relative numpty, I found it remarkably difficult to get right, my maggots flying hither and yon, scattered to the four winds on occasions. Peter had the answer to this too – fish a lot shorter. Better to bait accurately at short range, than inaccurately at longer range.

From then on, with just a few maggots landing around the float every few minutes or so my catch-rate began to pick up and I managed to put together quite a respectable net of fish – F1s, some Ide

(a first for me as I'd never caught one before – a fish like a huge Roach and very hard fighting), a Golden Orfe (again another first), skimmers, and a lone Tench. At the end of the session we had a weigh-in (we had special dispensation from Ron at Reception), and I was very pleased to record twenty-nine and half pounds – the most I think I've ever weighed-in at Monks. Peter was of course ahead of me with thirty-four and a half pounds which would have been much, much more had he not stopped fishing to sort me out and give me instruction.

Once again it was a Grand Day Out in smashing company. My thanks to Peter for persevering with me throughout the session – what a frustrating pupil I was! Here's to the next time we go fishing.

Saturday, 15th.November 2008

2008-11-15T20:54:00.000-08:00

Temperatures were in the teens when I journeyed to Bysing Wood – it was one of the mildest November days I can remember in a long while, and I thought it was a good opportunity to have yet another go at the big Bream.

I’ve had a few good ones this year - fish of six and seven pounds – but nothing big and certainly nothing near the target of double figures which I have repeatedly tried (and failed) to catch. I got a call from Ted our club bailiff to say that a twelve had been caught and it might be a good time to get over there and have another try.

Lots of members were fishing and there were a couple of ‘parties’ of four or five individuals in a swim either sharing a rod or just ‘spectating’. For once, everyone seemed reasonably well behaved unlike the usual accompaniment to such gatherings which invariably included bad language, shouting, and general anti-social behavior. Call me old-fashioned if you like but I go fishing to get away from such shenanigins.

I decided to try an area of the lake I hadn’t fished much for Bream, the top end known as ‘The Knicker Island’ end (don’t ask). There is a natural subterranean spring which enters the lake at this end; in very cold weather it is the last part of the lake to ice over and always leaves a clear patch even if there is an inch or two everywhere else.
After huffing and puffing with my new barrow to the swim, I had to sit down for a minute or two as I was sweating profusely - it was so mild and I didn’t really need the two jumpers and bib-and-brace I’d got on! However I set up with the usual Method Feeders, one baited with two rubber corns popped-up, and on the other rod, a single 8 mm. Halibut Pellet hair-rigged to a nine-inch braided hooklength. When after carp I like to keep this hooklength really short at two or three inches, but Bream need a bit more to take the bait properly.

I don’t mind using groundbait on the Method cage as long as there is some evidence it has been eaten. I like to use as little as possible in the winter to avoid over-feeding and prefer the strategy of casting all over the place to cover as much water as possible rather than to clip up and build up a concentration of feed; all this seems to do is attract the skimmers, fish up to a couple of pounds or so. By casting around over a wide area a lot of the lake can be searched and if there are Bream anywhere and in a feeding mood I reckon I’d get a take.

Things started pretty slowly with hardly anything happening during the first couple of hours. There was the odd snatch and pull – but nothing positive so I stuck to my plan of moving the baits around in a wide arc; I also tried different baits too and swapped between the 8 mm. Halibut pellets, 12 mm. Halibut Pellets, and double popped-up artificial corn at varying distances and locations. Eventually however, I had a drop-back take to a bait cast directly out in front – but unfortunately missed it. This tends to happen a lot on these sort of takes and I wonder whether they are ‘proper’ takes at all and not line-bites. At this juncture I happened to notice a series of dimples on the surface over an area of about twenty square yards, exactly half way across the lake.

These miniscule dimples are impossible to see in anything other than a flat calm and it was fortunate that whatever was causing them was in the one area of the lake which was in fact mirror-smooth. I’ve noticed this sort of thing before in the winter – it can easily be dismissed as little fry or even emergent insects – but experience has shown it is often fish grazing on the bottom releasing minute bubbles. I quickly reeled in both rods and re-cast right into this area; 8 mm. pellet on one rod and 12 mm. on the other.

They’d been out about ten minutes or so when there was a good old ‘bang-bang’ bite on the small pellet, the bobbin whacking the rod in a series of thumping raps. I hit the fish straight away and at once felt a solid resistance on the end – I knew immediately it was one of the big Bream by the feeling of dead weight on the end. Bream may not be the most exciting fighters in the world but you can always tell when you’ve got a good one on. This fish ‘kited’ about a bit before surfacing near the net and when I saw it I could see by its size that if it wasn’t ten pounds – it was near as damn it!

Fate however was as unkind to me as it has been with the other upper nine-pounders I have caught; nine pounds twelve ounces. Perhaps I should have stuffed four one-ounce Arlesey bombs down its throat?!

It seems churlish to be disappointed with such a big fish – but those who have similarly pursued their own goals weight-wise (perhaps with other species) will understand exactly how I felt. I was very happy with the fish – but disappointed I had once again missed the magic ten pound mark by only a handful of ounces. The fish was a real ‘slab’ and looked to me to be a young fish unlike some of the old ‘warriors’ I have caught in the past; this can only be good news for the future of big Bream fishing at Bysing Wood.

Out with the rod again and another series of little movements to the bobbin, all of which failed to develop. I did toy with trying to strike them but left them alone believing them to be line bites. There then followed a blank spell right up until dark when I had another fish of three to four pounds just as it was getting too dark to see.

By now things had become very quiet but I decided to stay on a little after dark to see if there would be any more action and re-cast both baits out in front one last time. Unfortunately, not a touch did I have, nor did I see or hear anything and gathered all my things together to load up the barrow. Just as I was about to withdraw the right-hand rod, the bobbin jumped up and down like a jack-in-the-box and I struck into another fish. This too gave the familiar dead weight on the end and for the second time that day I netted another big Bream. Slightly smaller than the first at nine pounds two ounces – but the first occasion I have banked two ‘nines’ in the same session. So something of a ‘result’.

The double yet again remains at large although I know he is there. His capture however I shamefully admit has now become something of an obsession……………….. and I promised myself I’d never get obsessed about a fish ever again!

Friday, 5th. September 2008

2008-09-11T07:10:00.000-07:00

My long-awaited trip to the River in Picardy. Phil and I have been wanting to get back and have another go, for ages, but with Phil at The World Carp Classic, this was a solo trip. Big fish were in the offing; we’d had a high average size during the last trip and both of use expected to get a real ‘lump’ before too long. As ever, I recorded everything in my journal.

[journal]
5.30 a.m
I have just got back from the ‘Boutique’ to get my wine for the session – a bottle of ‘vin rouge’ to go with my meals. The ferry is relatively quiet with few crossing at this hour.

This is a solo trip, my regular buddy Phil away at The World Carp Classic at Lac Madine. He is fishing with his good friend Chris (Lev) Levington and thus far they are fishless, although several fish have been caught including a 56 so far. There is still time yet for him to break his duck and catch his first ever fish during one of these contests – although talking to Phil he doesn’t see it as a competition – more an opportunity to meet fellow carp anglers from all over the world.

There is the usual mixture of excitement and trepidation – ‘what if something goes wrong and I cannot deal with it on my own?’ I try to put these negative thoughts to the back of my mind and concentrate on my Mission Plan for as ever, the trip has been planned with all the efficiency of a military operation…….

The first job is to navigate down to the ‘Target Zone’ – the section of river in Picardy which yielded such promising results last time back in April. The next aim is to get onto the PA (Point of Access) – the place where I can leave the car and get to the swim (which I had previously identified using Google Satellite Imaging.

3.00 p.m
All four rods are out – 2 single baits downstream and 2 double baits upstream, the first lot of feed is in and the kettle is on for the first cup of tea.

The SatNav got me to the PA ok but I found that access was 100 yards across a ploughed field! Although the satellite imaging had been accurate, it hadn’t shown of course what conditions were like on the ground and considering the huge amount of kit that needed to be transported to and fro, this was unfortunately a no-no; I plumped for exactly the same swim I fished back in April as I felt I could do very well from there.

The local Police have just dropped by although they didn’t bother to get out of their 4 x 4 as it is raining; they just came to have a look-see and then buggered off.

The rain got harder and harder the nearer I approached the ‘Target Zone’ and was coming down in ‘stair-rods’ by the time I arrived at the river. My preferred swim is on the far side of the river so I have had to take quite a circuitous route to get there which of course proved fruitless and involved a detour of several miles to get to where I wanted to go.

There is a very serious issue to contend with which Phil pointed out last time we were here, namely the extreme shallowness of the water in front of the swim. In fact it is so shallow I cannot see how a fish can be landed without going in after it – which is possible – but probably inadvisable. I have the waders with me and I need to make a plan as to how to don them and get out to a fish; doesn’t seem impossible however. We shall have to see how we get on.

7.30 p.m.
More bait into the swim and I am starting to build it nicely; I’ve even had one or two Breamy enquiries so that’s encouraging. Since I don’t expect to catch a carp until the third or fourth night, anything between now and then is a bonus as although the rain has stopped for now, there is a vicious wind blowing, gusting up and down stream making things horrible. Not confident yet.

Saturday, 6th.September 2008
9.00 a.m.
It was Bream City here last night with one fish after another, all on the Halibut Pellets. I put up with them until about 2.00 a.m. but simply had to get some sleep so pulled in the Halibut Pellet rods. The rods baited with Matrix boilies were untouched which further leads me to suspect they are lacking in attractiveness. Whether the manufacturer is ‘cutting’ them with cheap ingredients to make them commercially viable I don’t know – they certainly don’t seem to catch as well as they used. I am glugging the single boily in Bloodworm and Molasses to try and increase their attractiveness.

There are no fish here yet – I have yet to see one at all although I might have heard one during the night.

10.20 a.m.
Although it has stopped raining and the sun has come out, there is still that very strong wind blowing which is keeping temperatures down. I have yet to see a carp although this hasn’t dampened my optimism - yet! The regime of regular feeding must be maintained for the scent trail to bring the fish into the swim from downriver and still I do not expect anything to happen at least until tomorrow.

11.00 a.m.
Just been looking closely in the margins in front of me and I have to say it is desperately shallow. I would go as far as saying it is at the very limit of where you can safely bring a carp in and return it. Water always looks shallower than what it is because of the for-shortening effect; there is only one way of finding out and that is to try and catch a fish and see. There are no options here other than to move to a completely different location. I tried putting the waders on and going in but sank up to my knees which isn’t in itself a problem – but netting a fish and getting it back to the bank with both feet stuck fast with rod in one hand, a landing-net in the other, and a thrashing fish on the end – it ain’t happening!

I have decided there is only one viable alternative and that is socks and trousers off and in after it; hopefully I shouldn’t have to go out too far to get it.

3.00 p.m.
As it starts to pitter-patter with rain again I pause to reflect on the ‘pontoon’ I have constructed which I hope might just give me another couple of feet out from the bank.

All manner of flotsam and jetsom line the banks of the river and I managed to salvage enough materials to build something which might help. I’ve also taken a shower using the solar ‘Camp Shower’ which although does not provide piping hot water, at least takes the chill off the cold. There has been little sunshine and it’s to its credit it ‘warmed’ the water as much as it did.

I feel wonderful! Having showered, washed my hair, cleaned my teeth, and shaved, I feel really invigorated. It is amazing the effect such cleansing has – it is quite symbolic too – a kind of washing away the previous unsuccessful hours and lack of action.

I still feel they will come eventually.

4.00 p.m
All four rods recast. This time I have short, stiff rigs on the single bait downstream offerings; these are accompanied by pva ‘socks’ of goodies. The double-bait upstream rods are the long, flexi-rigs with no socks. Between the four of them there must be something the carp like. That’s if there are any there. They are still not anticipated to arrive until tomorrow.

The Session Wine Choice
This is a Sauvion, Saumur-Champigny (red) costing £4.00 from the ferry shop. Very nice. Recommended. Went well with the beef mince, rice, onion, and pepper ‘thing’ I created last night. Tonight it’s chicken pasta so we’ll see how it goes with that.

7.00 p.m.
The wine proved an excellent accompaniment………………………………………… in the middle of writing this, the l.h. downstream rod is away! This proved to be a small skinny common of 11:04 to the single pellet and short, stiff, rig. Fish landed without too much trouble although it did get stuck on the ‘ridge’ – where the bottom shelves off into the deeper water. Best make up some more of those rigs!

Sunday, 7th.September 2008
12 Noon
A pretty amazing and drastic turn of events last night as the lateness of the journal entry shows.

Once again, the weather was horrible, with intermittent rain showers and really gusty winds, in fact I have never known the wind blow so hard in France – branches were coming down off the trees – the lot!

I continued the regime of baiting and put out single baits on all four rods; each rod was accompanied by a pva ‘sock’ and all hooklengths were short lengths of 20 lbs. Korda ‘Hybrid’. It didn’t take long for the Bream to start and once again my swim became ‘Bream City’ with the bobbins dancing up and down like yo-yos! I was really starting to get fed up with the perishers – curiously, all on one rod – the left-hand upstream rod baited with single pellet. Oh how Bream love pellets! Once again I withdrew this offering as I was getting pretty fed up with going up and down the steep bank, all the time attending to the snot-ridden things! Big Bream I like; smaller ‘skimmers – ugh!

At last I was able to settle down and get some sleep although it was little more than dozing, so hard was the wind blowing, the bivvy sides were rattling, kicking up a fair old racket. I must have been half-in and half-out of sleep when I became aware of the drone of one of the buzzers. Stumbling about, I managed to find my bivvy slippers and negotiate my way down the little steps I had cut into the bank to make the descent safer. One of the boily rods was away and in no time at all there was the satisfying lunge of a big carp on the end. I was happy to let it go and yielded line before imposing myself on the fish which was threatening to get far too big for its boots!

The fight was a fairly standard affair – it made it into weed once or twice but was no match for the ‘big guns’ I had brought with me – 3 lbs. TC Harrison Ballistas and 30 lbs. Berkeley ‘Fireline’ braid, ideal for cutting through weed and lilies. There was a certain amount of trepidation however, bringing the fish over the ridge and through the shallows. I knew this would be problematic but the ‘pontoon’ made all the difference and I was finally able to scoop out a fine looking common.

This fish turned scales at 24:12 and was a very pleasing result after what felt like a lot of hard graft. A quick photograph and it was back in the water – and it was here that the problems started. There wasn’t water deep enough to cover its back and despite pushing it out as far as I could with the landing-net handle, it just lay there, upright, and unmoving in the dark.

I quickly donned the waders and entered the water at the margins – and just as quickly retreated. I sank in up to my knees and test-probing with the landing-net handle revealed it was just as bad further out. What to do?

Back at home I had made a solemn promise to Christine that I would not do anything unsafe – safety first at all times. Whilst I deeply regretted the circumstances of the now stranded fish, I was adamant that risking my own safety was not an option. I could do nothing except hope it managed to find its way into deeper water and home. I must say, I did not anticipate the returning of a fish would be a problem – rather, getting it into the net had been my one and only concern.

I there and then resolved to abandon the fishing from this swim and reeled in all four rods; I just could not risk this sort of thing happening again. In the morning I would move to another part of the river and use the rest of the trip as a scouting mission, exploring other locations.

I was up and about at first light, packing all the kit away into the car. The good news was that the fish was now gone – it had managed to get itself off the shallows and away.............phew! was I relieved?!

A quick look at the map and I decided to investigate the north side of the island, about a kilometre away from where I was at the moment.
....................................................................................................
Much of the river valley is given over to sand and gravel extraction. The many barges that ply up and down, carry this material to where it (presumably) is distributed all over France. One of the unfortunate aspects of these activities is the extensive riverside works which are an unsightly intrusion into an otherwise beautiful river. I did however, mange to find a very ‘tasty’ looking spot down at the river’s edge with only just enough (and no more) room to set up the rods and all my paraphernalia.

With baits out (an underam lob distance) I sat back and watched the huge barges throwing up their immense wash as they went up and down in front of me.

What of the prospects? My intention as always is to use the same strategy that has proved so successful in the past – setting up a scent trail and drawing the fish up to the swim. The only drawback to this is that time is required and I have only two nights left to do this. Will this time be sufficient?

3.15 p.m.
There is a curious bright yellow object in the sky; rumour has it, it’s called The Sun! It is the first I have seen of it this trip!

My current GPS:
N **.*****
E *.*****

4.30 p.m.
Everything has gone lovely and quiet. No boats are running, no-one is about save the very occasional dog-walker, there is no traffic or industrial noise. It is very peaceful.

Despite very heavy leads, there is still a strong current and I am having trouble holding bottom here. The water is very deep – 15 ft. plus I should think, although this I deem, is a good thing. I saw one or two fish topping earlier (not carp but it seems as if they have stopped now.

8.00 p.m.
Another bombardment of bait to try and get the fish up to the swim. On recasting the rods, I found that the pellets were missing; is this due to them ‘washing away’? or are there ‘Ronnies and Reggies’ in the river? I couldn’t see any sign of their usual scrapings on the boilies however. There doesn’t seem much point in leaving pellets out for long periods of time.

Still getting rain showers. The weather has been bloody awful this trip.

Monday, 8th.September 2008
9.00 a.m.
The evening started off with the usual high winds and squally showers, but later cleared to leave a fine, still, and chilly, night.

I had seen one or two carp in the early evening but as it got dark this activity intensified. Swirling and leaping could be heard in the dark – exciting stuff!
There were lots of yo-yo bites to all rods early on; a succession of Breams were hooked – and duly returned when all of a sudden, the bites ceased. There was a brief pause, and then a screaming take ensued to one of the downstream rods! I was on it immediately and hooked into a fish which tore off downstream. It felt a good fish and I let it go, slackening the clutch to avoid a hook-pull.

This really was a lively fish which was up and down the river like a mad thing! – it felt almost demented in its desire to free itself from its tether, but eventually I slipped the net under a long, lean common which weighed 15:10 but which looked as if it should have been a lot more.

This was a real result for me as it made all the effort in relocating to the other side of the island worthwhile; I felt really pleased with myself and rebaited all three of the remaining rods. I decided that four were too many for such a confined swim – three adequately covered my baited area and also gave me more room to land fish, as well as move about.

As I lay in my sleeping-bag, I could hear the sounds of the occasional carp rolling or splashing out in the river. Once again, I couldn’t say whether I was awake, dozing, dreaming, or asleep – but I heard two distinct, seperate bleeps of the buzzer, followed by a screaming ‘one-toner’. Without being aware of how, I found myself standing in the dark hanging on to a fish which was absolutely roaring off! This fish really got a trot on and I should think it took a good thirty-forty yards of line against the clutch.

Eventually it slowed and I managed to regain much of what had been lost – but then it set off again on another run – this time upstream and I just had to let it go. Eventually, after slowing it down and regaining some line and then further negotiating runs across the river I eventually netted an absolute peach of a common.

This fish weighed 25:09 and was one of the ‘chunkiest’ commons I have ever caught. Not fat, or particularly deep-gutted – just solid as a rock, a veritable Arnold Swartzenegger of a fish – total muscle!

Happy days. Or in this case – night!

11.00 a.m.
Just done some sums and the average size of fish caught so far this session is 19.3 lbs. Proving once again that this location has a better than average weight than those at ********. It seems that when you get a twenty they are 24 or 25 pounds – whereas at **********they are 21 or 22; plus, there are always a lot of small fish at ********(single figures).

I have changed the rig on the downstream rod – it’s a short, stiff, rig but I have tied a Dacron Hair to the hook and knotless-knotted the coated braid to the hook. This way there is no ‘joint’ between the hook and the stiff braid although the Dacron braid allows the bait to behave naturally.

