Improve Your Coarse Fishing (UK)
Bob Roberts’ diary
MY DEADLINE for this month’s diary coincided with the final week of what’s been a challenging end to the river season. Talk about a damp squib. But at least this might be the very last time we have to down tools on March 15. Change is afoot and I’m assured license holders are going to be asked to choose between whether we retain the existing closed season with all its nostalgic timing issues, amend it or abolish it altogether. I was asked by the Angling Trust if I would like to be the ‘poster boy’ for change. Too right I would! By the time you read this there will be three articles on the Trust website, one representing each camp. Please read them and make your choice wisely.
Week one...
My Scottish friends have some wonderful words and phrases to describe the weather. Many of them I ‘cannae’ understand but I generally get the idea. After all, you don’t have to be a genius to work out that when the weather is ‘crabbit’ or ‘drookit’ you are going to need a coat (and probably a hat) but this past winter has been positively ‘dreich’ (pronounced ‘dreek’). Dreich applies to anything lengthy that bores you stiff or, when applied to the weather, includes wet, dull, gloomy, dismal, dreary and miserable. Does that sound like this past winter to you? It’s been a stinker, hasn’t it? I can take cold winters; I can take wet winters; if anything, I’m no fan of mild winters, but what I really dislike are inconsistent winters like this past one. One day it’s snowy, then it’s warm, then it’s icy and so on. The river levels are up and down all the time, the temperature never stabilises and nothing ever settles. Stillwaters are clear one day, iced over the next. Yes, fish must feed sometime, but where they are holding up and what they are likely to be tempted with would test even Mystic Meg’s powers of perception. I’ve been waiting patiently for that rare occasion when a tiny window of opportunity opens. The one when the snow has gone, the river levels have settled back to near normal, there’s still a tinge of colour and the water temperature is rising. It arrived this week and despite still recovering from a debilitating bout of what was described as ‘manbola’, nothing could keep me away from the river. Armed with a gallon of fresh maggots and some new prototype rods to test I hit the river with a vengeance. How could I possibly fail? If you know the answer to that, answers on a postcard, please... I simply could not raise a bite from a barbel and nor could the only other angler on the stretch. Meanwhile my phone pinged as an image message arrived proclaiming the capture of a huge lump of a barbel some 30 miles upstream. Word then reached me of another superb catch, nine fish to 11lb 14oz, taken the previous evening, though all but two came after dark. Frustratingly, my own barbel drought continued, though two nice chub, both battered old warriors, at least saved a blank. Driving home I was left to wonder, had it been a mistake to deliberately target an area renowned for bigger fish? Should I have gone to a more prolific area? What if? Writing a diary like this means I’ll frequently take the easier option to ensure I have page-filling pictures but it’s equally important to take a gamble occasionally and go for glory. Today that gamble failed, but next time it might pay off, which is why I’m happy to roll the dice and take the positives from a negative day.
Week two...
According to the weatherman a ‘beast from the east’ was on its way but a biting wind and the threat of snow wasn’t going to prevent me from going fishing, oh no. I was hell bent on meeting this beast head on. Clearing out the freezer I’d discovered several bags of left-over pork from a long-forgotten hog roast. Rather than throw it out I blitzed the meat in a blender along with a fresh white sliced loaf to produce a light brown, fluffy ‘licky’ mix that smelled absolutely gorgeous. Would a change from the regular plain bread feed provoke a response in what were going to be challenging conditions? Travelling light, wearing top class thermal gear and keeping mobile meant I barely noticed the cold even though the air temperature stuck on minus one all day. What snow fell was powdery dry stuff which will shake off without soaking you, but how would it affect the fish? Well, truth is I had bites from the off, but very delicate ones. Lots of tippy tappy mouthing of the hookbait but very little you could really strike at. I’ve always preached sitting on your hands and waiting for a proper pull with bread but those were few and far between. Not ideal when my usual philosophy is it’s better not to strike at all than to miss a bite and spook the fish. If you don’t strike, the fish is still there to be caught next cast. The first fish I hooked, in a tight hit-andhold swim, felt like a proper lump and bust my 5lb hooklink. But as I worked my way down the stretch I netted a fish here and there amidst the snow flurries despite missing several decent chances. It was
as if these chub were just mouthing the hookbait and backing away with it in their lips. This often happens in winter. The solution was to have a couple of casts with a cage feeder to introduce some feed into the swim and then remove the feeder and clip on a nylon loop with a string of BB shots instead. Just enough to hold bottom and present near-zero resistance. That paid off late on with my two biggest chub of the day. I drove home in a blizzard with a pretty smug grin on my face. True fishermen are afflicted with a kind of inexplicable desire, a madness, which is why I was on the banks again two days later. The snow lay ‘deep and crisp and even’ but the roads were clear and traffic light. Sadly, the fishing didn’t quite live up to expectations but the day will remain memorable for the tiny vole that practically fed out of my hand, as did a robin. All around me creatures that normally blend into the background were silhouetted against the snow. Rabbits, rats, a stoat, a fox, there was no hiding place as they scuttled about.
Week three...
A rise in temperatures saw the snow melting and rivers on the rise. Nightmare time. It was a case of monitoring levels and being patient. The Don was one of the first to fall. It was then simply a case of waiting for the colour to begin dropping out. The fishing would not be easy but at least I could approach it with a degree of optimism. It was a day for wandering the back alleys of Attercliffe, finding spots where the river could be accessed amid this industrial concrete corridor. Urban fishing for trout and grayling has a certain wicked appeal. As expected the fishing was tough and the bigger ladies stayed away but a fish here, a handful there saw me keeping busy enough as the fat lady began clearing her throat for one last hurrah.
Week four...
And up the rivers came again, this time with a vengeance. The rise was meteoric. Not quite Spinal Tap’s, ‘This one goes up to eleven’, but at least an eight! A swirling chocolate brown soup carrying loads of debris awaited me. Up she rose, threatening to top the banks in places and social media treated us to images of fools who’d parked their vehicles right next to the river, set up their bivvies and gone
to sleep, only to wake up surrounded by water. What idiots! The Trent is a mighty beast when it’s flooded and not to be treated lightly. The name Trent itself is believed to derive from the Celtic word for trespasser because it flooded far and wide. Today the majority of the river is managed to stay within its floodbanks, but that means it flows faster and harder. Reluctantly, I drove down the A1 in heavy rain expecting a tough day and all expectations were met. Cowering behind a brollie is not my idea of pleasure and, to be frank, there was no fun to be had. A washout for me, sadly. But that didn’t put me off returning 48 hours later for one last hurrah, this time in the company of young Alfie Naylor. We fished together on the opening day of the season and it seemed fitting to come full circle and fish together on the closing day. Boy, it was tough. We moved around a fair bit and saw out the final hours in the most perfect flood swim imaginable just a couple of hundred yards from where we began the season. Alas one small chub, to me, was the best we could muster in 10 hours of trying. You watch how things improve now the season’s over. Give it a week and the rivers will be perfect, like the dreich winter gone never happened. Roll on June! The last fish of the river season was hard work