Improve Your Coarse Fishing (UK)
Bob Roberts’ diary
My monthly fishing diary...
INDIGENOUS only to England’s Easterly flowing rivers, barbel were not particularly widespread. You certainly don’t have to go back too far to find times when they were absent from the Severn and Wye and absolutely rare in the Trent. I vaguely recall the late Richard Walker claiming there were a few barbel in the Great Ouse on the strength of a lost fish at Olney but it wasn’t like anyone was catching them. The number of rivers that have been stocked with our whiskered friends during the past three decades is mind-boggling, a trend supported by popular demand for more of what is effectively ‘the new carp’. Unfortunately they don’t cope well with high water temperatures and this presents river anglers with a huge dilemma. As we’ve not experienced a drought like the current one since 1976, we are in a new ballpark when it comes to barbel care. Following numerous reports of dead barbel, a number of forward thinking clubs have closed their barbel fishing stretches in the interests of fish safety. Trouble is, now the genie is out of the bottle, when does it become safe to re-open them? Noone seems to have thought of that. How about we simply bite the bullet and settle for a ‘glorious sixteenth’ in September? That should do it.
Week one...
Growing up in an era when you had to stand in a red box down the end of the road if you wished to phone someone, calls were invariably associated with bad news. Some things don’t change. My wife received a call from the hospital. A recent X-ray had revealed a shadow. No-one was sure what it was so an emergency CT scan was required by people who talk routinely about cancer. We would have to wait up to two weeks for the results. The following day I was due to fish for carp with guests from Scotland including Stewart McMath, the general secretary of the Pike Anglers Alliance for Scotland. This was payback for the wonderful hospitality they show us when pike and perch fishing north of the border. Brian and Butty were centre stage with me as third man, so I arranged to drop in for a couple of hours and then depart. My place was to be at home for the next fortnight. “Don’t get too worked up if you hear nothing,” suggested Butty. “The longer you have to wait for a call-back, the more likely there’s nothing to worry about.” So I set up a floater rod, caught a couple and helped our friends catch some, too. Everyone was happy as Larry. Then the phone rang. I have never been as nervous in my whole life but gloom quickly turned to elation. The hospital had come back with fantastic news. Just a scare. Nothing to worry about after all. People go through this every single day. No wonder the doctors become inured to it. As for me, I left a shoal of carp munching away on my floaters and drove home as fast as the speed limit would allow. Some things put fishing into perspective.
Week two...
With all that was going on I had cancelled a proposed boating holiday on the Thames. Following the good news, this was hastily reinstated with a delay of 24 hours, which in turn resulted in a series of absolutely improbable coincidences. Peter and Katharine Smith used to own the Caer Beris Hotel in the Wye Valley where I helped out with some fishing courses. Now both retired they spend as much of the summer as possible cruising up and down the River Thames entertaining on their fabulous floating gin palace. So there we are, two days into the trip, remarking how few fishermen we’d seen other than a handful of carp anglers and several shifty-looking types carrying spinning rods and carrier bags, when we spot what appeared to be a ‘proper’ angler. All of a sudden the guy jumps up and cries out: ‘Bob? Bob, it's Barry!’ Blow me, it’s only Barry Mullins, a guy who attended practically every one of those fishing courses on the Wye and obviously knew both Peter and I. If it was a shock to us, imagine how unlikely a coincidence it must have been to him to see not one, but both of us. We pulled over, shared a beer and a few stories, as you do. But the tale of coincidences doesn’t end there. On our final morning, moored up in the middle of nowhere alongside the Thames towpath, we were lounging on deck enjoying a delicious bacon sandwich when it occurred to us we were smack in the middle of a match length and the guy who was tackling up just five yards from us was none other than Dorking’s Gary Pook. Thirty years ago I was invited to fish a charity match on the Thames and he gave up his bed for the night so I could kip at his parents’ house! Unbelievable, or what? I’d love to say the fishing during our trip was fabulous but in all honesty it was a bit pants. We had a dabble most days for a few hours, usually early or late, hoping to catch maybe an odd decent chub or bream, but mostly it was just roach and other small stuff that kept us entertained. Perhaps the most memorable catch of the week was a barbel. Yes, after all I’ve said about leaving them alone, I caught a barbel, on a waggler set three feet deep. What made it special though is it was probably the smallest barbel I have ever caught. Oh, and just in case any keyboard warriors are reading, it swam off strongly after being rested!
“We had a dabble most days, hoping to catch decent chub or bream”
Week three...