1.00 p.m.
An old character has turned up and is fishing the far bank. He appears to be using three, light, telescopic rods, baited with what seem to be sprats. There seems to be no form of bite indication, the rods have been laid down at the water’s edge where presumably the rod-tips will go or one of the rods will end up in the river! I wonder what he is fishing for? Pike? Eels? They eat what they catch over here so it could be either.

Three EDF vans have turned up and are parked in the car park behind me. The workers obviously know one another as this is obviously their lunchtime trysting-place – it is a typical Gallic scene however. Out came the bottles of wine and the baguettes. Very civilized.

2.00 p.m.
Not a single, solitary piece of action have I had all day – even the Bream have had enough, though I suspect they will return this evening.

More bait has gone in and I have just enough left for a final baiting this evening. Rationing the resources has proved very efficient. One thing that has been a success is catapulting out the 18 mm. Boilies with the ESP ‘Particle’ Catapult. Up to a dozen at a time, landing in small groups gives a very good distribution. Better than putting them out in one’s and two’s and taking all day at it. Will adopt this mode again.

Fishing the French rivers really is an absolute joy. It enables you to blend in and become a part of what is a wild environment, the environment in which the quarry live. These are no commercially reared, fed, fish, designer-contrived to be the maximum weight possible, but pure, unadulterated wild creatures whose domain is the wild river in which they live.

I am tempted to say that size doesn’t matter with these fish such is their allure; it is a fact however that a wild thirty from a wild river far, far outstrips their equal from a commercial venue. This is not to demean the commercial fish because they have an inherent pleasure-providing value. It’s just that these wild river fish possess a Quality that puts them at a completely different level. The numbers that just happen to be their weight are just that – numbers. It is not the numbers that are the value of these fish, but they take on the environment and its purity which is as much a part of them as it is the river in which they dwell. I just love them.

3.30 p.m.
I think it was the insistent flies continually settling on me which suggested I probably needed to take a shower! Up to now I had not had the opportunity to test the ‘Camp Shower’ properly – there being so little sunshine on these French trips over the past couple of years, but today had been such a glorious day it was an ideal opportunity.

I put some water in the bag at about nine this morning and left it flat on the ground in the sun to heat up. Even given that the sun has gone behind the clouds for much of the time, I was delighted to find the water pleasantly warm – not hot, but decidedly warm. A roaring success. Thus invigorated it was time to start thinking about collecting all non-essential items together and putting them in the car ready for a prompt departure tomorrow morning, an unpleasant if essential task. Don’t want to be late for the ferry. [Note - I was!]

4.00 p.m.
Another old gent has turned up and has gone to fish under the bridge with a livebait and huge orange ‘cigar’ float. Bless him; I’ve seen five-year-olds make a better fists of things. Still, I hope he enjoys his fishing......... whoops, as I am writing I see he has taken a tumble down the bank. He seems to be o.k. though and is upright. For a minute I thought I might have to do my ‘entente cordiale’ thing and go and lend a hand.

Some time later I see him running down the bank to his rod and strike – he is attached! Presently, a friend materialises out of no-where and puts together his landing-net which he has left up at his car. In short order, a large fish is landed – and what a fish!

This looks (through the binoculars) to be all of 8-10 lbs. I can’t see what it is but I guess it’s a Pike; zooming the digital image on the camera however it looks more like a freshwater Bass (?) I didn’t even know there were any in the river – although a closer examination shows it’s probably a Zander. Whatever it was it receives several lusty blows to its head with a short length of steel pipe! It is then wrapped in a towel, and put in the back of the car!

Tea tonight apparently!

6.00 p.m.
There is a sudden mad flurry of activity out on the river as one huge barge after another comes chugging through.

The tsunamis they send up are massive as first the river is sucked down revealing the bottom – then comes surging back in with tidal waves swamping the banks. I cannot imagine the huge forces at work here, but the immense wall of water being driven in front of the bows of some of these craft is testament to the astronomical numbers which must be involved.

Four or five went through, one after another, each time the bobbins were set going nineteen to the dozen, the buzzers bleeping hysterically in accompaniment. The extreme upstream rod was doing a right merry dance – different to the other two – so I lifted into it on the off-chance. There was something on the end! This was in the form of a 7:08 Barbel, fairly hooked in the mouth.

Setting a new pb for me I returned it after a hastily taken snap.

Now the question is “does it count?” i wasn’t fishing deliberately for them so I cannot claim any merit in the capture. As a Barbel it was a modest one, but supposing it had been of record-breaking size? (in actual fact it did break a record – my own!) Now there’s one for the philosophers. I shall ‘count’ it anyway.

This fish did not like being out of the water and I held it in the current for quite a long time before I let it go and I wasn’t entirely happy about its welfare when it went. Seems Barbel are not as robust as other species when it comes to hanging about on the bank waiting to have their photo’s taken.

8.00 p.m.
It seems very quiet out on the river now – I haven’t seen or heard from a fish for ages. I’m just anxious that last night’s action was a one-off. I don’t think I’ve over-baited; most of it will be well on its way to the English Channel by now anyway. Can’t help wondering though.

Tuesday, 9th.September 2008
On the ferry home
After the Barbel went back, I busied myself with attending to several preparations for the journey home tomorrow. All non-essential kit was taken back to the car and I made sure the Ferry Terminal was programmed into the SatNav.

I always find this final night’s fishing an odd affair. On the one hand, it can be the culmination of all the hard work done throughout the trip and often yields the best results of the whole session. On the other, I am always missing Christine and know how anxious she gets for my safety; I was really looking forward to seeing her.
It was a lovely evening, the golden rays of the setting sun illuminating the banks of each side of the river in a gorgeous, warm, glow. The temperature however was dropping and it felt decidedly chilly. Fish however began to move as soon as it got dark and it seemed as if some bizarre switch had been thrown – the river suddenly became alive with fish! Carp, and other silver fish species suddenly all joined in a spectacular display of rolling, leaping, and swishing in the darkness. The last of the barges had been through of course and maybe this was the preferred time to feed – when boat traffic had ceased.

As if on cue, the Bream began their activities again, ‘yo-yo-ing’ the bobbins up and down like demented Jack-in-the-Boxes! The year class I was catching were the same size as at the previous location – slightly smaller than those Phil and I had caught back in the Spring. There must be a very high density of Bream in this section of river for they were proving to be a confounded nuisance. Future trips must allow for this and bait-wise I’ll probably bring extra large ‘donkey-chokers’ to avoid them.

I caught a couple of these nuisances, quickly dispatching them back into the water, wondering whether all the feed I had put in had done the little more than attract them and hold them, in which case, they could bloody well clear off!

At this point I started to get very fast, jerky sort of bites, some of which pulled line from the ‘clutch-runner’ – much too excitable for Bream! When one finally turned into a full-bloodied take I thought I had hooked into a small carp – the fish fighting like a little terrier, giving numerous rod-jerking wrenches; most un-carp-like (or Bream for that matter). When I slipped the net under the fish and banked it in the darkness I could see it had the glorious silver flanks of another Barbel!

This one was slightly bigger than the first and weighed 8:12, thereby breaking my pb for the second time that evening! Again, did it count though?

Bites were more or less unremitting for most of the early part of the night, the only interruption coming when a series of lifts turned into a proper take resulting in a small common of about 8 lbs. No sooner had this fish been returned to the river than there was yet another series of jerky lifts followed by a ‘proper’ take. Again, the fish fought in a most un-carp-like way and when I finally netted it, yet another Barbel graced the net – it was even bigger than the previous two and I couldn’t contain my astonishment uttering the familiar expletive. When I weighed it, it was dead on 9 lbs. Like the previous fish I didn’t take photographs as I didn’t want to risk the fish – it went back straight away. I wish Phil had been on hand to do the honours, for it was a great fish.

Further action followed during the night and my plan for getting much needed sleep before the long drive home tomorrow went right out of the window. Three carp picked up my boilies this time, the ‘shoal’ of Barbel seemingly having buggered off. Fish of 14:12,

19:02,

and 20:00 dead were all weighed and returned to the river in what had been a now very productive night. Curiously, of the eight fish caught during the trip – all were commons; not a mirror or leather amongst them. Perhaps this demonstrates the dominant nature of the gene giving rise to common carp scaling within wild fish spawning naturally in the river.

One final fish was hooked just as I was taking the other rods down; unfortunately, this was lost due to a hook-pull near the net amongst the rocks lining the margins. From what I saw it wasn’t a huge fish – although it would have been nice to put another score on the score-sheet.

And so into the car and head for home.....................

Monday, August 25, 2008

2008-08-25T22:41:00.000-07:00

Murston nr. Sittingbourne, Lake 4

SAC, Murston, Lake 4

My first session at Murston on a cloudy, grey, overcast, windy afternoon. Access to the Fourth Lake was easy and I was able to fish secure in the knowledge that the car was safe – I could see it from where I was fishing and this was a great reassurance.
As expected, the lake was extremely weedy and it was obviously going to be a tough job finding somewhere fishable. There were two characters fishing on the far bank and I went round to see how they were getting on; both were fishing poles with sweetcorn as bait and lots of small fish were reported. One of them said however he had caught a Rudd of about three pounds! Could this be true? We are talking National Specimen size here and I don’t doubt it as I’ve heard similar from Phil. My appetite was whetted for them immediately.

My walk along the near bank revealed all the swims weeded up so it was a case of far bank or nothing. Fortunately, there was a ‘Secret Swim’ between the two old geezers and I set up there.

The area to the left of the pitch was almost completely weeded right up. There were some clear spots in the margins but I suspect this was where members had been dragging; where I was and to the right of me, the water was a bit clearer although weed was still present underneath. I managed to find clear-ish water in front of me an under-arm lob out and I set about baiting-up this spot with the Vitalin; I didn’t over-do it too much as I suspect I have done so in the past – particularly on School Pool and I suspect this contributed to my failure. Better I think to build the swim gradually and only lay down groundbait by re-casting the Method Feeders. One rod was baited with artificial corn, one with Crab Pellet, and the other with Pineapple Crush boily. I was very interested to see the response to the boily following the conversation I’d had with Phil regarding bait and my own thoughts on attractiveness.
The corn had been out about ten minutes or so before there was a Breamy-type take and I hooked a fish which shot off into the weed. There wasn’t a thing I could do about it on the John Wilson and it took a good deal of heaving, humping, and hand-lining to get it out. Get it out I did however and landed a five and a half pound Tench! I was absolutely ecstatic with this fish as it seemed as if the plans had at last come to fruition. It was a long-ish, lean individual and I should think had the capacity to go over six on a good day.

Back out with the baits and it’s a long wait for the next fish. This was a rip-roaring take I was convinced was a carp as it shot straight into the weed and came to a dead stop. Initially I couldn’t move it and was convinced I’d have to pull for a break, but by careful handlining I was able to shift a big clump of weed towards me and to the bank. I had no idea if the fish was still on – all I could see was the weed so I just put the net under the whole lot and heaved it onto the bank. Parting the mass of weed, there lay a fish of about four pounds – so it had stayed on after all!

There was one more fish after this – another of about four pounds odd and although I stopped on after dark there were no more takes.

The Fourth Lake at Murston is a fantastic water. Rich as a Sultan’s horde, the water exploded with fry every time the feeder hit the water – they were on it in a flash; the water is alive with fish and I am greatly looking forward to some winter action on here. Some tactic to beat the small fry will be called for – probably a largish particle like Chic Pea and perhaps similar tactics used at Longshaw Farm to beat the tiddlers might succeed. There are also Pike present and I am looking forward to having a go at them with the spinning rod when conditions allow. What with the Tench, Rudd, and Carp there is a wealth of fishing here.

Saturday, 19th.July 2008

2008-07-21T14:15:00.000-07:00

Bysing Wood

This summer has been fairly horrendous. What with being made redundant, we had launched into re-decorating the kitchen just before I found out I had lost my job and were committed to not only a mountain of work – but hefty expensive into the bargain. Although I had managed to find employment, there was work to be done at home in every spare moment so consequently, fishing has had to take something of a back-seat. On the few occasions I had managed to get out, the lake was either full, conditions were dreadful (gale force winds and driving rain), or like this weekend, matches were taking place and the venue was off-limits.

My target lake is the School Pool in Faversham and the aim is to catch one of the few big Bream and Tench – but things just haven’t gone right. With work now coming to a conclusion on the kitchen I decided to have an evening session on Bysing Wood where there were several things I wanted to try out.

My tactics had previously focused on Method-Feeders and boilies for bait with corn and maggots as alternatives on float-fished and quiver-tipped rigs close-in to the margins. By burying the boily in the method ball I found I could consistently fish down through quite weedy swims and still have a good presentation, but I was still concerned that the bait would end up under the feeder (despite using Korda feeders with the lead on one side of the cage so that it ‘always’ settles bum-down as it were on the lake bed). I came up with the idea of fishing the method feeder Helicopter-style. Now this is not my idea – I saw Matt Hayes using it for carp on one of his programmes, but it occurred to me that the hooklength could be hidden in the method ball, much as a ‘Stick Mix’ hides the hooklength on a carp rig. The very short dangling hooklength would be very unlikely to tangle and if it did, could be folded up inside the groundbait.

I nearly lost out on my chosen swim. I left the car just inside the gate and went off to have my usual gander at the lake before starting fishing and as I was returning from The Dead Tree Swim (which I was very pleased to see available) someone passed me on the track in his car obviously making for the same place. Now the question arises here – “who gets choice of the swim?” was it ‘rightfully’ mine because I was there first – or was it the chap in his car because he’d got his tackle with him? I regret to say I rather pressed my case and asserted my claim although I am still uncertain whether it was legitimate or not.

This is one of the most popular swims on the lake and is very productive, offering many options for bait positioning. My plan was to fish across to the far reeds as close as I could cast and build a bed of Vitalin and Layers Mash groundbait on which hopefully, the Tench and Bream would eventually settle on.

I was immediately struck by how seriously, a member fishing opposite was taking Health and Safety issues – as a Health and Safety Officer myself I applauded his risk assessment skills in wearing a ‘Hi-Viz’ vest during fishing! Perhaps there were low-flying Pteradactyls, Eagles, or Flying Fish about the place. Being seen by such hazards is an important part of Health and Safety!

I catapulted several balls of the groundbait mixture out in front, just short of the reeds and cast two rods onto the feed. One rod was equipped with a Tutti-Fruitti boily and the other, popped-up Enterprise corn anchored by a number 6 shot, half an inch from the hook. I have caught carp on this bait but never Tench or Bream and I was keen to 'get off the mark' with them on it.

My Method balls were squeezed onto the cage with the hooklength between the groundbait and the cage. The idea of this was that the groundbait covered the line, disguising it, much like the carp-angler's 'Stick' rig. Almost immediately I started getting bites at the start of the session which was to produce more Bream than I have ever had in a sitting at Bysing Wood. The fish all seemed to be of the same 'year class' - fish of between two and two-and-a-half pounds, not a few ounces more nor a few ounces less. I was getting them one after another and when I changed to a 16 mm. Cotswold Baits drilled Crab Pellet the catch rate increased. Bream (and Tench for that matter) absolutely love pellets and the difference in catch rate between them and the boilies was quite marked; I think I shall make the pellets my front line bait in the future. I also had fish on the popped-up corn too so avid were they feeding.

Then there was a blank spell and the bites suddenly fell right off. I suspected that a Pike was about as there were a series of swirls and a period of small fish leaping out of the water followed by the familiar slashing vortex but it wasn't long before I had another positive bite on the pellet rod...........

As soon as I hooked it I knew I'd got one of the better ones; although Bream hardly fight at all, the dead weight on the end of the line signified a decent fish - which it proved to be at seven pounds eight ounces. I slipped it into the keepnet to see whether I could catch some others to go with it.

I suppose the rod had been back in the water about five minutes or so when there was another take - unfortunately I was away from the rod having a pee - but got back in time to hit the fish (and pee down my trousers at the same time). Again, this too felt a good fish although unfortunately it came off after having been on for only a few seconds.

I have noticed this with Bream and Method Feeders. I think you must hit them very quickly as they seem most adept at shedding the hook. Some takes will see the bobbin hopping up and down like a Jack-in-the-Box and if left the fish will get off. Theoretically, by the time a bite is registered on the bobbin, the fish is hooked (by the resistance of the rig); they do however seem to be able to shed it quite readily. Probably, this is something that varies from water to water and happens more on some venues than others. At Bysing Wood, the dominant activity is carp-fishing with resistance rigs and I imagine that the Bream have got used to being hooked with carp angler's rigs and have learnt how to shed them. The carp certainly have learnt such tricks. In future I shall try to be far quicker 'off-the-mark' than I have been in the past at striking these bites.

The Bream fed on and off for the rest of the afternoon and if I had put all of them in the keepnet I would have had a fair old weight. I hung on however for another decent one and some time after dark I had another of 6:14. Not big, but good-ish. These bigger Bream are almost like a different species. Whereas their smaller bretheren are pale, insipid, slimy individuals, fish of over six pounds or so are bronze coloured and virtually slime-free, an altogether different kettle of worms.
Perversely, the hours of darkness saw a fall-off in sport - the complete reverse of what normally happens and there was just the odd twitch and smaller sized Bream at intervals.

At some point, just before eleven o'clock in the evening, I had a more positive take. When I struck and hooked the fish I at first thought I'd hooked into a snag. I knew I wasn't in the reeds as I was 'clipped-up' to get the distance in the darkness. This fish however was completely solid.................and then eventually, very slowly, it moved and started coming towards me. At this point I was in a fair old state of excitement - the fish felt massive and was undoubtedly the biggest Bream I'd ever hooked - I vaguely saw the commotion in the water in the light of the full moon that was shining and it looked simply huge! For a long time my ambition has been to catch a 'double' and at last it seemed I was going to do it! It was far and away bigger than the 7:08 I'd caught that afternoon.
As I put the landing-net in the water and crouched down to net the fish....................the hook fell out.

To say I was gutted is an understatement. I have fished a long time for my double and having come so close on more than one occasion I am well deserving of it. This loss of such a big fish however was not the first time such an event has happened and I dare say it won't be the last. It doesn't make it any easier to bear however. It was horrible. Loss and heartache.

Although this disaster was awful to suffer, there was a positive aspect to it. It meant that the loss of the fish mattered. It had me thinking that the minute such a loss meant nothing - that it was just a mere inconvenience, then the meaning of what I was doing - the position that fishing holds in my life - is still the same that it has been all these years.

The minute the loss of a big fish means nothing, is the time to hang up the rods and don pipe and slippers.........

2008-05-23T03:25:00.000-07:00

Thursday, May 22, 2008

In the interests of honesty and faithful reporting, I am about to recount what amounts to the most embarrassing event in all my years of carp fishing; it’s making me cringe as I recall it!.........

I decided to have another session at Bysing Wood – this time after carp. For many years, reliable ‘hot-spots’ around the lake have consistently produced fish and all the old-timers in the club know exactly where they are and what they must do to produce a take. One of these spots is in a swim known as ‘The Compound’, a dug-out situated right in front of the old gravel-washing plant which used to be used to clean the diggings in the days when gravel was still extracted. To the left of the swim and a little way down the bank is a willow tree which now grows out over the water – and a few yards out in the water is the hot-spot from which the carp are caught. At regular intervals, summer and winter, carp swirl in this spot, and a well presented bait at some point during a day’s fishing almost always produces a fish. It’s a poor day when nothing shows in this spot and if they can’t be caught here, they probably can’t be caught anywhere.

You can always tell when the fish are active by tell-tale swirling; curiously, this action is confined to a small area the size of a coffee table and you have to be pretty accurate in placing your bait right on it. Quite what it is that makes this few square feet of lake so appealing I have no idea, there don’t appear to be any snags, depressions, plateau, bars or any other feature, no change in the bottom such as soft or hard mud, mussel bed, bloodworm bed, McDonalds Burger Bar – nothing. They have always liked it though.

