Improve Your Coarse Fishing (UK)
Bob Roberts’ diary
My monthly fishingdiary...
Week one...
IT’S funny how our best discoveries are made by accident. On the journey up to Scotland with Brian Skoyles we talked about taking on Loch Ken’s famous pike, yet on the way home we were raving about the eye-opening perch trip we’d just enjoyed! Perhaps I’m approaching that stage in life when I can better appreciate things. I’m more chilled out and the appeal of social fishing grows. I’m hopefully long past the point where I have everything to prove so I no longer feel any need to be selfish, to compete for the biggest, or the most, so the enjoyment of a trip is more about the company and what they catch. Not that I’m struggling to catch, far from it, but it’s nice to feel genuinely pleased when someone else catches a big fish. Loch Ken is a spectacular piece of water, nine miles long but never much more than half a mile wide, often much narrower. It follows a river valley, a series of narrowing necks that open out
into expansive reedfringed bays promising so much. It’s difficult to decide where to fish because the whole place screams ‘fish’. Brian and I shared a boat with Stewart McMath, secretary of the Scottish Pike Anglers Alliance. Having agreed we’d take turns on the runs so everyone had a reasonably equal chance of catching, I took advantage of my downtimes to do a bit of drop shotting. On only my second cast, a small jack nailed a little white curly tail. Shortly afterwards I hooked another, or so I thought. Pointing my rod at the fish, I bullied it to the boat but, when it broke surface, I got the shock of my life. A great big spiny dorsal broke surface and boy, did I change my playing action sharpish! It was to be the first of many quality perch. Although we did catch pike as planned, it wasn’t long before the pike rods were reeled in and all three of us were concentrating on perch fishing. The day flew by and it has to be said we were thoroughly engrossed. It was only when we were back in the pub that Brian and I discussed how we might have done better. Next time round, we will. The following day we fished a private loch with a reputation for runs from small pike that fight like fish three times their size. I was sceptical until I played a ‘double’ that turned out to be about 4lb. These Scottish loch pike are something else. Boy, do they fight hard! The fishing had been fairly tough yet we drove home on a high, so many lessons learned, so many new ideas to try next time and that can’t come soon enough. Twenty-four hours later I was strutting my stuff on stage as compere for the Nottingham Piscatorial Society’s annual Speakers Evening, now in its fourth year. John Bailey and Paul Floyd gave very different yet highly informative and entertaining talks to a packed house, and almost £3,000 was raised for the local air ambulance and the club’s junior section.
Week two...
WINTER arrived suddenly. Folk waking up to a bit of frost practically fell over themselves to be the first to claim how cold it had been in their neck of the woods on social media, like it was apocalyptic and they’d never experienced a winter before. ‘Minus 4 here last night!’ they bragged, ‘ice on my pond!’ Some publishing images of car dashboards. Others screen-grabbed images from the Met Office website in case no-one believed them. Me? I saw it coming well in advance. That’s what weather forecasts are for, you know. I had my float rod all set up because this was just what I’d been waiting for. It was grayling time, at last. Where most species go comatose on the first frosts, I could practically guarantee catching grayling and wild brown trout on the Don. Almost everywhere above the M1, right up through the city of Sheffield and beyond is where I head for and a lot of it is free fishing, providing you can find a point of access. This is tricky because so much of it flows through an industrial landscape and parking is a nightmare. Oh it was good to be back! A tub of red maggots, a 2AA waggler tipped off with a size 20 hook, a light float rod and a bait apron was all the gear necessary. I picked the perfect spot, the end of a run of shallows swathed in streamer weed dropped into a patch of calm water just slightly deeper and steadier. Nowhere was my swim more than 30 inches deep. First cast in I had a grayling of maybe half a pound. The instant it was hooked I could see the white flashes of its belly as it writhed around like only grayling do. It was to be the first of many. When the bites began to dry up I simply moved 40 yards, and then I moved again. Each time I would catch straight away – grayling from a few inches long up to perhaps 12oz, wild brown trout up to a pound and, in the latter stages, I had some nice dace, too. Only once did I hit something on a different scale and I’m guessing it was a very large trout. Alas it broke my hook, right on the bend, after powering away a good 20 yards downstream, so I will never be sure. There are a few barbel here but I wouldn’t have expected a fight like that in these cold conditions but you never know, and nor will I. Still, it’s the excuse to come back and try again.
Week three...
THOSE Ken perch really got my juices flowing although it was clear I had room to hone my drop shotting technique. There was a nagging doubt in my mind that maybe I was doing something wrong, so I watched a load of YouTube clips, packed a roving bag with the bare essentials and headed down the local canal to put theory into practice. Try as I might, I struggled. Not a bite. What was I doing wrong? To make matters worse I could see an angler in the distance and he appeared to be catching. Eventually our paths crossed and it was a pleasure to meet a guy who I’ve swapped the occasional Facebook messages with but never met in the flesh, one Dan Esox. Dan’s a very accomplished predator angler and he said: “You should try one of these (a Ned rig). Do you want one?” Can’t say much fairer than that, can you, only a few minutes after meeting someone for the first time? Anyway, I decided I’d watch him fish for a while. Though I could see he wasn’t doing much different to me, he was getting plenty of action. Wow! So I chucked my drop shot rig into the same area and bingo, I was instantly into fish. What became patently clear was that everything comes down to location. Between us we half-filled a large landing net head with perch in next to no time. Not exactly a fish every chuck but several bites each cast at the very least. Cast, twitch, bite, strike, miss it, twitch, bite, strike, etc, until you hooked one. It was great fun. When we went our separate ways I tried again in the areas I’d failed in earlier, this time brimming with confidence. Nothing. Not a single bite. We’re in the time of year when fish shoal together and move to their winter quarters. This is when you need to know you are doing things right, even when you’re not catching and to keep searching. Find the winter hotspots and it won’t be long before you get a sweat on. Elsewhere you’ll be frozen out. Lesson learned.
Week four...
BY NOW I’d well and truly got my perch head on and it seemed like the perfect time to revisit a commercial fishery that produced quite a few big stripeys for me last winter. This was especially the case because the owner was prepared to let me have a try with soft lures, providing I was sensible and mounted them on a smallish barbless single hook. What could possibly go wrong. Well, how about not getting a single bite for a start. I couldn’t believe it. Last week taught me about hotspots so I searched and searched. I fished three different lakes and not once was one of my lures touched. It was uncanny. These fish either weren’t feeding, or they were feeding on something that didn’t look like a rubber lure. Oh well. It just goes to show you shouldn’t get too cocky, especially when the seasons are changing. Licking my wounds I decided to return to the canal. Not where we’d caught so well last week but to a different area completely, one that used to be a favourite winter perch haunt 20 years ago when it was one of the go-to places in the depths of winter. An absolute banker back then, but what of now? Only one way to find out and maybe now I wish I hadn’t. I really struggled although I did catch a fair number of ‘wasps’ on the drop shot tight to the tins but not so much as an enquiry on jigs and nothing from open water. Maybe I was there just too early in the season. Perhaps they’ll turn up after Christmas. One thing’s for sure, I will. Those fish have got to be hiding somewhere.