Improve Your Coarse Fishing (UK)
Bob Roberts’ diary
My Monthly Fishing diary
WITH my beloved rivers off the agenda for three months, is it any wonder I tend to get a little bit depressed? Other than commercials, good stillwater options in my neck of the woods are limited, particularly in the early weeks of the closed season. The better ones are closed until June and, trust me, I’d love nothing more than to be targeting big tench and dinner platesized crucian carp. But they fall into the realms of fantasy in these parts so I’ll be intensifying my pursuit of unicorns and money trees instead, on the grounds they’ll be so much easier to find.
Week one...
A weekend at The Big One served only to depress me further. Don’t get me wrong, I met some fabulous people and had a thoroughly enjoyable if shattering time, but holding a show in Hampshire pretty much guarantees visitors will come up to you saying things like: “Yes, I’ve had lots of 3lb crucians, but none of the big ones, like my mate has!” Ye gods, what I wouldn’t give to catch them half that size. I haven’t caught a genuine two-pounder since the last time I fished for them – in Hampshire. Still, I can reflect in the knowledge that there are well over 50 different commercial fisheries within a radius of 30 miles of where I live, and that means I can at least have the pleasure of watching my float dip under at regular intervals. Which is why I headed to Messingham Sands with Trevor Empson, a guy I first fished with almost 50 years ago. We chose the North Day Ticket Lake with quality roach and skimmers in mind, hoping the carp would leave us alone. And sure enough, they did just that. Watching a guy a few pegs away struggle with a lump on the pole for half-an-hour was about as close to a pond rat as I wanted to get. Until things warm up there’s a short window of opportunity to catch loads of silvers on light tackle. As soon as the temperatures hit double digits consistently those rig-wrecking bullies will make light tackle roach fishing suicidal. So for a while it’s a case of making hay while the sun doesn’t shine. Peter Kay rain (you know, the stuff that wets you!) required the use of a brolly early doors and the breeze made it necessary to angle it on my right-hand side. This taught me that although I’m more than competent in shipping a pole back and forth to my right, I’m borderline useless when it comes to shipping to the left. Talk about feeling cack-handed. It was tragic stuff and only after the rain stopped, when I could dispense with a brolly, did I slip back into my usual smooth rhythm. We all have limitations. I knew if I got my act together I could be on for a big weight, so anything weighing less than 6oz was returned immediately. Only the bigger fish would grace my catch picture. Messingham is a fabulous all-round complex which also holds some cracking perch. With the brolly out of the way I could now feed a margin line to my right with a few casters and the occasional broken-up lobby. After 45 minutes of trickling in feed I went in over the top with a lobby tail on the hook and immediately missed a sailaway bite. The second drop produced a 2lb perch. Not a monster by venue standards
but hopefully more would follow. They didn’t. That one fish was all I managed, which puzzled me, as I doubt it would have been on its own. They definitely shoal together at this time of year. Next time...
Week two...
Word was the bream had begun arriving near Sykehouse Lock on the New Junction Canal. “Best get down there, Bob, before they get hammered,” said my source in the Stainforth Angling Centre. And then it snowed overnight. Proper heavy stuff, deep enough to cause chaos on the roads, but by mid-morning the snow had completely disappeared as the white stuff was washed away by rain of Biblical proportions. The canal lies pretty much equidistant between Scunthorpe and Doncaster and before noon both the Iron and Rovers had their Football League matches called off due to waterlogged pitches. A day later, low-lying areas of the Thorpe marshes were flooded and roads closed. It didn’t bode well for my intended trip to the canal but after a circuitous route around
Week three...