I wanted to try something different today. Due to my unemployment, I have spent a lot of time watching the fishing channel 274. Matt Hayes demonstrated a Method Feeder fished ‘Helicopter’ style with plastic corn as bait at Horseshoe lake catching loads of Tench. Since I had never caught a fish on artificial baits before I wanted to give them a serious go under propitious conditions rather than a last gasp last resort. I decided to try and emulate Matt Hayes’ Helicopter Method Feeder style using two grains of pop-up corn with a number 4 shot an inch away from the hook and milled Vitalin as the groundbait.

I have found burying the bait in the groundbait to be very successful at Bysing Wood – I think the fish prefer to see hookbaits right in the groundbait as distinct from on their own outside of it; it also makes the rig 100% anti-tangle.

I threw out some balls of Vitalin before lobbing the rig right ‘on the money’ and fished the second rod (rather half-heartedly I must say) out towards the middle of the lake in the faint hope of one of the big Bream. This was daft really as conditions were bright and sunny, not at all what I would prefer for the species; I’d have done better to have fished something else for the carp – but there you go. This was a silly decision on a day of silly-ness which proved to get silly to the point of humiliating embarassment!

There was lots of activity on the part of the carp which weren’t really feeding on the bottom – they were cruising around just under the surface and the sensible thing to have done would have been to try for them with Chum Mixer on the surface or pellet fished just under (or come to think of it, the floating feeder – now there’s a method worth a go). Today however wasn’t really about hardcore fishing, it was a relaxing day down by the lake getting away from the troubles of unemployment. I have never been unemployed in my life, and at age 57 it takes some coming to terms with i can tell you!

It was whilst I was fiddling about with something that the hot-spot rod roared off! I didn’t have to strike as it was just a case of hanging on while the clutch screeched and the fish powered off up the bank. The Shakespeare Mach 2 Barbel rod was not only remarkably sensitive to the lunges of the fish but had enough power for me to impose myself on it – the fish swung out towards the middle of the lake and I knew that barring the unforeseen she’d be mine.

The scrap was intense with the fish coming to the top and thrashing the water to a froth. It was a really active common that was all over the place and fought much harder than the fish I’d had in France recently. Eventually however I got it over the net – and just about managed to scoop it up it was so long! My Korum circular net is 26 inches across the frame and the fish overlapped by some way! I had to use a scooping action to get it in and even though the fishs’ tail folded in, there was a real danger it could hop out! I dropped the rod and managed to get hold of the frame to prevent the fish getting out and hauled it up the bank onto my unhooking mat. My first reaction was that the fish was enormous! The length of it was tremendous! There was a distinct possibility that after thirty years of fishing at Bysing I had at last caught one of its thirties!

I quickly got out the ‘Avon’ scales which I don’t really like using as it is easy to make a mistake counting the revolutions of the needle to mark the correct weight – but after zero-ing I popped the fish in the bag and watched the needle go round to thirty-two pounds exactly! I was overjoyed with this and yelled across to my good friend Stan fishing opposite to come round and help me take photographs which he did whilst I waited at the margins with the fish in the water (in the net). I could tell by the wry look on Stan’s face when he arrived that he was circumspect,

“A thirty? You sure!”

He had come equipped with his digital scales and we re-weighed the fish there and then……

“I can’t be absolutely certain And’, but I don’t think it has lost ten pounds in weight in the time it’s taken me to walk round!”

“What!... It can’t be!..... Oh no! Don’t say I’ve read me scales wrong!”

Yes dear reader – today’s prize for Plonker of the Week goes to – yes! It’s Andy Spreadbury! For failing to read his Avon scales properly and not being able to see at a glance that a twenty-two pound fish wasn’t in fact thirty-two!

Even as I write this I hang my head in shame. To be adrift by one or two pounds in estimating a fish’s weight is understandable; to be wrong by five pounds you could put down to poor judgment, but ten pounds?!

Seduced by the prospect of a thirty I allowed my ambition to override my common sense……..

My excuse is that the fish was exceptionally long and lean, and hollow; and oh yes – was sucking its stomach in at the time; and yes – was on the Atkins diet and must have a size zero obsession.
That’s my excuse anyway………

Bysing Wood - Sunday, 9th.March 2008

2008-05-19T21:36:00.000-07:00

I decided to get away from the worries of my recent unemployment and have a session at Bysing Wood after the double-figure Bream. I expected that because it was a Monday I would have the place to myself and the pick of the lake. Wrong. A lot of the swims on the Road Bank were occupied so I had to go round to the far side and fish my old favourite – The Beach.

With recent heavy rain, the water levels had risen somewhat and there was now an extra six inches of depth on the very shallow bar that runs right across the front of the pitch – a distinct advantage when trying to get deep, slab-sided Bream towards the net.

Spring is my favourite time of year to be out fishing and I often think that some of the best fishing of the whole year is to be had at this time. Temperatures were reasonable (if a bit cooler than of late), and the whole place had an air of freshness and renewal; blossom bloomed on the trees and there was a wonderful sense of newness and purity.

My plans this year involve an assault on the large Bream and Tench of the nearby School Pool, but I wanted to use sessions at Bysing Wood to test a different approach I intended to use this summer. This involved the use of Method Feeders, short, very supple hooklinks, and the hair attachment method I had found so successful in France recently.

This involved the use of a very short shanked hook (ESP Raptor pattern, size 10) and a hair so short you can just about comfortably get the hair-stop through the loop. The hooklength material was 8 lb. BS ‘Fox Supersilk’, an extremely supple braid that looks like a string of weed when wet. It is the most supple braid I have yet found, although can be difficult to use in terms of tangles. So supple is it that it is rather prone to wrapping back around the anti-tangle tubing – yet offers advantages over conventional braids which still have an inherent stiffness, which worsens with increasing breaking strain.

Feeders were a new lightweight version; I didn’t want to overload my Shakespeare Mach 2 Barbel rods and fished them very tight with no ‘drop’ on the bobbins, consequently, as soon as they were picked up off the bottom I’d know about it.

My plans involve the use of ‘Vitalin’ groundbait although I had none with me today. I had some white crumb and VDE Method Mix however which I wanted to use up so I mixed the two together. The resultant stodge however was a sticky, gooey mess, and quite unsuitable, although I had tyo go with it as I had nothing else. This was a reminder that a good knowledge of groundbait ingredients and how they behave when mixed together is a distinct advantage and I made a note to self to investigate this when time allows.

Baits were 12 mm. boilies in ‘Tutti-Fruitti’ and Pineapple flavourings. This was a change to my normal fishmeal offerings as I had ‘got wind’ that sweeter flavours were catching Bream on Bysing Wood. Twelve millimeters is about right for Bream I think; they are big enough to avoid the small fish such as Roach and Rudd, but not too big for even relatively small skimmers.
I began the session by mixing the groundbait and leaving it to stand for ten minutes while I rigged up the rods. I had planned to introduce the groundbait as catapulted balls with my ‘ESP Particle Pouch’ catty since it was the only one I had big enough to handle the balls I was using. In practice it was quite unsuitable and a specialist ‘groundbait’ catapult is obviously required; perhaps someone could recommend one?

I got groundbait out in front by means of a spod in the end although I wasn’t happy with the horrendous splashing that accompanies such an activity; it was that or nothing however. The skimmers didn’t mind though because I had an almost immediate response to the ‘Tutti’ – a fish of about two pounds bouncing the bobbin up and down like a yo-yo! This was quickly followed by another and further action for the next half-hour, all of which I missed for some reason. Don’t know why; just didn’t connect.

There then came a blank spell as the shoal moved off elsewhere and I can’t say I was all that sorry. Small Bream are not my favourite; I find theydon’t become interesting until they reach six or seven pounds or so when it’s almost like fishing for a different fish – and herein I think lies the essence of the approach to fishing for big Bream. You have to treat them like a different species altogether, for tactics which produce the skimmers – don’t necessarily produce the big ones and an approach designed to avoid the lesser fish is vital.

Feeding (as in all fishing) is vital, and in the case of trying to catch big Bream on Bysing Wood is essential to get right. Filling in the swim at the start of the session definitely encourages the fish to feed – but if a shoal of skimmers are present it adds nothing to the fishing to keep feeding them as they will just hang about, getting to the baits before their grandparents do. Far better to hang back on the feed and let them move off. I have more than once had bigger Bream after a shoal of skimmers have been through and it may well be a strategy of these larger fish to hang back and detach themselves from the youngsters and remain as a small group, ‘mopping-up’ what the ‘children’ don’t eat. It is often commented that Bream congregate as ‘year-classes’ of fish and move around with similar sized bretheren, consequently, large Bream will form only small groups, whereas skimmers number hundreds. Get stuck into a shoal of skimmers, and feed them and they will be with you all day – while the ‘daddys’ stand off with smiles on their faces and a “you can’t catch me” attitude!

In mid afternoon, and out-of-the-blue, I had a positive take to the ‘Tutti’ rod. As soon as I hooked it I knew I was into one of the big ones and I had just started to get it coming to the bank when my mobile rang! Now normally I would have ignored it, but since it might have been a job offer I took the call only to find it was an employment agency who had seen my CV on-line and could they talk about what sort of job I wanted! I had to explain that whilst important – I was currently attached to a very large Bream and could they call me back in ten minutes! This produced hoots of laughter from the young girl on the other end who thought it was histerical (??)!

This turned out to be a fish which looked close to my target (which I have been trying for years now to catch) of ten pounds – but which on weighing fell short at 9:01. No matter, I was chuffed to bits, and no sooner had I photographed and safely returned the fish when I had another take! This fish felt even bigger and was a real dead weight on the line and I was gutted when it inexplicably fell off! I was really disappointed with this for I feel sure this one might have been the fish to crack it.

Such is fishing, and is all the more reason to go back and have another try.

I fished on until darkness but had no further action of any kind.

2008-05-02T23:24:00.000-07:00

Preamble

Phil and I felt that we had really started to get to grips with the River and had begun to string together ever-improving catches; Phil’s pioneering spirit however was gnawing at him like an itch and he desperately wanted to explore other stretches of the 500 long kilometer river. Although I was content to continue to return to ‘our’ stretch (where I felt an overwhelming confidence), there was always the thought – “I wonder what’s around the next bend”. So it was we decided in the winter of 2007-2008 to look for – and fish other parts of the river. As usual, the project was approached with all the planning efficiency of a military operation:

Intelligence Gathering

I gave myself the task of finding new potential locations by means of visiting Internet sites to get clues as to where promising locations might be. Google was the search engine of choice and by using keywords such as ‘carp, fishing, peche, carpe, bouillette’ (the French word for boily) and the name of the river, I got ‘hits’ for both English and French sites. By using the “translate” facility in Google I could scan the French ones with ease and spent the next few months investigating the hundreds of ‘hits’.

Another technique I used (which yielded the most promising results), was to use “Google Earth” and zoom in on the river and pan upstream and downstream looking for anything unusual in the way of changes to the river topography such as barriers, side-streams, islands, channels, lagoons, in fact anything that might be a draw to the carp. One feature in particular I thought might have potential was anywhere carp might get out of the way of the main current and the disturbances created by the huge barges which ply up and down stream and after months of searching, following several ‘dead-ends’, I suddenly came upon this section of river:

The main channel flows from right to left at the top of the image – the bottom ‘U’ being exactly what I was looking for – a place where the carp could get out of the way of the barges since they would not bother to go the ‘long way’ round but would use the main channel. Phil thought it was a great location – especially for this trip which was scheduled for early Spring; he had fished our previous location in the Spring and had done better in the main flow than anywhere else so with me preferring the back-channels and Phil the main we were nicely situated to experiment and see which was the most productive.

The left-hand end of the island looked particularly ‘sexy’ as it was obvious eddies would be created by the right-to-left downstream flow and this should be a natural holding area.

Planning

We held several meetings to discuss tactics and make a plan of attack; such things as route to the target area, obtaining Carte de Peches, and bait were all considered and evaluated. We were like Generals planning a military assault and began the process by making endless lists of requirements for the trip – Rations, Navigation equipment, boat access, ‘assault kit’, and survival needs. A month before the ‘Go’, Phil booked the ferry whilst I printed off the maps (should TomTom let us down for some reason), and three weeks prior, I ordered my bait – boilies in eighteen and twelve millimeter, and twenty millimeter Halibut Pellets for feed. The boilies were put up in the loft to air-dry and hardened.

The week leading up to the trip was total chaos. Christine and I decided (on the spur of the moment) to gut the kitchen and replace it with a new one so it was a trip to MFI and reluctant use of the credit card, and frequent trips to ‘The Dump’ to get rid of the old carcasses, doors, and cabinets of the old one. This upheaval couldn’t have come at a worse time – but ‘She’ [who] must be obeyed! Christine did contribute however by shopping for me so I was well rationed-up for the four day ‘Assault’.

As usual, I made notes during the trip:

“There was a delay of over an hour at Dover due to ‘technical difficulties’ which saw us board the filthiest, most clapped-out tub on the high seas. The ferry was a disgrace – goodness knows where they resurrected the old barge from but the toilets were overflowing and the toilet floor was awash. A real ‘rust-bucket’ is being generous and added to its deficiencies were an inadequately stocked cafeteria and no cutlery. We were more than pleased to be off and on our way heading south.

Afternoon

We located the ‘island’ target area but had considerable difficulty navigating the locality. Anticipated access routes turned out to be non-existent and we had to go miles out of our way to conduct an adequate reconnaissance. The anticipated ‘hot-spot’ area on the tip of the island at the downstream end turned out to be twenty feet above the water, covered in thick vegetation, and quite unfishable although further round in the other arm of the river was fishable as well as inviting. Having decided this was where we would fish it was back into the truck and off to find somewhere to buy the ‘Carte de Peche’ needed for fishing all the rivers in France.

We looked everywhere – bars, shops, cafes; we even stopped people in the street and eventually found out we could get them from a branch of Decathlon, several miles away. This took some finding and some astute navigating, but eventually we were ‘legal’ and headed back to the river. This was not without difficulty as we got lost and simply couldn’t find the remote track which led to our ‘secret location’ we were sure had rarely (if ever) been fished.

By the time we had stopped off at a bar and had a glass of Stella, got to the river, unpacked the truck and set up the camps it was nearly dark. Hastily getting all rods rigged and cast out we sat back to watch hordes of Bream congregating in the margins giving us constant line bites to all rods! We were determined however to try and kick things off and set about baiting-up the middle of the river. Things looked promising too – the occasional fish moved at long range and we eagerly anticipated what the night would bring.

The last couple of hours were spent sitting under the stars and drinking wine (a rather nice Cabernet Sauvignon) until we collapsed into our pits.

Saturday, 26th. April

Morning

I awoke late to a glorious dawn; birds were singing, the sun was warm on my back (when I finally emerged) and all was right with the world.

I set-to and had a sort out, rebaiting and re-positioning all four rods. Feed which I had introduced the night before was topped-up and necessary housekeeping activities in the bivvy attended to. Phil and I had an early morning Conference:-

It was obvious the near bank was ‘infested’ with Bream and other unwanted bait-scoffers, the flow eddying back from right-to-left against the main flow of the current. It was also very shallow close in too – possibly too shallow to net a very big carp. The far bank conversely held the main flow of the river and was much deeper; it was in this deeper area we had seen (and heard) the odd fish moving. Already (and at an early stage) a crude understanding of this stretch of the river was evolving and during the day we hoped to expand our knowledge with further investigations and observation.

Afternoon

I stopped fishing at lunchtime to a) have a shower, shave, and sh*t, and b) to assist Phil out in the boat in conducting a survey of the river.

We were both circumspect as to the depths in front of us and their ability to hold the very large carp we sought. The fish-finder is mandatory equipment for this sort of activity and on this occasion enabled us to produce a rough profile of the bottom contours:

This was good news indeed and was a real boost to the confidence; this enabled us to further develop our understanding of the river and pursue other strategies:
1. Rod 1 - ¼ of the way across on a bed of mini-boilies
2. Rod 2 - ⅓ of the way across on a bed of boilies on a short link
3. Rod 3 - ½ way across on a bed of boilies on a long link
4. Rod 4 - ¾ of the way across on a bed of boilies (?)

Due to cooking duties and re-tying rigs I did not in fact achieve this arrangement until tea-time which although was late, was I hoped in time for an evening feeding spell (should there be one). At 5.30 p.m. Phil and I decided to have a siesta so we could stay up late into the evening.

Evening, 7.30 p.m.

The final pangs of doubt begin to creep in as evening comes and we have yet to have any sort of a take from carp. Earlier on we saw two boats with what were obviously carp anglers laden down with gear chug up the river in front of us. This is the first time either Phil or I have seen any local carp anglers; at least we are on the right track location-wise as it appeared they were interested in fishing near our camps.

Invasion of the Ants!

They are everywhere, running around inside the bivvy! In clothing, bedding, and food containers. Ugh!

Sunday, 27th.April

Morning

The evening was calm and beautiful with bats flitting in and around the trees and Tawny Owls calling to one another. There was a decided increase in activity on the part of the carp as swirls, leaps, and other water disturbances evidenced. These manifestations of carp presence boosted our confidence and the pessimism which had begun to set in during the afternoon waned a little. Phil and I sat up until gone midnight drinking wine and eating pasta and a tomato and cheese concoction conjured by Phil on the ‘Coleman’ (stove). At around two-ish we both retired to our pits – I fell into a fitful sleep wondering what our new location tomorrow would yield for we had more or less decided that if nothing happened during the night we would up-sticks and look elsewhere.

I awoke to Phil muttering…….

“I can hear a baitrunner……………….is it yours Andy?”

“No, all my alarms are on – I’m certain”

“ P’raps I forgot to turn mine on?”

In the dark I heard Phil stumble down the bank and squelch his way through the mud to his rod presently, I heard him cranking a reel and the distant swirl of a fish. He had forgotten to turn it on and what he heard was the spool revolving at a rate of knots!

The fight was relatively undramatic although the landing of the fish was not withoutits difficulties due to the shallow-ness of the water in the margins, but eventually Phil slipped the net under a pristine common which weighed twenty pounds on the button.

This was a great result for Phil and was just reward for a lot of effort in surveying and scatter-baiting on his part. We stayed up for a while to listen to the fish swirling and ‘lumping’ but eventually succumbed and went back to our pits.

Morning

I decided to re-organize and switch tactics; all rigs were re-tied for single baits (I had been fishing ‘doubles’ since these were the most successful on the other stretch of river we fish) and PVA ‘Funnel Web’ socks holding a mixture of Halibut Pellets, boilies, and mini-boilies, and these accompanied the rigs half-way across the river. This brought an instant response in the form of another 3 lb. Bream, quickly followed by another. We had been catching these from the start and had become more or less convinced these were the major inhabitants of the stretch – hence our lack of confidence there were enough carp about to make fishing for them worthwhile.

No sooner had I re-cast than I had another up-and-down sort of take which on lifting into was obviously yet another Bream. I was getting a bit fed up with them as there were obviously hordes of them out there and they were getting to the baits long before the carp had a chance. I’d got the fish a good way into the bank and could see it was another one of about three pounds or so – when there was a massive swirl in the water and several yards of line were ripped from the reel!

“That ain’t no Bream!” exclaimed Phil……….it certainly wasn’t and my first reaction was that it had been taken by a Pike; in actual fact we believe it was a Catfish. I was attached for perhaps two or three minutes before the 25 lb. ‘Silkworm’ hooklength was shredded near the lead. The catfish had taken a three-pound fish and over a foot of hooklength into its massive mouth – some mouth! How big was the catfish?!......

Afternoon

Yet again we are blessed with glorious sunshine. After recent arctic weather back home, it is a joy to feel the sun on our backs. Lunch was a confection of eggs, sausages, and bacon, wrapped up in a bun, all washed down with the excellent Cabernet Sauvignon.

