A DOG KNOWS BEST

When you are successful at angling, everything you do needs to be correct, and it’s all down to luck my romantic side says, but as well as luck you have to have the right bait, the right tackle, in the correct spot at precisely the right time!

You can be the luckiest person alive, but if all of the above isn’t correct you will fail. You can’t have one without the other.

I’m now sat looking at a large hatch of midges flickering in great clouds which are taken every now and again with the breeze towards the front of the high reeds at the edge of the water.

Slanting at a low angle the sun beams across at me, reflecting off the water’s green surface and hitting me as it ripples.

Every now and again out in the pool’s bay carp remind me of their presence by slowly raising their heads out of the water and snatching, I presume, midges that get caught on the surface.

If I was fly fishing this evening, and this was a trout pool, then I’m sure it would be a red letter day.

The sky is fading in colour and the sun is losing its heat as it slowly starts to set, making me feel cold inside.

My dog Jess is sat by my side on the floor staring very seriously into the water with her ears pricked as if something is about to happen; a rat? Whatever, she seems to be very alert, almost on edge.

The tip of my rod suddenly jerks as something pulls the line; a bite?

I’m legering at the moment, a part of fishing that I never feel particularly happy with as it always seems too distant and vague.

It’s an art in itself, it’s not just a chuck and chance method of fishing as so many fishermen think it is.

Many little nudges and knocks mean a lot of different things. To me legering is fishing blind. I adore to see the fish, this is where I’m at my most comfortable and best, be it fly fishing for trout or stalking or tempting carp as they bask on the surface. But on evenings like tonight when the water is thick with the new algae, green and moody, there are no fish to be seen, only signs of their presence, such as the occasional rise to the gnats. So, legering is the only option, as the carp are too far out in the pool for float fishing. There are of course many methods to avoid this ‘vagueness’, but I’ve seen carp in Redmire (and I’m sure it happens everywhere) pick up the bait on a hair by the very tips of their lips thus avoiding any part of the hook and not making any of the line above the hook move. They then feel the weight of the hook, line or lead and carefully drop the bait. Being on the bank legering you wouldn’t even know that this was happening, but if you were fishing close to them, stalking a few yards away, you could watch the hook and bait and strike in the same direction as the bait going into the carp’s mouth.

This in theory sounds easy, but in practice it’s very near impossible, and I have found it to be a success on several occasions.

The water is now very dark and powerful, an evening chorus of blackbirds chatter away to each other. The gnats surround me, and as they do, they land on my face and hands, making me itch. The water has lost its breeziness of earlier on, almost as if the wind has gone to sleep along with the sun, but as some things go to sleep others awake, the moon brightens the dull sky like a white candle.

In the distance I can hear Thursday evening’s bell ringing practice at the local church, it’s such a traditional English sound.

‘What’s up Jess?’ I ask my dog who is still staring at the water. A large fish breaks the spell and she looks towards the ripples.

‘See that Jess?’ I enthusiastically say. Jess looks at me and then back again towards the water.

A wood pigeon softly ‘coos’ in the woods behind me and I try to see where it is. My eyes follow the line of tall menacing oaks and below them, the most beautiful rhododendrons.

Jess is still looking intensely into the water. She slowly raises her head from the spot she’d been looking at and with that the line

rushes out, my bobbin rises and I pounce on to my rod, lifting it quickly as it curls into a deep and powerful arch with a living energy source of a fish on the other end.

It’s hard to control, the thrusts of a warring carp. Angered by having its dinner poisoned by a hook it kites to the right of me. It tries with all its strength to swim into the reeds, to get cover, to hide away from the outside world, it knows only too well the evils of dry land. My rod quivers with stress as it sends vibrations off the fish and down its length to me. I can slowly reel and gather line but it’s hard when the fish is still fighting to keep its distance. A bat whizzes around the ripples created by the caught fish. I move it closer and closer until it is a few yards away, reach down, fumble with my landing net, then I stretch forward and slide it underwater, below the carp. I raise it up, engulfing the fish’s golden body. It kicks and tries to escape one last time. I raise it up out of the water and rest it on a soft patch of grass.

With the light fading I feel around its mouth and then gently unhook it, I switch on the torch and there in front of me lies a fine carp.

I hardly ever weigh the fish I catch, I used to when I kept records of them, but now I fish for myself and not to fill in record books. I got to the stage where I was only fishing to keep up with the previous year’s records!

The carp opens its mouth, reminding me that its home is in the water, so I pick it up and gently release it back into the now black pool.