Pinch me! Just three days after it snowed I caught my first carp of the year on a floater! Between us, Brian Skoyles and I had loads. It was meant to be a ‘kettle’ day. One where we set up a couple of rods each, sitting together between them either side of a stove, supping tea and brainstorming new tackle ideas and putting the world to rights. Hopefully we wouldn’t be interrupted by too many fish. We met up at Tyram Hall and parked the flooding I had the parking area all to myself – but only after engaging 4x4 mode. I should have known the fishing would be hopeless. The canal was chocolate brown and tramming through. The water was over the towpath in places and running down the car park steps to greet me. Even a hefty 2g pole float couldn’t cope. In truth it didn’t take me long to concede defeat. That night I watched a video clip showing how the River Don was so high it had completely swallowed the canal aqueduct near Bramwith to a height where only the walkway handrail was visible. You could see clearly how the Don was now running straight down the canal towards where I had been fishing. No wonder I couldn’t catch. our vehicles a little further back than usual to protect the now waterlogged grass. The match lake levels were very high, but who can complain when the sun is finally shining brightly from a blue, cloudless sky? We fished scaled-down carp methods on barbel rods, Brian Spombing particle mix to the island margins, me fishing a PVA bag in open water on one rod, a centrepin
and light lead set-up over a sprinkling of pellets in front of an adjacent platform on the other. We caught steadily in the sunshine – nothing spectacular, but it was fun. Carp in both margins, bream in open water. And then it died. Stone dead. Neither of us could raise a bite. What soon became apparent was that carp were moving in tight to the water’s edge, tucking in behind the reeds over areas that would normally be above the waterline. They weren’t so much foraging for food, they were sunbathing in the warmth. Once that was established I went looking for a sheltered spot and sure enough, I found one where numerous swirls and tail patterns indicated carp were both present and active. A quick pack-up and move saw us in position with a rod each, one net and a bait bucket. I chucked a zig close to the right-hand margin and it was away before Brian had even cast his surface rig. Minutes later Brian had one off the top where fish were now mopping up the freebies. This prompted me to withdraw the zig so we could concentrate on floater fishing after which we had a ball, sharing one rod between us. Interestingly, at The Big One, Brian and I gave a joint presentation called ‘A Year in Reflection’ in which we described the species we like to target and the methods employed through the course of a typical year. Brian rated April as his favourite month for floater fishing because the fish seek the warmer surface layers on sunny days and they are still naïve. He is not wrong. Come summer they will be much harder to catch, and that will give us all a big challenge.
Week four...
Brian rang to say he had a dilemma. He’d spent a day at Swanlands Fishery near Thorne, fishing the old lake, and was amazed at the quality and size of the carp he’d seen swimming around. Big doubles, apparently, but this being a typical match fishery he was hampered by the rules that are tailored (rightly) towards the core customer – match anglers. Did I have any suggestions because, Brian being Brian, he didn’t want to fall foul of the rules? It was an interesting conundrum, and as I regard the owner as a friend I was keen to have a go. The challenge was not so much to break any rules, or gain permission to ignore them, but how could they be interpreted to enable us to target the bigger specimens while not upsetting him or his customers? Rules are generally there to protect the fish and fisheries from idiots. I understand that. Indeed, on that score they make perfect sense. But there’s invariably a bit of leeway, for example (speaking generally now rather than of specific waters) I frequently hear boilies are banned but anglers have been catching on pop-ups! Floaters are banned but ‘wafters’ are okay. Then there’s the popular winter tactic of targeting carp with discs of floating bread popped-up straight off the lead. Floating baits are a major problem in summer matches, as they can be used to ruin the swim of the guy downwind of you. I get it. They can attract unwanted ducks, too. So by all means ban them in matches, but why ruin it for pleasure anglers? Corn is allowed, but how about other particles like maize, chickpeas and hemp? Pastes are merely boilies that haven’t been boiled. Peperami is not dissimilar to a boilie, and at five sticks for a quid in the supermarket they cost pretty much the same if you chop them up. Then there are marshmallows. A killer bait in the right circumstances. Common sense has to be applied. And if you do find a way to bend or tweak the rules your loophole will be banned soon enough if you shout too loud about it! But on a wet Thursday afternoon when there’s no-one else around...? We geared ourselves up with all manner of potential options but in the end the weather was so utterly miserable – grey, chilly and wet – we reverted back to basics from the shelter of our brollies. Simple hair-rigged pellets did the business for me. Brian caught mostly on luncheon meat. We had carp to low doubles and some of the biggest poor man’s crucians (yes that is an F1, not a common) I’ve ever seen. Sometimes the wheel doesn’t need reinventing. All you need is patience.