The wind got up and provided a blessed relief from the hot sun which was heating up the bivvy like an oven. We pitched-up down at the water’s edge in the shade of the trees to seek refuge from is the unaccustomed heat. The breeze is cooling as we sip wine, munch biscuits, and watch Bream cloudying the water at our feet. No carp have show for hours and quite frankly I don’t expect to see any until this evening. Past experience has shown that the chances of a fish improve with every day that passes – it seems to take these fish a long time to a) realize there is food to be had, and b) actually get around to trying it. Every day that passes should mean the chances of a successful outcome are better.

I am sure there is a general feeling amongst those who have never attempted it that one has only to arrive in France and chuck-out and fish will be fighting each other to crawl up the rods! In actual fact nothing could be further from the truth and the carp in these wild river systems are as hard to catch as carp everywhere for the simple reason they could be anywhere along the literally hundreds of kilometers of the river’s length.

It is benign, peaceful, and quiet, and nothing disturbs the the absolute stillness of the ambience. At the moment it feels as if it doesn’t really matter whether I catch a carp or not; it is quite enough to just be here and play my part in the scenario in which I find myself.
4.00 p.m. – a slow stutter take produces another Bream of about three-and-a-half pounds. This was to one of the 20 mm. Halibut Pellets I have put out. At least it’s a fish. I really think we should move now.

Evening

One Bream this afternoon to a different tactic – 20 mm. Halibut Pellet over a bag of pellets and boilies – Phil and I worked hard at our baiting for the action we anticipate will come during the hours of darkness. Unless we do well tonight we have decided to move to ***** - the scene of former successes. We are agreed that although the past three days have been very enjoyable, the location has failed to come up to expectations. There are odd fish in this arm of the river but they are passing through and are not in sufficient quantities to make setting out our stalls for them worthwhile.

Although I am disappointed my results have been poor, the session has been a welcome interruption to what has been a very stressful few months. Still, there is still the night to fish and an opportunity for the fish to do the right thing and play ball!

Monday, 28th.April

Night

Banks of cloud gathered from the west and it was obvious we were going to be in for some rough weather. There came however the increase in air temperature that cloud cover confers and we sat out in shorts and tee-shirts eating Phil’s tacos and fajitas.

I re-cast all four rods. Single boily on all – bar the extreme right-hand offering which was the single 20 mm. Halibut Pellet that had interested the Bream during the afternoon. Phil remarked how little Bream action there was now, now it was getting dark, and no sooner had he suggested it might mean the carp might have pushed the Bream out than he had a blinding take to one of his rods!

I was helpless to give assistance – Phil was up to his shins in mud in his ‘bog hole’ and I just stood back and watched events in my bivvy slippers. Phil had the fish in the net in fairly short order and I helped him carry the fish along the bank to his unhooking mat. A mirror carp in very good condition weighing 21¾ lb.

I was very happy for Phil for it was a lovely fish but I secretly hoped my turn would come soon…..I didn’t however have long to wait!

As soon as I got inside my sleeping-bag, the pellet rod was away! – a spirited fight from a very energetic common that weighed 18 lbs. I was overjoyed with this and pranced up and down the bank singing “ I got one………I got one!”

This rod was re-cast to the same spot – way downstream to the limit of where I had previously introduced bait, and half an hour after we had settled back down, Phil had another fish, also a common, of exactly the same weight.

At this point, flashes of lightening rent the sky and the distant rumble of thunder could be heard. Time to batten down the hatches and zip-up the front door. The rain when it came was typically French – excessively huge amounts of rain accompanied by a light show of dramatic proportions. This was the start of a wet night, a night of wet, mud, slipping and sliding, and tumbling down the bank.

I lay in my bivvy with both the front door and my sleeping-bag zipped-up when suddenly there was the drone of one of my bite alarms! Line was being steadily drawn from the reel of the left-hand rod. I was down the bank (and nearly headlong into the river) in a flash and lifted into what seemed a good fish. With what was very shallow water in front of me, I had formed a plan involving the donning of waders to enter the water to net the fish. With all the rain however I was slipping and sliding in the dark, balancing on one leg with the rod in one hand and a wader in the other – desperately trying to maneuver my leg into the wader. The fish meanwhile was headed straight for Paris….

When I finally got myself sorted, the fish had unfortunately found a snag and as I heaved and humped to get it out, the hooklength parted at the point where the outer coating had been stripped back near the hook. This was bad news indeed and I was gutted – but I quickly re-tied the rig and got the bait back into the water. Wet through, I retired to my bivvy to dry out and hopefully get some shut-eye. No chance of this however as the re-cast rod was away again! This time I played the fish to the bank before attempting the waders – although on this occasion I fortunately didn’t have to as Phil was on hand to perform the netting operations; another common, slightly larger than the first at 19 lbs.

Back out with a fresh boily and it’s back to the bivvy to try and get some much needed sleep. Phil and I had both developed severe headaches – a combination of a lack of sleep and an enthusiasm for the Cabernet Sauvignon! I did at least manage to drop-off and was just succumbing when the buzzer was going yet again! This was a real screamer of a take – what carp-anglers call a ‘one toner’ and as soon as I hooked it realized it was a good fish.

It made off determinedly for the far side of the river and I had to let it go, albeit against steady pressure. Mindful of the snags however I did my best to hustle him back towards the near bank and I found Phil beside me ready and waiting with the net.

The fish thrashed around a good deal in the very shallow water and Phil made a couple of abortive attempts at scooping it out. For a minute I thought he was going to knock the fish off – but he managed to get it in the net and it was ours!

This was a really impressive looking fish, the scales showing 31 lbs.! to say I was pleased is an understatement; I had gone from an anticipated blank with its attendant despondency – to total joy and elation in the space of only an hour or so! Fantastic!

Out with the bait again and back into the bivvy. This time I did manage to sleep although I awoke on a couple of occasions to assist Phil with fish of 20 lbs., 19 lbs., and 21 lbs. a very high average size and most encouraging for the future prospects for this new stretch of the river.

A grey, cold, dawn greeted us as we emerged from our bivvies and midway through the first cup of tea of the day – I was away again, this time with a lovely common of 19½ lbs. almost a carbon copy of the previous night’s captures.

Morning

Further thought and consideration. We have decided to stay here of course instead of moving to **** and I re-rigged to fish boily on the two rods, with pellet on the other two. All rigs were now short, stiff, hooklengths with size 8 ‘Carp-R-Us’ Longshank Nailers. Boy was it cold though! What a change from yesterday when I had to sit in the shade out of the sun!
More bait into the deep channel on the far side; we hope the carp are going to stay with us today rather than clear off as they did yesterday. Things don’t look that good however as there is little indication fish are in front of us at this point.

Afternoon

1.15 p.m. Phil kicks off the afternoon with a 19 lb. common taken on a hi-viz Rosehip boily.
We decide to hold a ‘Council of War’ and decide it is appropriate to try for a really big fish. To this end we are both going to try our respective versions of the Big Fish Rig. For Phil, this means two 24 mm. boilies fished in tandem with a size 2 hook; for me, it’s three 18 mm. boilies boilies fished in-line with a size 4 Korda Hybrid Longshank. Mine goes on immediately whilst Phil is choosing to wait until the evening when he believes the main body of the fish will move in.

One of the benefits of the Long Stay with friends is the opportunity to discuss and debate the various merits of rigs, baits, and other matters to do with angling. Of particular interest to me are the rigs which Phil is using and with which he has been successful all over France. He has an extremely simple approach to rig-making – just a hook and a hooklength, and that’s all; no bits of rig-tubing, sliding rings, eyes, swivels or other paraphernalia. The only essential requirement of the rig is that the bend of the hook must be touching the side of the boily – in essence, the thing is side-hooked, but when you hold the thing up and exam it, you can see that it must hook any fish that so much as sneezes at it – the point of the hook standing very proud and in the best position to take hold. Phil catches more than I do and his justification that they work, cannot be disputed. My little job for the afternoon is tie up several of these rigs for the coming (and final) night of the session.

Phil and I were both in our pits grabbing forty-winks when the Police Municipale arrived. Three characters dressed like rejects from the SAS arrived with side-arms and flak-jackets! For some reason they only wanted to check Phil’s Carte de Peche and not mine (must be my look of innocence). Phil said he was convinced they had Carte stubs with them and were checking against the details. The one who questioned me wanted to know when we arrived, when we were going, that sort of thing. After looking very serious and intimidating they left with a cheery “Au ‘voir” and “bonne peche!” They seemed decent types and unlike the stereotypes we had be warned about. Just goes to show people’s experience of fishing in France is very different although I believe a lot of it is how you treat them and address them. This was the first time Phil or I had had our ‘licences’ checked by Police and I think the message is as long as you’ve got one, and try to speak to them in French you won’t have any trouble at all. There are of course English idiots they have to contend with and without doubt this is where the ‘horror stories’ originate.

A bank of black clouds came rolling in and it was obvious we were in for another downpour. Phil decided to do some more baiting-up before the heavens opened and I went down the bank to attend to what looked like a Bream bite. I lifted into the little rascal with the intention of giving it a good telling-off – but was amazed when the rod was dragged down and the fish set off! This fish scrapped like a terrier, taking me all over the river; I was convinced I was attached to a very good fish indeed and played it gingerly. It turned out to be yet another common of 19½ lbs. which seems to be the average size for the stretch. I was very pleased because it came to Phil’s Rig which I now have full confidence in; so efficient does it seem that I think I shall try it back home in the UK.

Evening

Thunderstorms again – typical of the weather in this river valley seemingly; we’ve had them every time we have fished. The cold rainwater in the river will not be good for the fishing.
Big effort this evening, putting out the rest of the bait we have; I am genuinely frightened however about getting down the bank safely to respond to a take, in the dark. The bank is treacherous and it is impossible to maintain a footing; I’ve cut some steps in the bank but fear I may not find them with my feet in the darkness and the panic of a take!

Night

11.00 p.m. a stuttering take amid heavy rain sees me negotiating the ‘Mud Slide’ that is access to my rods. Despite the fact a take is in progress I have to measure my steps very carefully to avoid a certain dunking in the river. By the time I get to them the take is still in progress and I lift into what feels like a small fish. On netting however it turns out to be another of the commons of 14 lbs.

No sooner is it back in the water than one of the other rods is going! – a real screamer of take this one – it keeps going and going until I get to the rod and lift into it. A better fish this I tell Phil as I find him at my side ready to do the necessary with the big net. It turns out to be a real corker of 25 lbs. a mirror in lovely condition.

Morning

The night was terrible weather-wise with persistent rain throughout, turning the mud-slide into such a perilous descent I had to borrow Phil’s shovel and dig more steps down to the water.

At dawn I could hear the drone of Phil’s buzzer and the scrabbling about as he exited his bivvy – with the attendant cursing and swearing as he negotiated The Bog Hole. This fish turned out to be a 10 lb. common which had picked up Phil’s bait intended for a big fish – two 18 mm. boilies and one 24 mm.!..............at the smallest fish of the trip I’m afraid it’s back to the drawing board on that one Phil!

No sooner had Phil returned his fish than one of my own rods was away. It kindly allowed me to get down the bank to the rods despite a lengthy negotiation of the mud. This fish was obviously not a big one and came to the bank like a lamb whereupon it took a sudden fancy to the margins down to my right and became hopelessly entangled with the adjacent rod and line! A right old mess ensued which took several minutes to sort out the least of the difficulties being getting the ensnared fish plus an attached line and rig from the other rod into the net and onto the bank!

As the end of the session came it was time to think about packing-up and right on cue – the heavens opened! Oh the joys of French carp-fishing!

In order to catch the return ferry we had to be on our way by nine o’clock at the latest, hence an early pack-up; on this occasion, a drenching to go with it!

As is our custom we left the rods out until the very last possible moment and it was while I was half-way through packing down the bivvy that there was a real screamer of a take! Paddling through the mud in my bivvy slippers I lifted into the fish which set off determinedly up-stream. It felt heavy and powerful and I knew immediately it was one of the better ones. This was the same rod I’d re-cast only a short time previously. Another common, and the biggest I’d taken on the trip weighing 23¾ lbs. – a smashing end to what had been another fantastic session on our River in Picardy.

2008-03-30T06:46:00.000-07:00

Saturday, 29th.March 2008

Another session back at Bysing Wood trying to catch a double-figure Bream.

I had another reason for going (in what I knew were going to be bad conditions) and that was to try out my new TFG “Stormshell” bivvy. I got this from the TFG site for about £65 which I think is pretty good considering what you get for your money – twin-skin construction, raised anti-mud thingy at the front, zippable mozzie-netting, and see-thru panels in the “door”. Although it’s a one-man bivvy it has quite a large ‘footprint’ and would just about house two bedchairs at a squeeze. All packing up into a small-ish (but heavy) pack:

After a couple of trials in the garden, I found the best way of setting the thing up is to spread it out on the ground in-situ, and then thread the poles through the seams. This is quite a difficult and onerous job as the take-apart poles can get detached from one another. They are also in two different lengths on this model and could do with being colour-coded so you don’t thread the wrong pole through the wrong seam (which is what I did!). manufacturers please note!

I then tried pegging the thing down in each corner to stop gusts of wind blowing it into the trees but this didn’t work very well because they kept pulling out – the best way of erecting it is to then insert the ends of the poles into the metal rings on the ends of the tags. This I imagine could be a bit of a nightmare in a very strong wind but I managed, and put some of the gear inside to hold it down. In actual fact, for the majority of situations, I would think these sorts of bivvies don’t need pegging at all since they have integral ground-sheets which in effect create a fabric ‘box’; put enough weight inside and the whole thing sits where it is without further embellishment. If you are anything like me, having enough weight to go inside to hold it down is certainly not a problem (despite repeatedly trying to reduce the vast quantity of kit I take with me!)

The only difficult thing really was getting the fly-sheet on. Once again, the high wind was a real problem – and it’s important to find the bit at the front which attaches to the sticky-out canopy thing. Again, the manufacturers could do with marking the sheet with a coloured patch of some sort as you can spend ages (as I did) trying it in different positions until you get it right.

Eventually however, I got everything fastened down and tickety-boo.

The peg was in my favourite place – The Beach. From here, you can cover quite a lot of the bottom end of the lake and there are many options from which to choose. The wind (gusting to nearly gale force) was blowing from right to left and from slightly behind so this allowed me to fish my maggot-feeders mid-lake and beyond.

I had a simple link-leger with the maggot feeder tied to six inches of the mainline. A twenty-inch length of 0.11 ‘Powerline’ was Four-Turn Water Knotted to the six pound Daiwa ‘Sensor’ and a size twelve Drennan Carbon Specimen tied on the end.

I kept casting every ten to twenty minutes during the first couple of hours to get as many maggots into the area as possible and within half an hour of starting I began getting little knocks and jerks on the bobbins. I was fully expecting this –bites from the diminutive Roach and was fully prepared for them, leaving the bites alone until they ‘hung’ themselves and self-hooked. As long as most of the maggots were out of the feeder I didn’t mind.

One thing I was keen to do was not concentrate the feed in too tight an area. Although this is fine for a day session when you can hit the spot with a fair degree of accuracy by ‘clipping-up’ and so on, it is virtually impossible in the dark, plus, with so little feed out in the water I wanted the Bream to move around and find little spots of it in the hope they’d eventually move around and find the one with the baited hook.

I think it is not always advisable to concentrate feed in one very small area every time you go fishing. This is the matchman’s accepted strategy – but is not always successful in a speci context. Wise old fish get to know heavy concentrations of feed mean trouble and definitely avoid them; very often the single bait on its own with perhaps one or two free offerings is all that’s needed to give them sufficient confidence to pick a bait up.

I had quite a few small Roach before darkness and find this most encouraging. These Roach were in prime condition and it was good to know the Pike hadn’t managed to get there gnashers round all of them. Just as I was bedding down for the night I had a really positive bite and hooked this Roach.

Although not huge in the grand scheme of things, it was quite a big one for Bysing Wood which is still recovering its silver-fish populations after years of depredation by Cormorants. It might just have weighed a pound but was gloriously coloured. Unfortunately, the image does it no justice and does not show the iridescent blue down its back. This is a most encouraging sign for the future.

As predicted, the Roach went to bed after dark – and were followed by the skimmers. There is currently a year-class of fish around the one-and-a-half pound mark which will gobble a bait if any quantity at all is thrown in; this was another reason for not wanting to put too much bait out. They can certainly stay with you all day if you feed them; better to let them drift away after all the scraps of feed are gone.

Then there was a blank-ish spell during which I had no action of any kind. In truth, I don’t think I would have managed it very well if I’d had because half way through the night the rain (which had been persistent, if not heavy) really started to set in and with a rising wind the session became most uncomfortable. Winter nights can be merely a matter of survival and it was during the middle of a heavy squall I had a positive take to one of the rods……

At first it felt as if I’d hooked one of the lake’s carp as there was a dogged, heavy feeling on the end; then the fish began to move in a series of heavy thumps and I had high hopes I might at last be attached to my target fish – a ten pound Bream! When I got the fish to the net and could make out a great white slab dimly lying dormant I whooped with delight! Hauling the fish up it certainly looked the part – Bream – big Bream, look simply huge. This specimen was covered in spawing tubercles around its head and gill plates and I was convinced I’d finally done it. It had to be ten!

The scales however revealed a massively disappointing eight-six – well short of the target and not for the first I wondered how a fish that looked so big could weigh so little. Maybe it was because it had been such a long time since I’d caught a big Bream I was wildly out with my estimate!

You can’t be disappointed with a fish like this however. It’s made me even more determined to get the double than I was before!

As Arnie says “I’ll be back!”

Saturday, March 15, 2008, Bysing Wood

2008-03-16T22:03:00.000-07:00

Back again at Bysing for another go after the Bream, Carp, and Tench.

There was a fine drizzle falling when I arrived and I plumped for a convenient swim where I could get everything set up quickly before the rain started to fall. I fished almost opposite where I did last weekend in The House Swim.

Tactics this week were to fish the corn again and a new bait – worm. With the water being so cold still, I figured that there would be no trouble from eels which would make mincemeat of worm or maggot in the summer; this proved to be wrong as I did actually get one – the first time I have ever had an eel during March.

The cage feeders were filled with a mixer of White crumb and a few kernels of sweetcorn and cast as far out as I could manage in the vicinity of the plateau area that lays off the Road Bank.
There was no action of any kind to the double sweetcorn all night and only the odd twitches (and take) from one eel. All in all very disappointing.

Whilst waiting for things to happen, I did work out a new way of attaching hairs to hooks. Using Fox Supersilk braid, I tied a loop in one end of the braid. Then I laid the hair along the shank of the hook and got the length right before passing the end of the braid through the eye of the hook. Then in close turns, I wound the braid up the shank of the hook towards the bend until it was opposite the hook-point. Then, in a series of half-hitches, I worked back down the shank finishing at the eye.

The net effect is very neat I think and does away with the need for pieces of rig-tubing on the shank of the hook which can slide up towards the eye and adds bulk to the knot.

One or two fish moved during the evening and once again, fish moved in front of the Compound swim. This swim has not been fished since the water has been down so low so it’s not surprising the lake’s population of carp have sought sanctuary there. There were odd fish moving on the bar in front of me too and I was confident of a take from something during the night.

We are in the middle of March at the moment and although it is not Spring yet, the catkins on the trees herald its start very soon. The water temperatures are still at winter levels and in every sense, winter conditions persist so I didn’t think it prudent to spod out any feed. I wonder whether this might be the answer though. There was no reaction to the corn which I feel should have at least brought some response from Rudd or Roach during a night when the rain fell continuously. I could have really done with the new bivvy of which I am awaiting delivery next week as conditions were extremely damp and uncomfortable.

I shall go back to The Beach for my next session as I always seem to catch something from there – I’ll be able to target the ‘hot-spot’ in front of the Compound swim where the fish have moving too.

