Des Taylor
Diary of a Countryman
THE weather was so changeable last week wasn’t it! Rain, sleet, snow, ice, freezing wind chill – I never knew what it was going to do from one minute to the next!
Early in the week I spent a couple of days in the comfort of my tackle den with the heater on high, writing and tidying. The amount of paper, wire, nylon and other bits of tackle that ends up on the floor of the den is ridiculous.
Anyway, I borrowed my wife’s Maggie’s vacuum cleaner and within an hour the place looked like new.
Among my emails was one from the Environment Agency asking for our views on the closed season. Well, in my opinion it’s another Brexit – it matters not what we think because the EA will do what it wants.
I have to chuckle to myself when I think about the EA having experts earning £50 grand a year for their supposed knowledge of fish and fishing, yet they want to know what we anglers think.
It’s a bit like Liverpool FC being in trouble and asking the Kop what to do – a joke.
Have we actually run out of people at the top in this country to make decisions and stand by them? I will not put my views to the EA – it has never listened to me in the past, so why should I waste my time filling in a form for these people now? Okay, so now that’s off my chest, here’s how my fishing went…
W E D N E S D AY
A pike guide day which I had to cancel at the last minute as the lake was frozen. That was a pain, but when the weather warms up a little and the ice melts a day or two later it will fish its head off.
So I grabbed my chubbing gear and cheesepaste and headed down the Severn for a few hours. Conditions looked hard with the river so low and cold but you have to be in it to win it, as they say.
As predicted it was very tricky although I did catch two chub – a three-pounder as soon as I got there at 2pm and a four right on dark. I start weighing chub when I think they are over 5lb, and it was nowhere near that.
T H U R S D AY
On the Warwickshire Avon with Wayne Langston. This weather is really knocking the fishing about and even the best spots produce very few takes, but every week I’m learning more about this delightful river.
It has features that are ‘softer’ than the Severn. There’s none of the harshness of Wales and its borders, but I love them both. I’ve only been fishing the Avon for a couple of years but in that short time it has been very kind to me and there is more and bigger to come, I promise you!
Anyway, takes were slow on deadbaits, freshly-caught livebaits and lures. We ended up with a couple of small pike, one small perch and no zander, but I fished new swims and new areas of the river which, when the river comes right, will produce me a big kipper.
S AT U R D AY
I went to one of my pike venues and caught a few livebaits ready for a pike session there next week.
Fishing the waggler up in the water I caught small roach, rudd and perch and even a perch of well over a pound, which went back as it was too big to use as bait.
I did what I normally do – when I had caught enough I carried on for another couple of hours. Although I enjoy catching specimens I can still like seeing the float go under regardless of the size of the fish.
I did quite a bit of floatfishing on the river last year and I plan to do even more this time round. It can get boring sitting behind two rods waiting for a barbel to hook itself !
SUNDAY
I popped up the canal to see Carl Sharp and Phil Horton fishing near Bells Mill Fishery.
Again, in this changeable weather, it had been hard going for them but they managed pike and perch on jigs, enjoying themselves walking and casting on this delightful little waterway.
I am trying to put together as much information as I can about this bit of canal before we start really pushing the water and even have a few lure competitions on there. I love canals, indeed that’s where I learned to fish and caught my first stone loach.
Some canals – including this one – are beautiful, and compare with rivers to walk along with a bag and a rod. I love the bridges and especially the narrowboats, with their bright colours and pretty pots and flowers on the roof.
Even where they run through towns I love them, and there are even more fish-holding spots in the boatyards and brickwork and locks in built-up areas.
It’s nice to see in an era of moans and groans about fish stocks going down that canals have returned.
In some ways they are better now than they have ever been in my lifetime.