Bob Roberts

My monthly fishing diary..

FOR those who look forward to seeing my beaming smile and handsome good looks in these diary pages, I do apologise.

As you may be able to see the surgery to remove the cancerous growth on my nostril has left things in a bit of a mess, but hopefully a second surgery will put things back to normal shortly.

I’ll say it again though, to all anglers, beware of the damage the sun can do. We run double the risk of skin cancers because we get direct sun from above and sunlight reflecting back from the water. Make this the year you use sun blocker. It could literally save your life.

Week one...

I fancied an easy trip to get me back in the groove. No long walks, no silly hours and more than anything I fancied a few bites, watching a float dipping under the surface. I won’t say I was keen but there I was, parked outside Aire Tackle before the owner arrived to open up.

Colin delivered the news I didn’t want to hear. “It’s not fishing well, Bob. Last week’s rain messed up the Aire and it’s been running into the canal. And the frosts haven’t helped.”

I decided to try a swim behind the Steam Packet pub and Colin wasn’t wrong. The canal was crystal clear, hardly moving, which is unusual, and bites were hard won. Loosefeeding at 13 metres brought a smattering of bites, mainly from perch. No fish were topping and it seemed unlikely the canal was going to spring into life at any moment.

Winter days are short and it’s easy to fall into the trap of staying put, then packing up early, telling myself I can beat the Friday afternoon nightmare of A1 traffic by heading home early. We’ve all done it but I had a desperate desire to catch, so I packed up, chucked my gear in the back of the Volvo and headed to an area that’s wider, deep and normally reliable.

The guy to my left was catching small roach on bread punch. No other bait is quite such a banker for bites but so easy to mess up. I trickled in maggots at 9m and slowly but surely I started getting the occasional bite. Clearly a better stamp of fish on maggots but very much a case of being patient as these fish were not exactly throwing themselves on the hook.

An angler fishing right next to a public footpath is a magnet. “Any luck?” “Has tha’ caught owt?” “You’d be better off t’other side of bridge!” And so on. Some stayed longer than others, sky- lining the fish. By pushing out to 11 metres I managed to keep a few bites coming; nice roach, odd perch and a few decent skimmers.

To hopefully push passers- by away from the canal edge I pulled in the pole and rearranged my luggage, bags and bait boxes in a nice semi- circle. Not so far that folk would step inside them but enough to hopefully reduce the impact of sky- lining.

Turning round to pick up my pole everything was solid. Damn! How could I have snagged up with my rig so far off bottom? And then the earth moved. Elastic began to stream out as I rapidly added more sections. What on earth...?

It seems I had laid my rig over the back of something big, clearly foul- hooked, that was now leaving the swim in a plodding but determined fashion. With 10 yards of elastic stretched out across the canal, the fish stopped and began to come towards me. My money was on a big pike but I’ll never know as the size 20 hook pinged out.

You don’t realistically expect to land these fish, all you hope for is a glimpse. Sadly, that wasn’t to be today. Never mind, I’d caught some fish, explored two new areas and will definitely be returning.

Week two...

By now the Trent levels had fallen nicely, all colour had run through and there was frost in the forecast. A chub session beckoned until my world was suddenly turned upside down by a nasty bloodstream infection that laid me up in hospital again, so here the diary takes a twist and Lee Swords steps in as my guest for Week Two. We were targeting the same area for chub so why not let him tell the story...

“Chub are one of the few species still willing to feed in winter, albeit cautiously, which adds up to a challenge where the angler has to actually fish for bites rather than expect his quarry to hook itself against a bolt rig.

“Winter chub are often carnivorous and my favourite approach involves a steak and mince combination to which I add a dash of cheese. Most of us enjoy feasting on steak and cheese and chub are no different.

“My cheesepaste is simple to make and can be frozen for later use. I use the HookBait Company Big Cheese base mix to which I add four different cheeses – hard red Cheddar, smelly blue Stilton, soft creamy Camembert or Brie and rubbery, processed Mozzarella. The combo ticks all the boxes.

“Here’s the unique part of my steak and mince method – and I believe I was one of the first to do this. I rub a small amount of cheesepaste into my hookbait steak to give the meat added cheesy attraction. This also slows down the blood leak- off and extends the attractiveness of the hookbait. Washed- out steak does not attract many bites!

