Far Bank
After a bitterly tough reservoir zander trip, Dom Garnett has been learning the pitfalls of flogging the water a bit too eagerly
The trouble with trying...
DOES effort always equal reward in fishing? Those really driven anglers are often the most successful, but for most of us there are days when the harder we try, the more elusive that telling bite seems to be.
This is partly why we love fishing. It’s not just about toil and sweat. It is about knowledge, experience and, yes, sometimes pure luck. I’d hesitate to say patience, because it’s more about keeping a steady belief in what you’re doing.
In my own fishing I rarely struggle for enthusiasm, but I have also noticed that when I try too hard to make things happen I rarely fish well. It gets worse when the fishing is tough, too. You start to rush things, lose your focus or try and do too much.
This is especially true with lure fishing, as I found out on a really tough day out on Rutland with my mate Andy Mytton. If there is one method that requires a relaxed confidence in what you are doing, it is the lure.
This is never truer than when you are on a large, challenging water and the chips are down. When the bites don’t come, you work that thing too vigorously, which can actually put the fish off. In fact, most of us who cast lures are guilty of giving them too much rather than too little action, and smarter predators don’t like their dinner doing cartwheels.
Of course, zander can be finicky creatures at the best of times – and I love the technical side of fishing for them. Andy is full of ideas and always looking for clues, whether it’s scaling his lure up or down, or even doctoring them a little on the boat.
The session proved harder than Vladimir Putin’s bodyguards. Bites were often few and far between. But while I jigged irritably, Andy still winkled out a few fish. What was he doing that I wasn’t?
Keeping a sneaky eye on him, the main thing I noticed about Andy’s style was how slowly and deliberately he fished his lure. He wasn’t doing more than me, but less. And whether it was angling pressure, or the fish just weren’t in the mood, it was a day that demanded more reserve. In fact, the mere motion of the boat was often sufficient to impart enough action into a soft lure to win a take.
I think it was at around four-nil down that I finally cracked it, albeit not through any conscious effort. I was just taking a bite to eat and resting the rod over my knee. I was doing nothing and the only movement was that of the gently rocking boat, when the tip suddenly smashed over. It wasn’t a big fish, but it was a blank-saver and a lesson well learned.