Bysing Wood - Sunday, 9th.March 2008

2008-03-11T15:43:00.000-07:00

For me, March marks the beginning of the Spring fishing regardless of weather. Some years it’s just a continuation of wet, cold, dreary conditions – in other years, March has come in mild, cheery, and golden; not so in 2008 however.

I always have plans afoot and this year is no different to any other. The Spring is the period when I am gearing up for a serious assault on Carp, Bream, and Tench at home, and the carp of the River in Picardie in France of which I have several trips planned for the coming months.
I have struggled quite badly at Bysing Wood for the past couple of years, mainly due to lack of time and a reluctance on my part to fish at night (when the majority of fish have been caught by other members). Mistakenly, I thought I could get away with fishing short sessions during afternoons but this just hasn’t worked and at last the penny dropped that I just had to start fishing the place ‘properly’.

I have also been playing around with what I call a ‘Catch-All’ method. I have been looking for an alternative to the bolt-rig-and-boily method that 99% of members use at Bysing Wood not only because I think it offers a better chance of catching the carp – but it would also enable me to target the Bream and Tench which are my priorities. Having caught two fish one ounce short of the magic ten pounds, I know there are large Bream in Bysing and it’s about time I got one!

After expending literally hundreds of pounds on different outfits I feel that at last I’ve got the kit sorted – Shakespeare Mach 2 Barbel rods (lovely, crisp-actioned jobbies with a hefty reserve of power, but light enough to give good sport with lesser fish), matched with Shimano Catana 4000 reels with front drags are the items of choice, but what about the rig end of things?

If there were a poll taken of anglers as to who is the most irritating person on TV angling shows there is no doubt the prize would be taken be John Wilson. I tend to watch with the sound turned down because I simply cannot stand his manic laughter and histrionics when he hooks a fish; he is though, without any shadow of doubt a superb angler who is very good at explaining what he is using and the best way to use it. He has often demonstrated swim feeder rigs for use on stillwater – a length of finer lighter line, attached by a four-turn Water Knot to the main line and a cage feeder tied on one end and a small hook on the other. A very simple rig, but a very effective one – my rig of choice on my first night session of the year –

Few members had turned out when I arrived so there was a good choice of available swims. Conditions were however particularly uncomfortable, a blustery wind was blowing into the Road Bank and with the hint of rain in the air it promised to be a damp and difficult night.

I chose one of my favourite spots – The Beach over on the far side. With the wind off that bank there would be shelter should it start to really rain hard and since I was intending to sit out during the night, choice was based as much on where I could fish from effectively, as where I thought the fish were.

With it being so cold still (and temperatures dropping from recent mild levels) feed had to be very parsimonious. I chose a mixture of white crumb with just a few grains of sweetcorn for the cage feeder, partnered with double-sweetcorn on a size ten and six pound line. No feed was introduced other than by the feeder and I didn’t attempt to lay a ‘carpet’ of feed in the swim with water temperatures still being so low.

Encouragingly, a carp moved a few yards down the bank to my right and my first cast plopped the feeder right on top of where it had ‘shown’; the second rod was cast to a mid-lake position out in front, a spot which had yielded me big Bream in the past. Since it was just after lunchtime, I spent the next few hours on the rods re-casting every half-hour or so to get some feed laid down although since it was by the cage feeder only and the chances were that the Roach would clear most of it up it did not amount to a massive amount. Surprisingly however I was not pestered by the normally bothersome Roach and my double-corn baits lay un-inspected all afternoon.

I was delighted to see the Great Crested Grebes had once again returned to the lake. Every March they have come back to nest and perform their charming mating ‘dance’ and to see them back once again was a pleasure. The weather however was not so welcome. Dampness in the air turned to real rain at nightfall and the wind rose in a series of gusts that at one point blew my rod-pod and rods to the ground and whipped up my unhooking mat and blew it into the water! I hate having to batten everything down to stop it blowing away but there we are, such is fishing on exposed gravel pits.

No action occurred for the first part of the night although it was difficult to detect if there was any – the buzzers kept up a constant chatter as the bobbins swayed about in the wind although I thought that once or twice I might have had short pulls of a couple of inches or so. And then the rain really set it, driving in sheets against the bivvy in a series of gusts that would persist for twenty minutes or so – then dying down to a more peaceful roar! It was during one of these periods that I had a take to the mid-lake rod………

I was on it immediately and lifted into solid resistance. As always the first few seconds were key………..what had I got? Was it a Bream? It was certainly heavy – maybe a Tench……….but as it slowly and steadily chugged off I knew a carp had picked up the bait and I let it go against the resistance of the slipping clutch. There were no dramas or undue excitements with this fish – until I got it near the shallow bar that runs across the front of the pitch.

This bar is a matter of only a foot or so deep and shelves steeply either side into deeper water; on top of the bar are many large stones and other debris on which stray parts of rigs habitually hang up. The tell-tale grating through the line was positive indication the line was hung up on the bar and I could feel the carp swimming up and down in front of me with the line caught around something.

There was only one thing to do – give it the old heave-ho and by degrees I managed to gain enough line to get the fish thrashing around on top – and finally over the bar and into the clear water where after a couple of runs up and down the bank I netted it; a fish of around ten pounds or so. Not huge, but a very welcome capture on such a foul night.

I hoped this fish would be the prelude to further catches and when I had another bite soon after re-casting I had high hopes that fish were onto the feed and que-ing up. I connected with the fish which proved to be only a small skimmer Bream – but it was action nonetheless and at last things looked as if they were warming up. No such luck however as this fish proved to be the last. The rest of the night was spent with no action whatsoever.

I was pleased to have caught the carp though – after a long series of sessions during last summer it represented a mini-result.

Hartleylands Reservoir, Cranbrook, Kent

2008-02-23T16:53:00.000-08:00

Saturday, February 23, 2008

February has been a very up and down month weather-wise and earlier in the week we had a series of very hard frosts which would have killed the fishing stone-dead just about everywhere.

It had been a very long time since I last fished Hartleylands and I was keen to get over there to see what I could do with my new waggler techniques; I had also got some of the new porcupine quill floats I had bought off eBay and turned into waggler floats and wanted to try them out.

I was the only one there when I arrived and was pleased to see that not an awful lot had changed about the place. Instead of the wooden platforms in the pegs however, there were plain dug-outs with chippings, a much nicer and more ‘natural’ way to create a swim from which to fish and I chose one half way along the left-hand bank. This was not an absolutely ideal choice as there was a troublesome wind blowing right to left which made casting difficult with the waggler rig – but I coped.

As usual, I had a cunning plan. To cope with the deep water, I had a special rig made up on a spare rod. This rig comprised a three-eigths ounce bomb, a split-shot a foot up, and a ‘Polaris’ float up the line. The purpose of this rig was to ‘fix’ the depth of the water where I was fishing so I could set the depth of my waggler rig accurately, relative to the actual depth of the water. This arrangement did exactly what it said on the tin and worked like a charm and I shall certainly use it as a depth-finding rig when next, need arises.

There was about twelve or so feet the twenty-five metres out and I set the depth at three-quarters of this so I was in effect fishing at nine feet with the John Wilson rigged at thirteen feet. I deliberately chose not to fish at full depth as I knew my constant feeding regime would bring the fish up in the water and I also suspected that with the water temperature rising after a very cold snap, they wouldn’t be on the bottom anyway.

My target fish were carp and the aim of the session was to reproduce catches I had made in previous winters fishing on the reservoir, I had however anticipated the presence of the Roach but was shocked at how they have now come to so dominate the fishery for it was wall-to-wall Roach all day long with no other species putting in an appearance during the whole of the day.
I began catching from the very first cast and it was one-a-chuck for virtually the whole time.

I was prepared for this and was determined to stick it out in the belief that the feeding activities of the Roach would eventually arouse interest from the carp and I would pick up the odd one or two at intervals. This was not to be; small perishers of sixteen to the pound eagerly seized upon my double red maggots for the first couple of hours. The fishing however was not as easy as it sounds though as I had to work quite hard at the feeding, at range, in a difficult cross-wind. Gradually though, the size of the fish increased as the day wore on and I eventually got into quite a rhythm of casting, striking, winding-in, unhooking and re-casting.

The reservoir is not what it was however and the anticipated carp just did not arrive. Without a doubt, the place is now a Roach fishery and is catching up Longshawe Farm for the quality of fish it produces. It always did have a reputation for the improving quality of its Roach fishing and it has certainly come a long way since I first fished there. I haven’t fished it in the summer so I don’t know what it is like then, but I would say it’s not worth fishing it for the carp in the winter now as I used.

I had a change at lunchtime and went on the maggot feeder on the bottom to see whether there were any carp there – I fished ten maggots on a size fourteen hook, but apart from one roach I had absolutely nothing. Zippo. Going back on the waggler I rigged up shallower having previously suffered some line bites. I was up to about four feet now, and immediately the catch rate accelerated. Better fish were coming too – real quality roach, not the little ‘bits’ one so often gets pestered with on commercial fisheries. It is alleged there are two-pounders in the reservoir; I don’t know about that, but it is certainly possible to have a day of quality roach fishing here now.

In the afternoon I decided to take things really easy and just dropped the rig under the rod-tip, feeding with the remainder of my maggots. The peg must have been stiff with fish right across as there was no let-up in the catch rate, indeed, the size of the fish increased and I got these (and other) beauties. Had I been able to put them in a keep-net it would have made a very impressive catch but as it was they had to go straight back.

Right at the very last however, the float buried and I became attached to a carp. Only a small one though but it did put up a spirited resistance to finish off the session nicely.

So what of Hartleylands Reservoir?

I hear there are plans to syndicate it as (I presume) it doesn’t make enough money at the moment. I gather day tickets are going up to £10 a day which is still a reasonable charge for this neck of the woods. I hope however, the owners reverse the decision to abandon day-tickets for syndication is in my view is doomed to failure. They did exactly the same thing at Longshaw Farm near Canterbury and reverted back to day tickets within a year.

In my view, the fishing and the lake is just not worth the price of a syndicate fee (which is bound to be high); why would anyone want to pay with so many other excellent venues from which to choose at a manageable cost by pay-on-the-day.

I suspect the owners of fishing assets have (wrongly) got the idea that syndication is the answer to revenue – and well it might be, on paper. The problem is, you have to find enough members willing to pay the needfully high cost to join – which in Hartleylands Reservoir’s case I believe could not be justified. Anglers will pay for exclusivity – but not any old venue, and there has to be a very good incentive to join, either big fish, beautiful surroundings, isolation, or cost.

In my view, although I like the place a lot – it has none of these.

I hope they will stick to the day tickets; it’ll be the best policy in the long term.

Monk Lakes, Match Lake 2, Peg 57

2008-01-27T00:13:00.000-08:00

Monk Lakes, Match Lake 2, Peg 57
I decided to go along to Monks to test myself and see whether I’d learnt anything from the previous sessions I’d had trying to learn how to fish the waggler. My ‘yardstick’ was the result I’d had on Match Lake 1 where I’d had 21 fish; if I could beat this then I felt I’d progressed.

I was late starting for the nine o’clock ‘off’ and didn’t get going until nearly a quarter to nine. I spent the first part of the session trying various different types of waggler as had been suggested to me including some ‘loaded’ jobbies. Now I just couldn’t get on with these at all. The peg I was fishing was almost dead opposite the ‘hot peg’ 45 – (which was occupied) dead opposite on the other side of the lake. This was much deeper, something like nine or ten feet at 20 metres or so – but I just couldn’t seem to get the depth adjusted properly for some reason. I tried using an AAA shot as a plummet………….. but I dunno – just couldn’t seem to get the thing right. Only by changing to an unshotted peacock insert jobby and using a light plummet could I really get it sorted and ended up fishing at nearly ten feet – a bit awkward to cast with my John Wilson rigged at eleven feet. On reflection, I should have added the extension and fished at thirteen feet which would have made casting easier – but there you go.

I determined to keep up a regular and consistent feed of red maggots all day and I am sure this contributed to my improved ‘performance’. After about ten minutes, the F1s moved in and I started catching them one a chuck. I employed the ‘active’ technique shown me by Peter (Morton) when we fished Bridges last time – giving the reel handle a turn every minute or so to keep the bait on the move and wafting about; it also has the effect of covering a lot of water and I found myself picking up fish ‘inside’ where my feed was going in, about fifteen yards out. Some of these F1s were chunky little fellas in good condition and went from about half a pound to over a couple of pounds.

Early on the bites were extremely positive and were of the ‘unmissable’ type – but later on became very shy indeed, barely dipping the float at all. Sometimes, I just struck on a ‘feeling’ I had something was there and was not unsurprised to find fish attached! This was a similar experience we had during the Fur and Feather on Match Lake 1 and initially I put this down to angling pressure and shyness; later, I changed my mind about this……

I fed – I suppose, about half a pouch of reds every other cast, all the time mindful of over-feeding. It is oft-mentioned that the fish won’t be feeding as well in the winter, water temperatures being cold and all that, and it is easy to over-feed them and fill them up, so I was on the parsimonious side rather than generous. Eventually however, the F1s deserted me and the occasional chub were putting in an appearance.

Now I love these Monk Lake Chub. They are what I call “good value for the money”, obliging, bold-biting, and hard-fighting. A netfull of these would gladden the heart of any angler. I am also extremely interested in how they are progressing because I have a hunch that in years to come, stillwater Chub will become the new ‘carp’. They do well in stillwater and being carnivorous are capable of eating the millions of miniscule Roach I find such a pest on most commercial waters; they of course grow fat and large on this diet. One day, fishery owners will learn to stock with chub instead of Roach as they have done here at Monks.

For most of the day the fishing was steady rather than outstanding. There were some blank spells as well as little periods of activity when I caught several fish on the trot including the odd small Carp and Tench and by the time it came to ‘stop’ at three o’clock (the end of my virtual match) I’d caught 38 fish averaging I suppose three quarters of a pound to a pound; so I had in fact between twenty-eight and a half to thirty-eight pounds of fish, a vast improvement on my meager nine pounds I scored in the Fur and Feather. It was the evening however that was most interesting…..

You must be packed up and off the water by four o’clock at Monks at this time of year but I stayed on after my ‘match’ to catch a few more. As usual, I was far more generous with the feed – as much to get rid of the bait as anything, and put out much more than I had been using during the day. This resulted in an instant and significant change. The bites which had been barely half-dips of the float became real ‘spearing-the-bottom’ jobs, and the catch rate doubled. Now you could argue that the fish had begun to feed because evening was approaching and this is a good time on any fishery – but the change was almost instantaneous. I was even getting bites on-the-drop, the float failing to rise to the surface and the line going tight to the rod-tip! I’d only got two number eight shot down the line so my slowly sinking double red maggot bait must have been falling gently through the water, much to their liking.

I have often wondered whether the normal ‘rules’ apply to these heavily stocked fisheries – there are so many fish in the water it would be virtually impossible to over-feed them with just a pint of maggots for the day. Next time I fish here I mean to try an experiment – heavy feeding from the off. Competitive feeding is the way to go to produce positive bites – get the fish competing with one another for the available feed and try and induce a ‘sparrows-on-the-lawn’ syndrome where they fight one another to get at the food.

This late spell also produced some good fish including this chub;

surprisingly, there were no barbel, unlike the anglers opposite who were catching loads. I wonder why peg 45 opposite has a high proportion of barbel in it and opposite here on 57 there were none. Was it that I just wasn’t fishing appropriately for them?

All very interesting.

The Willow Pool, Faversham, Kent

2008-01-20T21:18:00.000-08:00

Sunday, January 20, 2008

Desperately short of time this weekend and only had a short afternoon available so went down to the Willow Pool at Faversham, one of my clubs match waters. I wanted to try a totally new technique (for me) today – Punched Bread. I had read great things about the method – how it would catch when other methods fail, blah, blah, blah.

I got myself a set of Drennan Bread Punches and prepared the slices of white bread the night before by micro-waving for thirty seconds; the slices were then wrapped in cling film to keep them fresh.

The punches (allegedly) were suitable for fishing from hook sizes 26……….all the way up to a size twelve, the size of the punch increasing with the hook size.

When I arrived at the pool I was surprised to see other members present. I suppose the mild conditions of 15°C had brought them out as you generally never see anyone. I decided to leave them to the popular (and productive swims) by the gate and walked on up to the far end of the pool where it is nice and quiet and where I have never seen anyone fishing. Here, there is a quiet corner with few pegs where it is possible to fish in peace whilst all manner of mayhem takes place on the nearby School Pool just the other side of the fence about thirty yards away.

I set up the waggler rod, it being my current favourite method of choice and tied on a size eighteen Tubertini 808 to 0.10 Powerline – loop-to-loop. The shot of my insert peacock were grouped under the float and I had just two number eight shot down the line. Plumbing-up showed four and a half feet of water in the centre of the bay into which I was fishing.

Now the Willow Pool is a very young fishery and the Faversham Angling Club have invested a lot in creating and stocking the place. Not unsurprisingly they are very keen to protect the stocks from the invasive attentions of Cormorants, the pool being so close to the Thames estuary. To try and keep these birds away they have strung ropes across the pool so that the Cormorants cannot fly in and land – which does of course make casting with rod and line very difficult. Three guesses where I ended up on my very first cast!................

It took me ages to re-rig and finally get a bait in the water with a sort of sideways whoosh rather than an overhead cast, but at least I was fishing – with corn to start with, just to see if there was anything about. I decided to use liquidized bread for feed in little balls.

The oft-quoted advice is to feed very sparingly with these as the fish can fill up very quickly in the winter. I am sure that is true on some waters but in the under-fed environment of the Willow Pool I think there would be little danger of that so I chose to introduce one of these every five minutes or so unless I was struggling.
Very soon I started getting little dips on the float, signifying interest in the corn so I decided to go straight onto the punched bread. The punch has a little slot in it which I assume is to permit the hook to slide through the pellet of bread and out the bottom end; I had quite a lot of difficulty making this ‘work’, the point of the hook getting stuck in the plastic of the punch. In the end, I used the point of the hook to hoik the pellet of bread out and hook the hook-point through manually. I’m sure this is not the way to do it and I hope a maggotdrowner will enlighten me on the correct method.

I managed to get the thing in the water however and immediately had my first bite…………… and then nothing. I assume the bait had been sucked off the hook. This happened several times before I cottoned-on that punched bread was a ‘one-bite bait’ – if you don’t strike at the earliest sign of a bite you fish with a bare hook. The next time I cast out I determined I would strike at the merest flicker of interest – which I did, to produce this baby Roach. This was to prove the first of many and with a bread ball of feed going in after every fish I had them really going for it.

Now I cannot imagine these are the original stockings of Roach introduced by the club – they must be spawnlings being so small; or were they? It was unlikely the new fish were old enough to be sexually mature as my understanding is that they have to be three or four years old before they can reproduce(?) Perhaps someone can enlighten me?

If the pool is going to be full of these diminutive bait-grabbers then I hardly think this is what the club members envisaged when the plans for the fishery were unveiled.

It strikes me that stocking with Roach can be a very chancy business indeed. There is quite a body of opinion supporting the need for quality Roach-Fishing, but it seems it is quite another thing in developing a fishery where Roach can grow big enough to be of interest. To be honest, Roach of this size are nothing more than a pest and I cannot think of any angler being content to fish for these ‘spratlings’ all day long; even the youngsters these days turn their noses up at them. On balance, my view is that fisheries are better off without them and that the example of Monk Lakes should be followed in that Chub are a much better proposition and give a much better return in their investment sport-wise.

Some of my liquidized bread had floated down to the right into a quiet corner and I noticed that a number of carp were taking the morsels from the surface! In January! Crikey, it must be mild!

I did no more – I shortened the rig right down to fish no more than a foot deep and lobbed the float out and drifted it round to the right in the margins where the carp were becoming really active, swirling and splashing at the floating items.

