Bysing Wood - Sunday, 9th.March 2008

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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!........