I get to keep tabs on lots of commercial fisheries through match reports from local clubs and over the past year I have heard nothing but good reports from Springvale Fishing Lakes (www. springvalefishinglakes.co.uk), near Bevercoates, just a few minutes from the A1’s Markham Moor roundabout. With 100lb bags of silver fish not uncommon I simply had to take a look. The first thing that struck me was how well the place was looked after, nestling in a rolling vale surrounded by low hills and trees. Fishery owner Sue Bloom gave me a guided tour and outlined her plans for lodges, a cafe and even more lakes. Mark my words, this venue has the potential to be one of the finest fisheries in the whole country. Unlike regular commercials, there’s 15 yards between pegs and the fishery provides each angler with several keepnets and a landing net for use during competitions. Silver fish are not the only target species. The previous day’s match was won with 200lb or so of carp but I was hoping to avoid them. Having chosen to fish the First Spring Lake I was given the okay to use a net during the first hour, just to portray what the average stamp of fish was like, after which everything was returned. With silvers the target I decided it would be fun to fish on the drop with a light waggler which is a novelty these days. Sure enough, it was a bite a chuck from the off, although I missed bites. Every time I picked up the catapult my float would go under. I’m sure you’ve been there. I was catching mostly 8oz-1lb chub interspersed with quality ide and then I began feeding shorter, gradually pulling the fish towards me into pole range. The more maggots I fed, the more fish I caught. When they came to 8 metres I could feed by hand and it was bagging time. The fish were literally boiling on the surface but fishery rules ban floating pole and floating baits. No problem, the answer was to fish a shallow rig but hold the pole high above the water. I would throw out some maggots and then slowly lower my bait among them. It rarely made it past the first three inches before the elastic would come shooting out. “Watch this, Geoff,” I said to my travelling companion as I netted four chub for 3lb in the space of 60 seconds. In-out, in-out, it was bonkers. You’d need to be superhuman to keep that up. I gave up because my arms ached. While setting up my kit for a bream bashing session on the Trent at Rolleston, a courteous angler eased the throttle of his outboard as he passed through my peg in a dinghy. “That’s Bob Roberts,” he whispered to his companion. I smiled and waved back, the tables now completely reversed on my trip to the Thames. They were headed far upstream, presumably to the weir pool at Hazelford, while I had dreams of breams. The swim I was in is wide, deep and sluggish. The previous day it had produced 130lb of bream in a five-hour match. Obviously it wouldn’t fish like that two days running but I had to be in with a good shout of catching a few. It was to be a single-minded one-rod approach using a groundbait feeder. Indeed I had only brought one rod and minimal tackle. Half a dozen quick casts emptied some
bait into the peg, the seventh carried a baited hook. I then set about getting the ‘office’ organised, camera set up on a bank stick, etc. Blow me, the tip hooped over before I even managed to sit down. Snatching at the rod I briefly felt the weight of a heavy slab before the hook pulled. I really should have waited until I was ready, but after a month away from the river I was like a bull at a gate. Fortunately, I didn’t have to wait long before I netted a bream. This was shaping to be an excellent evening’s sport and a second slab wasn’t far behind. Then it all went wrong. I’d joked with the club secretary just a couple of hours earlier that it would just be my luck to catch a barbel in this out-and-out bream peg and the ‘barbel police’ would descend on me! It’s amazing how easily you can bully a barbel on 5lb line when the tackle is balanced. A fish of around 8lb was quickly netted, unhooked in the water and, as the camera was already set up next to me, a quick snap and straight back, kicking and protesting, still full of fight. I doubt the fish was out of the water for 15 seconds. The next two bites produced barbel, too. One being bigger than the first. I was in a quandary. Should I pack up? Or maybe move? Well moving would actually reduce my chances of catching bream and increase those of catching a barbel so I stayed put in the hope that bream would show in sufficient numbers to reduce my chances of catching another barbel. From 3-2 down I soon turned the tables to 5-3 up. That’s more like it. I was clearly in for a treat. Those slabs would keep on coming until it was dark, or so I thought. I hadn’t remotely considered that NINE kayaks would stop straight in front of me, bang next to where I was feeding. The leader of this group spent the next hour showing them how to slap the water with an oar, how to rock side to side, what to do when you capsize, play water polo and basically they created as much disturbance as a bunch of pre-teens possibly can. Things couldn’t get any worse, or so I thought. Six two-man canoes joined the party. These screeching youngsters had a whale of a time stacking canoes on top of canoes to see who could create the highest tower and then see who could climb to the top without falling off, which of course happened every time they tried. I didn’t have so much as another bite. It was game over and goodnight. Serves me right for catching a barbel!