It wasn’t long before the float really buried and I found myself attached to one of the pool’s hard fighting carp.

These are really pretty little fish and are going to look very impressive if they survive into adult-hood, although their rate of growth is slow at present.

Nature goes at its own pace and in its own time.

Monk Lakes, Bridges

2008-01-14T12:08:00.000-08:00

Sunday, 13th. January 2008

As previously reported By Peter on Maggotdrowning:
http://www.maggotdrowning.com/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=66562

The object of the exercise was to carry forward what I’d learnt on my first session with the waggler (previously blogged). There were a number of issues to address – what sort of waggler for which conditions, shotting patterns, that sort of thing, and I started off by showing Peter my float-box. He suggested I try an insert peacock carrying 4 AAA and in addition to the bulk, to shot it with a couple of number 8s – one about half-way down, the other nine inches or so from the hook. This was a fairly heavy rig (as wagglers go), unlike the little six-inch jobbies I’d got which only take a few shot to cock them; it was so windy, even the heavy waggler was a job to cast.

Peter was out of the blocks almost immediately and was into a little run of skimmers;

unfortunately, the shoal must have moved off as their presence was short-lived. I managed to bag one but as usual was falling way behind Peter’s catch-rate. A problem I identified almost immediately was visibility.

I tried to match the distance Peter was casting – quite a long way for float-fishing, about twenty-five meters or so, maybe thirty – I’m not too sure, it seemed an awful long way though and I have to confess I really couldn’t see the float properly and often not at all. Although the fine tip of the insert is great for lack of resistance to a biting fish, its slimness was a real disadvantage to the optically-challenged such as myself. I struggled with the thing for a good couple of hours before finally admitting defeat and fished shorter – even picking up a couple of fish. As Peter continued to reel ‘em in from his long-range presentation I changed the float for something else.

I’d got several other patterns with me, mostly of the straight variety made of reed, clear plastic, and peacock quill, but after several changes I eventually settled on a Premier Windbeater with a balsa body and straight stem carrying a shed-load of lead. At least this was manageable in the extremely strong wind which got stronger as the day wore on. I finally got the visibility issue sorted and could see the bright orange of the tip pretty well and with some fiddling about managed to get the shotting about right too. Peter however had out-caught me by a ratio of about five to one and I began to get ever so slightly frustrated by my lack of action – whereas Peter was picking up fish (albeit the odd fish, but fish nonetheless) a matter of only a few metres away.

Peter of course had the reason – and not for the first time during our sessions together it was FEEDING.

If there is one thing that is more important than anything else it is giving the fish feed in a consistent and regular manner sufficient to keep them interested in looking around for and finding hookbaits. Almost every time we go fishing, Feeding is the number one issue and today was no different. Peter reckoned it was my carp-fisherman mindset that made me adopt the sit-and-wait style I was using – whereas he was always busy, either feeding, twitching the bait back, re-casting, re-baiting, casting spells, talking to the fish – and whatever other devices he employs to coax, cajole, and coerce fish into taking his bait.

True, twitching the bait by giving the reel handle a turn every minute or so I am sure persuades an otherwise disinterested fish to snatch the bait back, but it is the constant and continual investment of effort that really does the trick, an investment that resulted in Peter far out-fishing me.

It was not only the amount and frequency of feed going in that made a difference – but where it was going also. Peter was pin-pointedly accurate – even in what was at times, a howling wind; my catapulted maggots were often going all over the place, blown by a gusty wind veering in sometimes unpredictable directions. There is a definite knack to it – you must aim low and snappy, not high and gentle – allowing the wind to blow the feed near the float, for it will inevitably blow it exactly where you don’t want it. The feed must be little, often, and in exactly the right place. Easy to talk – more difficult to do.

The carp was a total fluke and I claim no great skill in either luring it or landing it. The skimmers fought ten times harder! I am convinced the fish must have been laying-up – and for some considerable time too as it had a number of leech-like organisms on it.

Carp lay-up in the very harsh weather and I have often noticed that sick or mangy fish are particularly prone to doing this. The one I caught was a very sad individual who had obviously had a hard summer – the evidence of disease was obvious – lesions, partially rotten fins, and poor condition resulting in a fish that was in the recovery stage of previous ill-health.

Peter had to go early as his leg was playing him up (poor old thing) and I spent the last hour doing much better than the previous few hours catching some of the Chub and this Tench.

All in all, not only an enjoyable day in good company, but once again, I learnt a lot from my ‘mentor’.

Thanks Peter.

2007-12-29T00:40:00.000-08:00

Thursday, December 27, 2007

The Xmas Maggotdrowners Fur and Feather held at Monk Lakes was a hugely enjoyable event where I had an opportunity to not only meet up with old friends, but also put faces to names and make new acquaintances. As far as the fishing was concerned I actually managed to catch something – unlike the last Fur and Feather I fished when I DNW-ed!

On this occasion, I managed 9 lbs. of fish on the pole which was a reasonable catch for me, but in match terms, I think the term is……………… “battered like a kipper!”.

Guess who I was pegged next to? Yes, the eventual winner Mike Jameson (Omega Mike)! A constant stream of fish came one after another to his net all through the match – not even my interrupting him while he was landing a fish (to borrow a marker pen for my float) stopped the incessant flow!

Good anglers always seem to catch fish – but it is the mark of a great angler that they make it look so easy. Mike falls into the latter category. It seemed effortless, a display of Waggler fishing at its best. I couldn’t believe the distance Mike was able to not only deliver his waggler rig – but detect bites at such long range and bank the fish so quickly. It was well worth turning up just to be pegged beside him and see just how it should be done.

I must say, Mike fired my enthusiasm. Having spent most of the past forty-odd years sat behind a set of carp rods and bite alarms, I’ve only just got to grips with pole-fishing, a relatively simple way of fishing, but like all fishing, with its own set of skills and disciplines.

I am fairly ashamed to say I have done very little waggler fishing. In the grand scheme of things, it is one of angling’s ‘core skills’. I guess if you went on a 'Fishing Course', one of the first things they’d teach you is how to fish the waggler, a most fundamental and basic form of fishing with rod and line.

My thoughts (at witnessing Mike’s display) were “how can I call myself ‘an angler’ if I lack this most essential and basic skill set?” After the match I made a mental ‘note to self’ to correct this deficiency and in my usual fashion set about investigating waggler fishing and the principles involved – for there are principles in all forms of fishing and it is essential to understand them if progress is to be made. I have never considered blind imitation of successful anglers - to equate to proficiency; finding one’s own path is not only far more rewarding but also gives an understanding, possession, and ownership which is unique to self and self alone.

[Those wishing to skip this bit and just want to read how I got on at Monk Lakes – feel free. It’s probably a load of rubbish anyway; but as I’ve said elsewhere, it helps in organising your thoughts about something to write them down]................

The Principles of Float-Fishing

This in no way is intended to be a definitive treatise on float-fishing; these are merely my initial thoughts on confronting what for me is a different way of fishing. The chances are I am completely wrong about all of it. Yet it is the path of the thought processes which is important – not necessarily where that path ends up.

In fishing, paths of discovery rarely have an end anyway.

I take my starting point from the (limited) experience I have of pole fishing. There, no casting is needed, the rig merely being lowered on top of the fish’s heads; but the principles of bite detection and rig presentation hold true – albeit in a different context.

Bite Detection

The idea of a float rig is that when a fish takes the bait, the float dips or disappears enabling the angler to strike. A fairly simple idea you would have thought but in practice full of complications.

Imagine you are fishing a peg six feet deep. Consider a rig with just a float on the line and a hook six feet down from the float. There are no shots between the hook and the float. What would happen is that the float would lay flat and there would be slack line between hook and float (the baited hook may or may not sink to the bottom depending on its buoyancy), enabling a fish taking the bait to move many feet without anything happening on the float at all. That’s why split shot are involved. Weight is needed to counteract the buoyancy of the float by making it ‘cock’ appropriately, and weight is needed to get the bait down to the fish as some baits have almost neutral buoyancy in water (or will even float). But how is the float to be ‘married’ to the shot and indeed what sort of float is required?

I long since learnt from my years of carp-fishing the necessity of understanding how rigs work, what their uses are, and when you should use them. In carp-fishing, there is no, one, rig which does for all situations, and whilst most of the fancy and bizarre creations called ‘carp-rigs’ are not required, there are a few different rigs which work in different ways and understanding the principles behind them is vital. Basically, the choice is long and supple – or short and stiff. The long supple rig is used when you need to give the fish enough slack to take the bait properly before being hooked; the short stiff rig is intended to hook the fish ‘as soon as’ before the bait is spat out. It all depends how the fish are taking the bait on the day and this depends on factors generally associated with competitive feeding, hunger, and the size and quantity of feed around the hook.

The Principle is the same whether it be a carp-rig – or a float rig and the keyword is STIFFNESS.

In order for a float to register a bite, there has to be a tension (or stiffness) between the hook and the float; if there is any slack at all, tugging on the bait won’t move the float and you won’t see the bite. Ideally, the perfect material for a float-rig is a fine, long, piece of wire. As soon as the hook is moved – movement will be seen on the float. This is completely impractical of course and the tension (or Stiffness) between hook and float must be enabled in other ways.

In pole fishing, this is achieved by split shots either spaced along the length of the rig, or bunched towards the hook-end. The weight pulling on the line creates a tension (or stiffness), the only ‘slack’ in the rig being the distance from the last shot to the hook – by default, about six inches or so, although this shot is moved up and down according to how the fish are taking the bait. If they are feeding confidently the shot can be a long way from the hook; if they are finicky, the shot needs to move closer. This distance thing between hook and shot controls the amount of ‘slack’ there is in the rig. It equates to the length of hook-length a carp angler might have on his carp-rig.

But what sort of weight are we talking about? How much?

I am guided by the ‘rule of thumb’ used in pole fishing, that of “0.1 of a gramme for every foot of depth”, hence six feet of water requires 0.6 grammes of shotting for the float.

I turns out that 0.1 of a gramme equates to a single No.6 split shot, so the float rig should have the same number of No.6s spaced down the rig for every foot of water.
Forget about ‘up-in-the-water-rigs’ for the moment.

Based on this, I tested a number of waggler floats to see how many shots they take with a benchmark of (say) six foot depth of water (which most commercials seem to be). So shotting will be 6 x No.6s plus whatever else is needed to cock the float appropriately. If I knew I was going to fish a water up to nine feet deep I’d test the float with 9 x No.6s plus whatever else is needed to cock the float.

The basic principle is that a number 6 shot must be fixed to the rig at one foot intervals in order to create tension or stiffness to the hook.

Waggler Floats

The waggler float is fixed at the bottom end only. This does two things:
1. It avoids tangles on the cast.
2. It helps sink the line below the surface drift.

The longer the float, the greater its ability to combat surface wind and drift. A technique that must be adopted of course is that several turns of the reel must be made to sink the line near the float, otherwise great bows in the line occur – a problem I discovered when I first tried the rig out...............

Monk Lake, Match Lake 1, Thursday 27th.December

There were matches on lakes two and four on the day so I plumped for lake 1 – where the Fur and Feather had been held; just for the hell of it I decided to fish exactly the same peg I’d drawn in the match to see what I could catch compared to what I’d caught in the match although a fair comparison was out of the question since conditions were much milder than on match day and I had the whole of this side of the lake to myself. Lack of angling pressure aught to have increased my catch-rate.

At peg 37 the wind was blowing a ‘hooligun’ (although it looks calm enough in the photo). Great gusts were charging down the lake from left to right and I should have thought it would have been a nightmare trying to pole-fish on such a day. I set up my John Wilson Avon/Quiver at thirteen feet and coupled it with a Shakespeare Powerplay loaded with 3 lbs. Line. The float was a Drennan insert peacock quill carrying 3½ AAA – but in fact I had pre-tested it and loaded up with 2 x AAA + 1 x BB + 7 x No.6. the bulk of the shot were grouped around the base of the float and the No.6s spaced at one foot intervals. Plumbing-up was done by pinching an AAA on the loop of the six-inch hooklength so effectively I had six inches of hooklength hard on the bottom. Three cups of red and white maggots were catapulted out in front at the start.

Co-incidentally, the match on Lake 2 kicked off at the same time as I made my first cast so I determined to stop fishing at the final whistle and see how many I’d caught.

My first cast landed with a splosh and on reeling in I was confronted with a tangled mess. Not a good start. Five minutes lost sorting the thing out and trying again. Casting was completely different to what I am used to. Give me a 3 lbs. TC carp rod and a 3 oz lead and I will throw it 100 yards – cast a waggler rig and it’s a different story – it’s essential to ‘feather’ the cast to help straighten things out so the rig settles nicely, the wind having only minimal effect on the float once it settles due to several sharp turns of the reel with the rod-tip sunk beneath the surface to sink the line.

Things were slow to start and I had to introduce several cups of maggots before I had the first bite – the float suddenly disappearing from sight. My strike only succeeded in rasping the clutch. I was quite surprised at how much resistance there is on such light tackle – no doubt due to the long length of sunk line. I adopted my usual practice of setting the clutch of the reel before casting but realised this must be screwed tight in order for an effective strike to be made. Despite this early ‘lesson’ I still forgot to screw the damn thing down at intervals during the day and missed several fish because of it. The protocol is: screw clutch up tight, cast out, hook fish, loosen clutch; and then before casting out again – screw clutch tight again.

Eventually however I got ‘off the mark’ and was amazed at what fun the light tackle was. Fish of between half a pound to two pounds give a more than a respectable account of themselves on fine lines, tiny hooks, and light rods. I’ve had less fun with double-figure carp and ‘heavy gear’ on occasions.

The thing I like about Monk Lakes is that it seems such a ‘fair’ venue. The lakes are absolutely stuffed with fish and I doubt you’d have a complete blank even on the harshest of days – provided of course you fish with a reasonable degree of proficiency, although few can hope to match the skills of Mike Jameson, Peter Morton, and several other Maggotdrowners. On a cold, harsh, winters day, what better than to catch fish at regular intervals throughout? I doubt I had to wait more than ten-fifteen minutes before getting a bite although it is testament to my ineptitude that my conversion rate of around 75% was less than satisfactory – mostly due to not sinking the line properly and striking against a great slack ‘bow’.

I also fed much more than I did in the match. The rise in temperature definitely got the fish feeding and at no stage was I aware of over-feeding, something I’m acutely aware of in the winter.

As you can see, I got a fair selection of what lake 1 has to offer – Bream, carp, F1s, and what I think are Ide. I am not familiar with Ide so I am not certain of their identification but I enclose a picture of one of several I caught. Perhaps someone can enlighten me as to how they can be i.d.-ed. These fish looked very much like Roach but weren’t if you know what I mean. As I say I have never seen Ide so I don’t know what they look like.

I had one that was well over the pound and put up a fair old scrap – they were well worth catching.

Curious thing during the day was the pattern of shoal movements.
At the start I caught three or four Bream, followed by a blank spell – then one or two carp, then a blank spell – then it was F1s for a while – then another blank spell as they moved off – then it was Bream again, then something else. The fish definitely shoal together and obviously cruise around with their mates, the interesting thing being you never know which shoal is going to be next. I assume the fact the shoals were here-and-gone meant that I failed to hold them with feed; chances are I could have fed even more and prolonged their stays.

On a match lake like this there is every chance the fish have cotton-ed on to the fact there is free feed if they cruise about the lake for it will be somewhere in every peg that is being fished. In an overstocked venue such as this food is at a premium. Although I could be wrong, I doubt the fish in the match lakes will ever grow very large because there is simply far too many of them for the food available – even given the regular contributions made by anglers.

At the ‘weigh-in’ I’d had 21 fish – far, far less than Mike and most of the Fur and Feather participants had, although I considered the session a learning-curve on what for me was a new method. Averaging between half and three-quarters of a pound each I should think my total was somewhere around ten-and-a-half and fifteen-and-three-quarter pounds; probably nearer 12-13 lbs. Or so. This would have still only put me in 13 th. Place or so! Guess I’ll never make a match angler!

Huge fun. Will certainly be doing it regularly in the winter months when the big carp are ‘asleep’.

The Little wooden reel, father, grandfather, and me

2007-11-26T15:26:00.000-08:00

Sunday, 25th.November 2007
The Willow Pool, Faversham, Kent

I have in my possession an old wooden Nottingham ‘Star-Back’ reel which is getting on for 75-80 years old. My father used it – and taught me to fish with it, and his father used it to teach him in the years leading up to the Second World War. To say it has more than a sentimental value to me is an understatement.
For many years my father followed my carp-fishing career and once or twice even came with me – but unfortunately we were never able to catch a carp of which my father had the greatest esteem and respect for in those days. Carp to him (and virtually the rest of the angling world) were thought to be nigh-on impossible to catch up until the mid-nineteen fifties – early sixties or so. It was my dearest wish that one day I would be with him when he caught his first ever carp; sadly this was never to be before he died of lung cancer, two days after retiring from work..........
Every so often I pick up this reel and turn it in my hand. The feeling of knowing my father and my grandfather (whom I never knew) used it to enjoy some of the memorable moments of their lives is both satisfying as well as upsetting in that I was unable to share those moments with them. To have been with my father when he could have used it to catch his first carp would have filled me with utter joy.
I decided therefore that if neither of them could now fulfil this objective – then I would go and do it for them with the very reel that is the everlasting connection between all three of us.

Sunday – late morning

Keeping ‘gentleman’s hours’, I arrived late in the morning and set up in Peg 2, starting off with the pole with the intention of going onto the float-rod later. The weather during the week had been very cold with sharp frosts and temperatures hovering at, or below zero in the morning; fortunately, the Saturday was milder and I hoped the rise in temperature would bring the fish on the feed. I firmly believe that in even the harshest weather, fish will be caught from the Willow Pool – it is absolutely stuffed full of fish – far too many in fact, and I expect the club who control it will have to carry out a certain amount of ‘thinning-out’ to create a more ‘balanced’ environment. Although healthy, the fish seemed not to have grown at all since I last fished it almost exactly one year ago.

I started catching from the off. One cup of pellets were introduced via a ‘feeder-pot’ and a single pellet was fished on a size 18 Tubertini. The pellets I had ‘pumped’ the night before and left them in my bait-box covered with kitchen towel to stop them going soggy. This seemed to work well and a nice rubbery bait was the result.
Peculiarly, it was carp all the way, one after another, each fish burying the float in a most confident and satisfying manner. They were typical of the Willow Pool carp being all shapes and sizes, from little four-inch babies up to fish of a couple of pounds or so. I even had some ornamentals including this koi-like sample.

By mid-afternoon I’d had enough of this carp-fest ‘fix’ and put up the float outfit.
The rod was a John Wilson Avon (Quiver) rigged at thirteen feet, coupled with the old Wooden reel which was loaded with 5lbs. Bs Maxima. To this I tied a length of 0.1 mm. Preston Powerline using a four-turn water knot, a pole float was fixed waggler-style using a drennan ‘quick-change’ adaptor and a combination of no.8 shot and no.10 Stotz completed the rig.
The reel looks (and feels) like a right old warrior. Damaged at some point in its history, my father had attempted to repair it using some Duralumin on the back – a functional if unappealing replacement to the brass ‘starback’ which had obviously fallen foul of my father’s notorious clumsiness! The reel arbour rotated however – albeit noisily, the steel spindle I suspect having been straightened more than once in its life, but as I screwed it to the rod, I couldn’t help recalling the picture of my grandfather William fishing with it at the Hampton Court Longwater – somewhere around 1930 or so. It is an image which will (and does) remain with me always.

As I lobbed the single grain of corn a rod-length out and scattered a few grains around the float I imagined my father and granddad William getting as excited as I was............ I didn’t have long to wait. The little float buried, I struck and felt as if I’d hooked the bottom, and steadily the little reel began to revolve as the little carp sped off across the pool. Although the event was entirely unremarkable in its execution, and indeed is something emulated and repeated by millions of anglers up and down the country, the symbolism for me was both poignant and satisfying.

