Bob Roberts’ diary

My monthly fishing diary...

Week one...

I’M NOT sorry to see the back of the past month. It’s certainly been a tough few weeks. The month started with a bang. I was trying my hand in a stream on a large nature reserve, trotting maggots in the hope of a decent roach or perhaps a bonus chub. Not a bite was forthcoming in the shallow, crystal clear water but it turns out that was the least of my problems. Finding the tailgate window on my vehicle smashed was a gutting experience but that was only the half of it. The tailgate was damaged, too, and the light cluster. What at first appeared to be mindless vandalism turned into a £3,000 repair job and me being off the road for three whole weeks. The repair shop kindly provided a courtesy car but not only did it have the tiniest boot, the rear seats didn’t fold so until my own car was fixed I would be reduced to travelling very light and no way would that involve a seatbox or a pole holdall. Never mind, how long could a tailgate replacement job take?

Week two...

A week passes with no news on my precious baby. We’ve entered an ice age and I have little desire to fish. I’m depressed. All lakes have a seriously thick lid of ice. There are even patches of ice where river levels have fallen overnight. It might have been fun to visit a commercial, smash a hole in the ice and see what might be winkled out on pole and pinkie, but I can’t fit the necessary gear into this socalled courtesy car. So I head for the Trent in desperation. One rod and a small rucksack. Did I mention there was a covering of snow on the tops? Flights cancelled, cars stranded on Dartmoor, trains disrupted and I’m supposed to go fishing with next to no gear. So leaden and gloomy was the sky it felt as though I was living in a twilight world. Terrible conditions for taking photographs. Here’s a bonkers tip though, try wearing yellow tinted polarising glasses. Makes everything appear brighter. I even feel warmer in them. Seriously! Turning up in the club car park I thought there was a work party in action but it turned out to be the local farmer and two of his hands. They were cutting back crack willows on the water’s edge that frankly needed attention. For 50 yards you can no longer get near the river and serious pruning was required. He was quite chatty and told me the weather was such that it was mostly a case of keeping his workers occupied, plus the firewood was handy. And then an unexpected storm broke and I don’t mean it snowed. A bloke came charging across the river in a dinghy, jumped out and expressed his dissatisfaction over the tree surgery. He apparently looks out across the river and likes seeing the trees and

forcefully suggested the chainsaw gang found alternative work. Well, that’s a rather polite interpretation of proceedings. He was raging! Shouting, waving his arms around, making threats and it definitely looked like things were about to kick-off, so I did what any rightthinking person would do. I bade them farewell and skipped the first few hundred yards of river, leaving them to their deliberations. Four hundred yards away I could still hear them, so I walked on until I couldn’t. The river was greeny-grey, that awful post-snow colour which suggests a tough day lies ahead and I was not far wrong. In such conditions it’s a case of scaling down and having patience. The smallest feeder, a longer tail, tiny hookbaits. It’s about temptation, the old waffeur-thin mint. That and being prepared to wait much longer for bites than in better conditions. It quickly became clear that there were fish around; fish that would mouth a bait but not necessarily take it. Very gentle indications on the tip, tiny trembles indicated that (presumably) chub were mouthing the bait, nudging it, tasting it, but not actually eating it. I’ve filmed them doing this. Picking things up in their lips and holding on for a few seconds, then letting go. Sometimes they will drift backwards on the current but no matter how you strike, you will miss. I must have fished a dozen swims and in each one I had those tiny indications. I saved my banker till last. One last roll of the dice. Nothing. I was staring down the barrels of a blank and then, I lifted up to retrieve and wound straight into a fish. The tip had not moved a millimetre. It was simply sat there with my bait in its mouth. On any normal day this fish would not have been photographed but today it was as big a prize to me as any seven-pounder. My dogged persistence had paid off and I was grateful for small mercies.

Week three...

