FROM HIGH SEAS TO STILLWATERS, WHAT A WEEK!
…and now I’m all set for what’s looking like a great start to the river season
AREAL mixed bag for me this week. I’ve been fishing places from small, intimate stillwaters to the high seas. I love it all, and here’s how it went…
FRIDAY
Standing outside the house at 3.45am waiting for my mate Phil Goodsell to pick me up to go tench fishing.
It was raining slightly, but the forecast was good so, hopefully, the rain would stop before we finished the hour’s journey to the pool we were fishing. Soon we were looking at a classic old English tench pool with clear water, lilies in the margins and, best of all, feeding tench, revealed by needle bubbles at the surface near to the lily pads. Heaven!
The rain had stopped and with overcast skies, everything was perfect for the fishing ahead.
Phil went for the modern blockend-feeder bolt-rig approach, but I wanted to fish off the dam in 10ft of water with a Polaris leger float and banded pellets on the hook.
It’s not a hard water and we both caught some nice tench on our chosen methods, Phil casting out the feeder to the same spot every time and me fishing near the pads, feeding 4mm carp pellets with a banded 6mm on a size 12 hook.
Each time Phil had a bite I heard his buzzer sound, but I enjoyed the sight of my float sliding under the water and putting a big bend into the rod to keep the fish out of the lily pads. It was a great day spent with my old mate of more than 35 years and took us both back to when we used to fish for tench in our 20s.
We were off the water at 1pm and drinking a pint of proper country cider on the way home with a bag of crisps at the local near Tenbury Wells. Phil had just the one pint as he was driving, but I managed three because I wasn’t!
MONDAY
An early start again, this time for a sea-fishing trip from Hayling Island with friends Dave, Simon and Tom. We met at Southsea marina at 7.30am for two days’ fishing on ‘Moonshine’ with Pete Churchill, who is an excellent skipper.
We were hoping to catch tope and, boy, that’s what we did! After an hour’s steaming out to the mark we were all into tope from the very first cast. Most of the fish were around 15lb, but some were going 30lb and these gave us some good sport in the strong tide.
We caught the tope on mackerel and herring, but we also tried fresh crab for smoothhounds and, again, we were into these fish straight away, with Simon taking the best fish at 17lb. What a fight that one gave!
The rods were bent, the sun was shining and life was good – although Tom was feeling the effects of a wedding reception the night before. Oh to be young again! We caught about 25 tope between us along with a heap of smoothhounds and I even managed a cracking thornback ray of 14lb. We headed back to the marina where we sat outside the bar and