“My mince gets the same treatment and I mould small amounts of mince and cheesepaste around the outside of a feeder – on it, not in it. This accelerates the breakdown of feed from the feeder and optimises the scent leak- off.

“My hooklength is usually 2ft of 6lb fluorocarbon to a size 12 Drennan Wide Gape hook. This is a much more subtle approach than many prefer.

“As we move into spring I’ll increase the hookbait size, but while it’s still cold I’ll stick with a sliver of meat roughly the size of a couple of maggots. If the river’s coloured I’ll up the hook size to an 8 to offer a bigger hookbait as fish are then feeding by smell rather than sight.

“Of course location is everything. You can only catch the fish in front of you. Spend a bit of time this summer looking for swims to revisit in winter.

“So there you have it. I won’t rub things in for poor old Bob, just share this fine Trent specimen, one of several I had in his absence. I’m sure Bob would have been catching them, too, were he not stuck in hospital.”

Week three...

Of course, the moment I’m discharged from hospital Storm Ciara rocks up bringing gales, torrential rain and snowfall on higher ground. My dreams of a return to the Trent are dashed and all I needed was a bend in the rod and any species would do.

I gave Brian Skoyles a call and we decided on a trip to Sykehouse Fisheries’ Twin Isles where the carp run 8lb- 12lb on average with an occasional bigger fish thrown in if you get lucky. But how would it fish? The grass surrounding the lake was sodden with puddles everywhere.

Owner Ray Lane suggested we try the deeper water towards the far end of the lake where we would have the wind off our backs. Basically we were perch fishing but perfectly willing to accept any carp that came along. Light leger tackle, 6lb line and a bait selection of lobworms, prawns – both raw and cooked – plus a few cockles and mussels.

Brian had the first bite on two lobworms. As he played a ‘ small carp’ he quipped: “Imagine if this was a perch...” And then it rolled, all stripes and scarlet fins! What a perch it was, all 3lb 15oz of it and a new Yorkshire PB for Brian.

We were still on a high when my lefthand rod roared off. A carp to the cockle and mussel hair- rig combo. While I was playing it the second ‘ king prawn’ rod was away, too. By the time I’d netted the first fish the second one had dropped off. But no worries, a second fish picked up the same hookbait. One cast, two bites

Then the world stopped turning, fish stopped feeding and we couldn’t buy another bite. Why? What had switched them off? We had no answers. Winter fishing at its most baffling.

Week four...

If Ciara wasn’t challenging enough, straight on the back of it came Storm Dennis, bringing more gale force winds and torrential rain. Rivers across the country reached record levels. It was looking like a washout until Alfie Naylor offered me a potential get- out- of- jail- free card: “I’ve gained access to a marina, should be a bit of shelter from the moored boats. Fancy it?”

I certainly did, but let’s not get carried away. The marina was flooded, coloured and rising, though sheltered from the worst of the wind the anchor couldn’t hold us steady and the electric trolling motor was barely powerful enough to make much progress. Let’s just say it was challenging.

Predators looked like our best option, so first job was to catch some baits. If I’m honest, it was the most fun part of the day, tucked in tight to the bank and watching the float disappear with monotonous regularity put a huge smile on our faces and pike were clearly feeding as we saw several swirl on the surface. This was going to be so easy.

Neither of us are fans of multiple treble hooks so we both opted for lip- hooking baits on singles. How could we go wrong? Well let me tell you we must have had at least eight takes during the day. Proper unmistakable float- straight- under bites, yet we failed to hook a single one. It was unreal.

I favour striking pike quickly and am quite prepared to miss a few takes on the basis that if a big girl grabs a livebait then my hook will almost certainly be inside its mouth, but not today. I suspect we were being plagued by Jacks. How else could we miss every single take, even if we let them run for fifteen seconds or more?

We got wet and blown around a bit, and the fishing was thoroughly frustrating, but do you know what? This was winter fishing at its most enjoyable. Good company, challenging in the extreme but success always seemed tantalisingly within reach.

I drove home with tingling cheeks, a thousand ideas bouncing around my head, wondering how I’d do it differently next time. Winter fishing is about more than what you catch. Sometimes it’s simply about experiencing the wild outdoors and doing your best to beat the odds.