Still no car. This was getting annoying, but no matter, I had an opportunity to treat a very special person. You may or may not know that I suffer with a degenerative kidney disease and require a transplant. I am currently on the Deceased Donor List. My wife had earlier volunteered to donate one of hers and things were proceeding towards that solution but an unexpected medical complication arose and our hopes were dashed. Quite out of the blue, an Improve reader contacted me asking questions about the donation process. His own son has one kidney and based on how fit and healthy he is he wanted to make a difference in the world, to give someone else a chance. At first I presumed he was asking generally but no, he was prepared to offer me one of his kidneys. What would it involve, what would he have to do? I introduced him to the transplant team in Sheffield and testing began. They take zero risks. It’s not about 95 per cent or even 99 per cent. It’s 100 per cent or nothing. His first day of testing went well. Now he was back for a second; this time for the full MoT. Nuclear medicines, CT scan, heart, blood, fitness, psychological counselling, you name it. It’s intense, and now we have to wait for the results and for the team to meet and decide whether we can go ahead. It’s by no means a given. People talk about lifesaving interventions. This is potentially one of them. Anyway, it provided an opportunity for us to meet properly and after learning he had never in his life caught a grayling, nor had he any real experience of trotting, I set out to put that right. After all, if you travel a mile or so West, East or South from the hospital you will cross grayling-filled stretches of the River Don which loops round that part of the city. Of course, as luck would have it, the temperature suddenly rose and all that snow lying on the Pennine hills began to find its way into the river. Not enough to flood but enough to add a tinge of colour and drop the temperature. It was hard, but Ian (Ian Piker Biker Cooper – if you’re a Facebook or Youtube user) stuck at it and was rewarded with a decent handful of fish. Next time, in better conditions, he’ll catch loads. Fingers crossed his results come back positive and we are a compatible match.

Week four...

Finally, after three weeks, my vehicle is fixed and I can at last transport a seatbox. I fancied nothing more than a couple of days on the pole. A quick call to my old mate Trevor Empson, who’s been suffering with a very nasty lurgy for the past two months, reveals he’s fit enough to join me at Lakeside Fisheries, Ranskill. The Match Lake is a silver fish paradise in winter for decent ide and skimmers. Being an old gravel pit the lake is dotted with islands while depths are up and down all over the place. Plumbing revealed the deepest spot I could find was around 6 feet at 11.5 metres half way to the left-hand side of an island. At 13 metres it was a foot shallower, same if I went to the right or came a little shorter. Clearly a venue where careful plumbing counts. Following a harsh frost the fishing, not unexpectedly, proved to be rock hard. This area had produced good nets of skimmers the previous weekend, so Trev, on the next peg, introduced a couple of balls of groundbait and a few pellets, fishing

maggot over the top. He never had so much as a bite in three hours. I stuck to drip-feeding maggots and caught half a dozen ide. Just goes to show how narrow the margin between success and failure can be. We both expected a slow start and that we’d catch later on and that’s how it went for me. I managed to put a few bites together after lunch but Trev continued to struggle. A switch to a small maggot feeder eventually gave him a few fish. “After two months of feeling lousy I’m just glad to be in the fresh air,” he joked. I rounded off the month with a trip to the Tripp. Tripp Pond is part of Messingham Sands Fisheries but tucked away off-site, surrounded by woods and normally only used as a match venue, so when owner Kev Johnson invited me to share a social day on there with him I jumped at the chance. Kev unwittingly had a mighty influence on my fishing 30 years ago. I was big into my Trent match fishing in those days and it was by pure chance I happened across a guy doing something very different. He was fishing a peg in the 70s at Collingham, casting a feeder to the far bank and then letting out an absolutely huge bow in the line. His rod was pointed downstream, the bites were drop-backs and every fish hooked itself. I was in awe as I’d never seen this done before. Indeed I wrote about it in my legering book but didn’t have a clue who the angler was. Many years later I discovered it was him. Despite a pretty wicked frost and some fairly thick fog, as I approached Scunthorpe a weak sun broke through and lifted the gloom. Indeed it felt like spring had arrived and for the first time this year I was able to remove my coat. Maggots produced small roach and skimmers galore plus a few gudgeon, though I was getting nowhere in a hurry. Kev suggested I used 6mm expander pellets and sure enough my fortune changed. I was soon catching crucian carp and F1s. No monsters yet a bite of sorts on practically every cast kept me on my toes, but what interesting bites they were. For every bite that pulled my float under I had ten or more tiny dips, dithers, slight sideways movements, you name it. These were proper tearyour-hair-out bites and nothing I tried seemed to make much difference. I suspect, or perhaps I should say hope, the fish were feeding half-heartedly and simply mouthing the bait, perhaps just sucking on it, I don’t really know. There’s a lot for me to learn about catching F1s and crucian carp. Lessons I shall try and master in the coming months. As I wrap up this diary it’s impossible to ignore that the river season ends in four weeks. Guess I’d best make the most of the time I have available between now and then.