As I lay the fish on the grass, I secretly hoped that they were pleased that the little reel that we have all used in our time had at last landed the fish for which they held such regard. Certainly, carp are not valued as highly now as they were in my father’s and grandfather’s day – but a carp’s a carp as they say.

I feel chuffed to bits!........

The RIP (River in Picardie) - Trip 4

2007-06-22T01:23:00.000-07:00

Ever since my last trip to The River in Picardie (The RIP) in France, I have been champing at the bit, wanting to get back. Not for many, many years have I become so obsessed with my carp-fishing, and since the very first trip with my good friend Phil Baker almost a year ago to the day, I have plotted and schemed the downfall of the river’s residents.

I knew this year would be a very busy year for both Phil and myself. Phil planned to move house, plus, there were family holidays, a planned week on the River Saone way down South after carp and cats, and work commitments crowding his diary. For myself, a trip to Australia, lack of holiday leave, and family commitments preventing me from going. All in all, things have been very difficult. The upshot was, that the earliest I could get out there was mid-June – and this, a ‘solo’ trip on my own since Phil couldn’t make it.

Planning

All sorts of schemes and ploys were in the offing, both tactics-wise and equipment-wise. For a start, since I was ‘flying solo’ as it were and travelling and fishing on my own, Chris and I decided ‘Bluetooth’ communications would be a very reassuring piece of technology. Christine was worried about me driving in France unaccompanied as I am a notoriously pathetic navigator. Her declaration I would barely find my way out of Sittingbourne – much less to Dover, on the ferry, and all the way down to the river in Picardie, being less than reassuring! Keeping in touch in the car ‘on the road’ at least enabled us to speak to one another and she would know I was ok. Mind you, the ferry crossing was scheduled for 2.10 a.m. (the cheapest I could get) so I doubted she was going to stay up all night while I made it down there!

I (may) have mentioned before the difficulties of Drive and Survive carp fishing trips, and the problem of toileting opportunities ‘in the field’ with no facilities. Previously, these had at best been rudimentary – a private and secluded spot in the woods beside the river, an unpleasant and often inconvenient arrangement. The SAS may well be happy to defecate into plastic bags and take their waste with them, but I was determined to devise some sort of ‘Porta-Potty’ and a disposal system which would be both more comfortable, as well as convenient. In the end I came up with this:

I got an old bait bucket and some pipe-lagging, removed the handle from the bucket and cut the lagging so it would fit around the rim. The idea was to fill the bucket with four to six inches of water, deposit the contents within the privacy of the bivvy, dig a hole in some remote location away from camp and empty the contents into the hole, the ‘Potty’ being washed out in the river afterwards. Anti-bacterial soap being an essential part of the sanitation system. Hopefully, the days of constipation and anxiety trying to find somewhere to have a cr@p would be over.

With an improvement in sanitation facilities (nicknamed ‘The Thomas’ after the well-known victorian plumber Thomas Crapper)

I also decided to raise the level of my field-hygiene by including a solar shower on my trips. This is basically a five-gallon plastic bag with a short hose and sprinkler on the end and a tap to turn the thing on and off. The bag is filled with river water and left in the sun for three hours – black side up. The bag absorbs the heat from the sun and heats the water. By hanging from a convenient tree, a refreshing and cleansing shower can be taken – although the box in which it came warned that so efficient is it in absorbing the sun’s rays, the temperature of the water can rise very high indeed!

Shower gel, deodorant, and shaving equipment would now also accompany me on the trips, whereas previously I’d ‘gone dirty’ (apart from one occasion when Phil and I had ritually bathed in the river when temperatures were over 100 degrees!).

A further measure was a mosquito-net. I had been severely bitten by the little blighters last July and had returned home covered in itching bites which had driven me half-mad in the week following. I was determined to at least provide some protection. All my fishing life I had accepted mosquito-bites as part and parcel of carp-fishing beside water; an inevitable result of the location where the activity takes place. These days however, I feel the need to demonstrate my manliness far less and accept anything which makes a fishing trip less stressful. This net would be suspended from the ribs of the bivvy and would completely envelope the sleeping-bag. Evacuation in an emergency (when I had a take in the middle of the night) was an anticipated problem which I would just have to deal with – I anticipated getting out of the thing underneath, although the efficiency of this method had yet to be put to the test!

Bait and Tactics
Phil and two of his friends had a trip to the river in April while Christine and I were away in Australia. The tactics they employed and the results they obtained caused a complete revision of our approach.....

Previously, Phil and I had fished the area of ‘The Beach’ at short range and done very well, taking fish to 31:05. The last trip we had in November last year was the most successful, casting baits further upstream in front of a wooded area – where we decided to concentrate on future trips. Phil and his friends fished this area – but further out, in mid-river, taking several upper twenties and two fish over thirty pounds. Phil’s assessment was that this was where the bigger fish resided.

For this trip I decided to go equipped with as much bait as I could afford. Phil suggested the big fish of the river responded to large amounts of bait and a more-or-less constant stream of feed was required to first get them feeding – then picking up baits. Amounts of ten to twenty kilos minimum for a weekend trip were mentioned! With the cost of boilies being so high I decided to try and economise a bit by using something cheaper. Maize, Tiger Nuts, Peanuts? I eventually decided on Halibut Pellets as a suitable mass feed to:

be heavy enough to not get washed downstream with the wash of the huge barges, and
be big enough and heavy enough to be catapulted at range. What I went with was this:
3 kg. Of 18 mm. Matrix boilies
2 kg. Of mixed boilies (tutti-fruitti, ball pellets and strawberry)
5 kg. Of 20 mm. halibut pellets
1.5 kg. Of ‘Time Bomb’ pellets
1.5 kg. Of 10 mm. halibut pellets
a few kilos of hemp…………………… amounting to about 15 kgs. Of feed altogether!
Frank in ‘Catcherbaits’ in Sittingbourne got me 20 mm.pellets which seemed to be just the job, they were big enough and hard enough to resist the Crayfish which seemed to have been a problem on the April visit – in fact the presence of Crayfish was quite significant.

Huge carp in French waters do not get huge by eating minute food items such as water lice etc. Large organisms rich in protein (such as Crayfish) are what do it for them and where you find the Crays – you will find the big carp. The other water I was familiar with in France – Maison du Lac Bleu held similar populations of these crustaceans and I was convinced they played a significant part in their diet and in the location of where they fed. We had not previously encountered Crayfish in the margins of the river – but it seemed they were present further out and this may well hold the key.

Every day prior to the visit was a torture – I just couldn’t wait to get out there. Daily visits to the Internet Meteo France site to see what the weather was like locally only made me even more eager!

[Journal]

2.15 a.m.

The weather is very kind for the crossing , calm seas and light winds.
There are lots of sports car enthusiasts on their way down to Le Mans for the motor race, although one or two of them notice I have fishing tackle in the car and are interested in where I’m going and what I’m doing.

I had to hand over a 5 Euro note for a cup of coffee and blanched at the meager change I was given! I think I got something like €1.75 back in change! What a rip-off!

It is quiet on board. Several passengers are stretched out on seats trying to sleep although it hardly seems worth it for the short hour-and-twenty-five-minutes crossing. Perhaps they have motored a long way and are knackered.

As always there were the usual last minute panics which seem a feature of these French trips. No matter how much thought I put into the planning and how many lists I make there is always something I’ve forgotten or omitted.

Phil texted me from the river Saone and he has had a very good result in the form of a forty-four pound mirror. Fantastic news! He is chuffed to bits as I am for him.
I’m already very tired and my eyes are sore. Perhaps I just got over-excited about the trip (as usual). I spend the crossing checking out the route down to the river, hoping I don’t get lost. That done, I pace up and down the ship, trying to while away the time. Despite the crossing being short, time seems to be dragging and I have trouble occupying the minutes waiting to cross.

I wish Phil were with me and we could wind each other up about the fish we are going to catch!

There is still half-an-hour to go before we berth in Calais and already I wish the journey were over. I just want to get on the Autoroute and on the way down to the river.

The coffee is foul and leaves a sour taste in my mouth; not only that, it goes through me like a dose of salts and I have to pay a futher visit to the smelly toilets. If this is “The Pride of Dover” I don’t think the citizens of Dover have much to be proud of.

Thursday, 1.20 p.m.

The journey down was without incident and I did manage to find the river – contrary to Christine’s evaluation that I can hardly find my way out of Sittingbourne – much less to a remote location in France!

I was very tired by the time I got to ****** and had a good look at the river before setting-up. It had been months since I had been here and the new Spring growth was as verdant as it was beautiful. First job – find Phil’s swim from where he caught a thirty last time. This was easier said than done because the banks are a veritable ‘jungle’ of undergrowth and it is impossible to even see the river from the path, much less swims where people had been fishing. In fact no-one has fished this bank (as far as we know) for there is no-where from which to fish. Phil and Mark had to cut ‘holes’ in the trees to poke rods through.

After much to-ing and fro-ing up and down the bank, I eventually located the ‘swim’ – a muddy little hole that I think could be quite difficult to cast from because of the presence of overhanging trees. Before moving the gear in however, there was a trip into town I had wanted to make.

I was determined to sample some of the local wine, cheese, and bread, and thought I had espied shops the last time I was here. This proved to be unfounded – all there were, was a ‘café de peche’ which was boarded up and had obviously gone out of business. So no wine and no cheese. Disappointing.

I walked back to the car and began the long, arduous process of moving the mountain of equipment down to the swim. This proved to be harder than usual, not because I was dog-tired due to the long journey and lack of sleep, but I had to crash through a seeming impenetrable ‘jungle’ of undergrowth that wrapped its creepers around my legs, placed fallen (and unseen) branches in my path to trip me up, and slashed tree branches across my face and eyes as I desperately tried to force a way through!
In the end , I just had to head-down it into the thicket and force a way through like a mad elephant! Eight times I had to do this, and although the distance was short, I was drenched in sweat, my clothes soaking with the effort. This was an opportunity to try out the new camp shower and I rigged it up from a tree, filling it with river water. I had brought all the accoutrements necessary for taking ablutions and I found the shower both functional as well as cleansing. It delivers only a meager trickle of course – but is a piece of field equipment that should prove reliable as well as effective. The only problem I found with it was I had to kneel down on an unhooking mat as I couldn’t get it high enough to stand under without climbing a tree, but this was a minor problem. A shave and liberal use of anti-perspirent and I felt human again, although the clothes had to be confined to the ‘dirty-bag’. Thus refreshed, I set up about making up the ‘weaponry’ and laying siege to the carp.

I have a plan – to fish at least 50 yards downstream of an introduced concentration of bait, but have to adapt this because of restrictions imposed by the proximity of bankside trees. There is also a bed of lilies (which Phil had failed to mention) and it seems sensible to focus on these as a feature. Because of restrictions overhead in casting, I can not reach the middle of the river and drop well short. This may or may not be a problem, we shall have to wait and see. I really must get some shut-eye as I am so tired.

2.00 p.m.

An horrendous thunderstorm has struck – right overhead and the rain is torrential! Thunder still booms round and round so we shall be in for a deal more rain yet. This has interrupted my baiting-up and I am not yet ‘settled’ into things as it were. This has been the pattern of previous visits to the river – it takes at least 24 hrs. to ‘tune’ oneself in to the session so to speak. Right at this moment I feel well ‘out of touch’.

3.00 p.m.

Had a chance to bait up following the storm, with hemp, pellets, and boilies to the mid-river and ‘cabbage patch’ areas. My catapulting style is a curious affair – extending the catty-arm to the right and aiming the baits in a kind of ‘round-the-corner’ style to try and circumvent the sticky-out tree branches. Feeling a little more into it now; although my little ‘Mud Hole’ is now a quagmire, the conditions could not be better, warm, overcast, and muggy.

One or two sizeable fish topping although I don’t know what they are. Not happy with my ‘hair’ lengths so I think I’ll make up some new ones and change them.

3.30 p.m.

Just had a call from Phil to say he’s bagged a 102 lb. catfish! It’s all happening for him at the moment and he can do no wrong!

I’ve just noticed how much bubbling is going on out there – some of the patches are really big. There are Bream in the river though and they could be truffling the bait up.

4.30

Just changed the hairs on the two left-hand rods and also cast them much further out into the stream. My theory is, that the massive barges stir up the bottom and this encourages the carp to feed on larger food items suspended in the turbulence – mussels, crayfish, and the like.

7.00 p.m.

With tea functions completed (a carbonara with pasta, washed down with Cranberry and Apple juice – I would have preferred a vin blanc but there you are) I set to in ‘working’ the swim again. One thing I have learnt is that there is nothing as important as Feeding. Whether your quarry is 40 ounces or 40 pounds – get it wrong and a good swim can become a bad ‘un.

Really starting to get into the session now. I am concentrating all my boily feed 30-40 yards upstream of the mid-river rod, the closer one is about 10-20 yards downstream to the right of the ‘cabbages’ I am spodding hemp and halibut pellets and although it is at short range I still favour the spod for the little pile of feed delivered to the bottom – unlike catapulting which spreads feed all over the shop.
Although I have anticipated having to wait a minimum of 24 hrs. for the carp to come to the feed, I feel sufficiently confident of getting a take some time tonight.

8.15 p.m.

Not for the first time there’s a fish popped its head out in exactly the same place – very close to my ‘downstream’ rod; this is the rod which is fifty yards downstream of where I have been introducing feed and the spot I anticipate where the feed ends up following the boat wash. It could be complete coincidence of course – it might be nothing at all to do my feeding regime. It certainly gives me confidence though.

9.30 p.m.

Final bait-up and re-cast on all rods as it begins to get dark. All quiet. No sign of any fish.

Friday, 15th.June, 2007
6.30 a.m.

What can I say about last night’s events other than they were some of the most dire I have ever experienced in all the years I have been fishing.

The evening commenced with heavy and persistent rain that fell all night, my ‘mud-hole’ which had been transformed into a quagmire by the thunderstorm, now turned into a pool of liquid, brown, sticky, goo. It is everywhere, clinging to everything in a glutinous slime.

I had a series of peculiar, twitchy lifts and got out of the bivvy to investigate. I don’t know what time this happened, but what I do know is that I must have been asleep or nearly so because I staggered about with my feet stuck in the mud like a drunken oaf. With one foot stuck in the goo, I must have lurched off-balance and struck my left foot against something solid. A searing pain went up my leg as I stubbed my toe – kicking against whatever it was, full-bore. To say it made my eyes water is an understatement and investigation revealed blood soaking through my sock.
It was beyond my means to do anything at that point, other than lay in my bivvy listening to the sound of the rain drumming on the bivvy-canopy. My left big toe hurt like hell and was throbbing rhythmically! A miserable and painful moment in what was turning out to be an extremely challenging session. There was nothing for it but to try and sleep until morning when I would have the opportunity to examine the damage properly and make such repairs as were possible.

At some point in the early hours of the morning, amid throbbing pain and incessant rain, I had a take to the extreme right-hand rod fishing to the ‘cabbages’. Chaos ensued as I simultaneously listened to the drone of the alarm – and desperately tried to get something on my feet so I could get to my rods. The waders had been strategically situated for just such moments, but for some strange reason I just couldn’t get them on my feet!

My left foot was really painful, not to say soaked with mud. I may just as well have paddled my way to the rods with nothing on my feet! Eventually however I managed to pull into the fish which had obligingly stayed attached and a short fight ensued during which I entred the water to effect netting operations. Amazingly this was performed without incident given the rather confined nature of the swim, although a by-product of this procedure was that I went over the top of the waders big style!

It never rains but it pours. Trousers ands socks off and confined to the ‘dirty-bag’. I was now fishing in just shorts and tee-shirt in what was now a cold and damp environment. A hasty snap of the fish (which turned out to be a very plump thirteen-pounder) and back in the water.

Now if I’d caught this ‘little fatty’ from a commercial fishery, I dare say it would elicit the response from some folks about “artificially pellet-fed fish being a grotesque corruption of what Nature intended”. The truth of the matter is that this was a wild fish from a wild river, not subject to any “artificial” feeding at all. Its only source of food is what Nature and the river has provided. It rather begs the question – “what constitutes a well-conditioned carp and what shape should that be?” fat and chunky, or long and slim?

My own feeling is that a fish’s shape is determined by its DNA and food availability. If it’s meant to be fat it will be (assuming an appropriate food availability). All I know is – I love every single one of ‘em!

One other incident happened during the night. After a series of twitches I lifted into a fish which turned out to be a great big Roach. Indignant at being dragged from the river unceremoniously on carp tackle, it kicked and struggled – embedding the carp hook into my finger well past the barb! Oh my God! A hospital visit this time, and perhaps they could sort out my toe too!

Thank goodness for microbarbs. After a bit of wheedling, pain, and gritted teeth I managed to get it out although I was now bleeding like a stuck pig – dripping blood everywhere. This involved another trip to the car to make use of the emergency first-aid kit which is compulsory for all motorists to have when traveling in France. Knackered, in pain, and grumpy, I retired to my pit to catch up on some much needed sleep.

9.30 a.m.

It all kicked off with a rip-snorter of a take to the mid-river rod. This fish set off downstream and I let him go before bringing him back in front of the pitch. This time I decided not to go in to net the fish (I couldn’t – the waders were still drying out, hanging up)- so netted a rather pale looking common that looked to be only about 12-14 pounds. On weighing however, I was surprised to see the digital read-out stop at 19:15. despite encouraging ‘bounces’ of the scales, it would not go twenty so I had to content myself with one ounce short. What does it matter anyway? I couldn’t have been happier after recent events and decided to have a complete re-organisation of the camp and to see to my injured toe.

12.00 midday

After an excellent brunch of fruit juice, scrambled eggs, and bacon, I am a new man. All four rods have been re-cast and repositioned. Three are in a line mid-river, and the fourth, fishing the ‘cabbage patch’ on its own.

I spent a good half-hour or so firing out boilies to the middle of the river, and slightly upstream of the left-hand rod. It will be interesting to see whether the ’50 yard theory’ has any mileage or whether the boilies stay put on the bottom, in which case it should be the left-hand bait which should be the ‘hot one’.

2.30 p.m.

It has become really rather windy – a wind which unfortunately is blowing straight into the bivvy. I hope this is not the indicator of an impending storm (again) for things are just starting to dry out. Toe throbbing.

3.30 p.m.

Just spent another half hour baiting up the mid-river with boilies. I’ve noticed that the two extreme left-hand rods have been towed downstream ten metres or so. I noticed this happening when the huge double-barges came through, so if the current can shift over three ounces of lead, then the boilies will get washed downstream for sure. Does this mean that unless feed is eaten, it will get washed progressively further and further down river – taking the carp with it?

This is a similar situation to when I’ve been fishing Chum Mixers on the surface in a wind. Mixers float away downwind and fish may start taking them quite some way away. What happens though is that the fish follow the bait-stream upwind and eventually will be found in front of you where the feed is going in. this is the opposite of the “wind blows the surface food onto the windward side of the lake and this is the place to fish for them” theory. I hope the same applies to the river.

5.00 p.m.

A humungous double barge has just come charging upriver and sent a wave so big – it breached the banks, came over the top and into the bivvy!. Needless to say ‘the mud pool’ which was starting to dry out………….hasn’t.

7.00 p.m.

Another bait-up to both areas – now, it is just a matter of topping-up what is already there.

I had a text from Phil who is getting wet down on the river Saone. He is convinced that things won’t really start to happen for me until the second night. That means it should be tonight!

I’d just like to get through the night without further injury and in moderately good order.

9.00 p.m.

More changes to the rigs. I have decided to fish with very basic “Silkworm” rigs and double-baits, these should give more ‘room’ for a fish to pick them up and suck them in before hitting the lead resistance. I am sure these wild rivers do not demand anything in the way of ‘fancy’ presentations and there is the distinct possibility of over-thinking what is basically a simple and unsophisticated scenario.

Sunday, 16th.June 2007
9.45 a.m.

Late journal entry due to late sleeping and breakfasting. This is not unsurprising considering the events of last night which kicked off just after dark. I began getting a series of snatches and abortive takes which finally resulted in a steady drone of the alarm; as soon as I lifted into it I could tell it was a small fish although it hopped around like the wallabies we’d seen in Australia a few months ago! He was soon in the net and there then followed what has become the inevitable series of snarl-ups – catching the net meshes in tree branches, getting the rod-tip and line caught in the tree branches, and falling over in the darkness (over tree branches). Tree branches should be removed from all trees to avoid such mis-haps forthwith! Hate ‘em!

This small fish (of about 6 lbs.) came to one of the mid-river rods; I feel really confident about putting baits out there now because on previous trips we hadn’t had a thing there.

Out with the rod again which involved wading up to my thighs in the dark to get far enough out to avoid the overhanging trees (branches). I nearly ‘came to grief’ several times, overbalancing as I struggled to extricate my feet from the soft muddy bottom.

No sooner had I got settled than the close-in rod was away. At first I thought it was a good fish but was disappointed with a fish which although was in pristine condition, was only 13:01.

no matter, it’s back out with the bait and a change of rig for some of the rods so that I was now fishing twelve inches of 20 lbs. ‘Kryston Silkworm’ and a simple knotless-knot carrying double-boilies; hook is a size eight ‘Korda Hybrid’. No frills. No line-aligner or what-have-you, just plain and simple no-nonsense presentations which are both functional and efficient. Why go for something more sophisticated? At the moment it doesn’t seem to be needed.

After a short lull which seemed only a few minutes but which I suspect was a deal longer, I was away once more. This followed a period of short snatches and pulls which I suspected were small fish. One of them I lifted into and once again I connected with a big Roach – again, a fish approaching two pounds in weight. The Roach out here seem to like their boilies!

A screamer of a take and I was connected into something which felt a lot bigger. I decided to go into the water to land it because it seemed it was all getting too cramped and confined in the swim, and as I waded out with the net – one of the other rods burst into life! I was powerless to do anything other than to try and guide my hooked fish into the net whilst simultaneously watching yard after yard being ripped from the reel spool! This was dire. What to do? Try and play both fish at once? This seemed out of the question as the one I was trying to land was all over the place and I could barely get it in the net – much less a second fish!

Eventually after much panic and getting caught in the trees I got the fish in and on to the unhooking mat. Hastily sorting the fish out I went to the other rod which was still slowly ticking line off the spool, and lifted into it.

At first I managed to gain line on what felt like a very good fish indeed and it seemed I must have made a good 40-50 yards of line on it when all of a sudden everything went solid. It was absolutely stuck. Solid as a rock. I put the rod in the rest to see if the fish would swim out and attended to the fish still lying on the unhooking mat which I hastily took a snap of and returned to the river after weighing – 19:02.

Line then started ticking off the spool. I’d made sure the common had swum off and then picked up the rod – there was a solid but living resistance and I gained ten yards of line, although I had to heave to the limit of the tackle to get it. Once again however, the fish ‘went to ground’ and there was nothing I could do to shift it. I tried pointing the rod at the fish and hand-lining which has worked for me in the past, but all that happened was that the line parted.

This was a tragic loss as I felt it was a good fish and may even have been ‘The Lump’ I know exists in the river. Oh well, re-rig….

Before I’d got the rod re-tied and re-rigged, there was yet another take – this was a real Linford Christie – it was off, out of the blocks and away downriver like an express train and I knew immediately it was one of the better fish. With slightly more room due to one less rod being out, the netting operations went better than usual and I got him up and onto the bank in good order.

This turned out to be a lovely common of 21:08 which I was really pleased with, and no sooner had I weighed and photographed it and re-cast – than one of the other rods went! This was frantic action indeed and was the sort of spell that if you are a carp angler you can only dream about!

Andy - featuring the "Startled Rabbit" pose!

I got the fish close to the net and it began thrashing around, charging up and down in front of the swim. It was because I may have been a little over-zealous in trying to ‘horse’ it into the net that the hook and lead suddenly flew out of the water! Bugger! Another fish lost. Still, out with the remaining rods.

This took quite a while as there were new rigs to tie, (I decided my hair-lengths were too long), and going over the top of the waders to cast out to cast out!........

At last I managed to lay on top of the bedchair and get a few moments rest, but in what seemed no time at all, one of the rods was going again! A re-run of past episodes followed with the fish chugging around in the middle of the river until persuaded to come near enough the bank to get the landing-net under it. At this point and for no apparent reason – the hook fell out!....

This made three fish lost, an event which had never happened to me on the river before. To say I was annoyed is an understatement. I was tired due to lack of sleep, and irritable because of the lost fish and went into ‘paddy’ mode – stomping around in the mud, cursing and swearing at everything I could think of!.................................................ok; bad language out of the way. Sit on bed and calm down. Did I feel better for this release of pent-up emotion? Well, sort of; it was back out with the rods and some much needed sleep.

It was just getting light when the alarm was going again, only this time all went well and I managed to get the fish up the bank and onto the unhooking mat in good order. This was one of the ‘golden-y’ commons which are darker than lighter coloured varieties – the edges of the scales have a gold-to-brown colouration, making them very impressive specimens indeed. Some common carp can be rather pale and anaemic-looking. I don’t count the ornamental varieties that are stocked into commercial fisheries in the UK – these river fish are wild and unadulterated, and yet have an inherent variation in scaling, body shape, and colouration which is fascinating. Must be the huge mix of genes going back hundreds of years (or could it be thousands – I don’t know). This fish was weighed at fifteen pounds and gave me an early morning wash as I placed it back in the water. That was that for the night-session.

12.00 midday

My camp has been in what one of my army friends would say was “shit state”! More rain has generated even more mud than before (if that’s possible). I have had to put both unhooking mats and my boots in the river and give them a good wash. I’ve re-ordered the camp as well to give myself more room to move around in although the front of the swim is still a mire. You cannot get out of bed and paddle through that!

Some very big barges have been coming up and down the river this morning and I have arrived at some conclusions as to how to feed for the fish.

Last night I put most of my bait out after the last barge came through so there wasn’t the great turbulence sending it all off down river towards the sea. Most of the action came on the left-hand rod which is nearest to where most of the bait went in, so my plan is to introduce only a little during the day, and put in the bulk of it after dark after the last barge has come through.

I must go through my maps and make sure I know the route to return to Calais, I must start to pack up at 7.30 a.m. and must be away by 9.00 a.m. latest to get the ferry so there may be no night report in the journal [actually there is – I wrote it up on the ferry].

4.00 p.m.

I have spent all afternoon getting ready for the return journey by shifting unwanted items back to the car, showering, shaving, and cleaning myself up and donned clean clothes. I have also had to contend with what must be a rising river (following, I assume, the recent heavy rains we’ve had). Three or four times, monster barges have been through and thrown up massive tsunamis which have come over the banks and into my camp. The front is now underwater/mud and I have had to make a side exit to the bivvy. There really has been a lot of boat traffic today and most of it has been the ‘heavy’ stuff.

Running repairs!

I was just thinking about the feeding regime. I haven’t put any bait in today but am saving it for tonight. If it takes 24 hrs. for the fish to come to it – and the barges have cleared it all out, I could get nothing at all. If I blank tonight, it could mean that the feed has to be kept going in all the time regardless. On the other hand, waiting until all the barges have gone means you can end with a lot of bait in a confined area for the fish to discover. We’ll see.

8.00 p.m.

This evening was full of activities. All day I have been engaged in non-fishing stuff or resting; now, I have just got all four rods re-baited and cast out. I’ve also put a bit of bait out upstream, although this is taking a bit of a chance because there is still time for the barges to come through and move it all away downstream. [in the event, there were no more].

All four are fishing the mid-river area and are equipped with identical “Silkworm” rigs.

There has been more ugly weather with further heavy showers. Claps of thunder were heard in the distance. This is quite the worst weather I have ever had for a fishing session in France although I don’t think it is at all unusual for here. Everything is so green and lush - I suppose it doesn’t get so without the rain to go with it!
I am nearly out of water and have one cup of tea left. There is an emergency ration in the car but I don’t really want to deplete it as I want it for the journey home tomorrow.

Sunday, 17th.June 2007
12.15 p.m. – The Pride of Burgundy, Calais

It was another dreadful evening weather-wise with claps of thunder booming up and down the valley. The wind was blowing – as it had since I arrived- straight into the bivvy opening forcing me to erect the big brolly in front of the Daiwa Mission Overnighter.

The expectancy of course was for the fish to start feeding as soon as it got dark as they had on Friday night – either that or my lack of baiting during the day had meant the fish had followed the feed downstream. In the event, there was no action from the rods (all of which were fishing the mid-river area) and I was beginning to think there weren’t many fish about. To compensate for this lack of confidence I fired out the rest of the bait I’d got (which amounted to about three kilos odd).

It was fortunate there was no action in the early part of the night because I would have got very wet indeed going outside to bait up. At least the rain had settled in to a series of showers rather than a continual deluge. I was half hoping I wouldn’t have to get out and deal with fish because a) I was dog-tired and had to drive back to Calais tomorrow, and b) I was heartily fed up to the back teeth with the mud which was now caking everything. It was even making moving around in front of the pitch difficult, every step a grotesque leg-wrenching stomp in imitation of Frankenstein’s monster. I tried to sleep and even managed to doze off for a while.

Suddenly, one of the rods was going and it was a mad scramble to don the waders and get to the rods. I lifted into the fish which immediately made off for the far side of the river and I let him go against moderate pressure from the slipping-clutch. I could tell it was one of the better fish and carefully stepped into the river to effect netting operations. I hadn’t realized how far the river had come up (which must have been with all the heavy rain we’d had) – it was a lot nearer the tops of the waders and I would have to be extra careful with moving around in the river in the dark.

This proved to be a very nice fish of 22:03 which swam off strongly after being returned.

A certain amount of chaos occurred however with the rod, line, and landing-net all getting caught in the trees and around each other! No matter, out with another bait and three-bait stringer, cast upstream to the left.

Shortly after I had made my way back to the bank, taken off the waders and stashed themn so I knew where they were when needed, and bedded down again, then the rod next to it was going! This turned out to be a scrappy little fish of 12:01 which fought harder on the unhooking mat than it did in the water!

After this had been returned and I’d had a session scraping mud off myself and my kit, there was a take to the extreme upstream rod again. The same routine of throwing off the covers, putting on the waders, paddling through the mud, and lifting into the fish was repeated. The fish was either very small or wasn’t a carp at all as the fight was a peculiar affair and I began to think it might be a whopping great Chub. This would have been well worth recording so I followed the usual routine of entering the river and scrabbling around for the landing-net.

I got the fish in the net – which turned out to be a Barbel of six pounds,

and began inching my way back to the bank by releasing first one foot, and then the other from the soft, clinging, bottom mud.

It was pitch dark down in the river under the trees and suddenly and without warning I could sense myself losing my balance. I managed to twist and aim myself towards the bank – but disaster struck for I found myself spreadeagled in the river!

I had to do a complete kit change in the middle of the night, all wet clothes confined to the ‘dirty bag’. This was most inconvenient as the trousers were the only ones I’d got with me on the trip and could not be possibly dried out in time. Spent the rest of night in underwear.

Fortunately, a quiet period followed during which I managed to get things sorted out and I still had my waders on (which had been cleaned and dried) when the next take ensued. A carbon copy of previous captures followed during which a football-fat mirror was landed weighing 14:00

That was it for most of the night. I resolved to take my kit down rather than re-cast as time was pressing and I’d soon have to pack up and do the tortuous load-shift back to the car.

Most of the latter part of the session was spent in cleaning all the mud off the kit and it was whilst I was at the edge of the river that I had a ripping take to one of the remaining rods. A scrappy fight ensued resulting in a last-ditch fish of 22:08, the final, and biggest of the trip.

This wasn’t an end to things however because as I was putting the fish back I noticed the rod-tip knocking on the remaining rod. I picked it up and pulled into a very big, powerful fish which I am sure would have dwarfted all the others I had caught. Tragically, it found a very bad snag way downstream and I just couldn’t shift it and sadly reeled in having pulled for the break.

As it was time to go, I vowed to return and try for him again. Both Phil and I are convinced there are veritable monsters in the river. All we have to do is work out how to catch them!

Time to fill the car and go…………….

Sunday, 20th.May 2007

2007-06-02T17:46:00.000-07:00

Bysing Wood, Knicker Island Bar

It had been ages since I last fished Bysing Wood. A trip to Australia, social events, illness to the in-laws (both of them), plus unforeseen disasters, had kept me ‘confined to barracks’; now, having completed my work-party I was at last able to get out and have a go.

We are only allowed to fish during the afternoon on Sundays in the club at the moment (the morning given over to work around the lake for members wishing to fish the ‘Close Season’) and when I arrived there was only one other member in residence. The thing was where to start? I hadn’t seen the water in months much less fished it and hadn’t a clue as to the whereabouts of the fish. However, knowledge of the water and an appraisal of the conditions indicated the area of the ‘Knicker Island Bar’ to be the place – the breeze was blowing straight in there and I knew the area would be a good bet.

From my position, I could see across to the far side and the new swims being created during this Close Season’s work-party activities. I am always in two minds about major groundworks. On the one hand, there is an argument that any sort of mass buggering about with topography destroys the ‘naturalness’ of the place – and I recall Jim Gibbinson saying many years ago he regards the cutting of ‘dug-outs’ as vandalism (a sentiment I broadly agree with). Here at Bysing Wood though I think this sort of radical earth-work is just about justified. For a start, the far side was pretty dangerous to fish, with a steeply sloping bank and very shallow water in front which encouraged members to wade. There was also an extensive area of silt which made fishing impossible until the water level went down to a depth suitable to make fishing possible and safe. There was also the question of bone-headed members!

No matter how many times the club committee appealed to the members to have due regard for other members and not to cross their lines, cast into their water, (and generally be a confounded nuisance), the bone-heads (of which there are many) refused to take any notice and arguments and sometimes even fights arose over who could fish which bit of water. The new swims have been cunningly constructed to force anglers to fish straight out in front of them – the strategic leaving of islands by the earth-moving equipment forcing nothing less than a cast straight in front.

At the moment the far bank looks a real eyesore – but I have high hopes for the future. The next stage of work will be tree-planting and grass-seeding, and if the banks recover anything like as quickly as other areas of the lake treated similarly then the work will have been worthwhile.

It is a sad fact such measures have to be taken for the few idiots that can ruin things for the many. It’s the world we live in I’m afraid. The fact of the matter is, you don’t come to fish Bysing Wood for idyllic surroundings and pristine fish – but it is a place which is close to home and offers carp-fishing which suits me. That’s why I have been fishing the place for more than thirty years.

The fish come down the lake on the wind and strike the margins of Knicker Island; a bait cast close to the island is a good ‘banker’ here. The fish then follow the shallow water around in front of the island until they come to the reeds where they follow the fringes until it thins out, whereupon they swim through the reedbed into the ‘safe haven’ beyond (out of bounds at the moment.

A bait positioned in ‘The Bay’ on the edge of the reeds is a very reliable spot, the only thing is, it has to be positioned within a metre or two. This requires clipping-up to get the distance without casting into the reeds, or as I do, ‘feathering’ the line on the cast to drop the bait and pva bag just short of the vegetation. I use the latter method for no other reason than I prefer to.

Can we for once and all ban this ‘carp fishing is easy’ rubbish we’ve had on the Forum recently?! Casting close enough to the reeds here without getting tangled in them requires skill and judgment – a skill and judgment beyond any novice (although with practice they’ll get the hang of it eventually).

Proximity to the reeds is vital to get a take. Too short and it’s a blank.

I started off with a stiff fluorocarbon hooklink about six inches long with a braid hair carrying a 15 mm. Cranberry and Shellfish boily. This was partnered with a ‘funnel web’ bag containing ‘Time Bomb’ pellets. No ‘freebies’ of any kind were put out. The other rod was fished off the point of the island with an identical rig and bait.

Action came virtually from the start with a couple of abortive snatches and a drop-back, neither of which I connected with. Now theoretically, a resistance rig should hook a fish every time, since the weight of the bomb and its resistance should pull the hook in. Unfortunately, the carp are unaware of this fact and frequently ‘get away with it’, either managing to shed the hook or not get hooked in the first place. Again, this is where skill and judgment comes in – you have to know what to do in a situation such as this and not fish the same old rig just because you’ve caught fish on it before. I opted to change my setup in favour of an eighteen inch length of Kryston braid to give the fish more of a chance to get the bait into their mouths properly and this once again went out with the bag of pellets.

I should think the bait had been out about twenty minutes, when I had a peculiar up-and-down sort of take and then a drop-back. I struck and was into the fish immediately which contrary to what you’d have thought didn’t make for the reeds behind it – but bolted for the bank and some snags. Winding feverishly to keep in touch, the fish still managed to get behind another bed of reeds and I had to pull hard to get it out before having a ‘slugging match’ at short range in front for ten minutes or so before being netted.

This turned out to be a common of nineteen-thirteen in fairly reasonable condition. So often are the fish caught at Bysing Wood that mouth damage and poor condition are to be expected. None of us are happy about this and all members take the greatest care to look after the fish when they are in our care. It is a fact however that the stock in the lake are now very old and a certain amount of poor condition is understandable, given the pressure. We would all like to fish for pristine fish – but must take them as they are – or fish elsewhere.

The bait was back out in the same spot – a metre or so short of the line of the reeds with a fresh boily and bag of pellets. Quite clearly the fish were following their normal patrol route as evidence was clearly visible – rolling and reed-shaking by fish moving within a foot or so of the bait. A further twenty minutes elapsed however before there was another take; again this was a strange affair, the bobbin dancing up and down like a jack-in-the-box. I was on it in a flash – but strangely missed the take. Could have been a line-bite or simply the fact the fish managed to eject the rig.

Again a new bait and bag went out to the same spot, the cast being made as a gentle lob, the line ‘feathered’ down to drop the bait just two feet short of the reeds. This time there was a longer wait before the bobbin was doing its cha-cha-cha and I hooked into a lively fish which made straight for the near-bank snags. Despite being slightly smaller than the first fish it was all over the place and led me a merry dance before being netted. A mirror this time of sixteen-five.

Back out with another bait and bag.

All this time, the bait off the corner of the island had remained untouched. This was usual for this swim, the bait cast against the reeds invariably producing the most fish – but after the mirror had been returned there was a steady take to this rod which drew line from the spool in typical fashion.

At first I thought it was a small fish. I got it coming in reasonably easily without too many histrionics, but when it was near the net it really went beserk and set off on a series of runs which had me all over the place. It was one of those ‘mental’ commons which just did not know when to give up. It was no stranger to the landing-net for it tore off every time it came within reach. I could see it was a big fish – another common, very long and lean. At first I had high hopes it might break my personal best for Bysing of nearly twenty-seven pounds, but when I lifted it out of the water I could see that it was one of the lake’s ‘warriors’, an old fish, bruised and battered with a very poor mouth. On the scales it weighed a creditable 23:08.

I hate catching fish with such poor mouth-damage. It almost seems a betrayal of the fish themselves – that in return for the pleasure they give – they suffer so. But there it is. The alternative is to not fish for them at all.

This turned out to be the last carp of the afternoon’s fishing. Despite several takes – all of which were Tench between three and five pounds, no more carp did I catch. There was a certain irony in the Tench; I had fished hard previously for them and not caught a single one. Here I’d caught three without even trying!

Such is fishing.