PAUL’S TIPS FOR GETTING STARTED

How to tell your wagglers from your boilies…

If you’re fishing with a rod for freshwater fish, salmon, trout, sea trout or eels, you have to have a licence. They come in different durations and cost between £3.75 and £27. If you’re under

16, they’re free. If you get caught without one, the maximum fine is £2,500. And check the calendar. The coarse fishing season is closed between March 15 and June 15 – this is the time when coarse fish spawn.

In terms of rods, when you’re float-fishing in a river or a lake, really anything from 11ft to 13ft is about the norm. The longer the rod, the more line control it allows.

Floats come in a bewildering variety of shapes and sizes, but two or three types will do when starting out. When fishing still or slow-moving water you would usually go for a “waggler”, shaped a bit like a pencil. In float fishing, you use two main types of reel: a fixed spool and a centre pin. The centre pin is the old traditional reel: it’s a circle, there’s a spool and the line simply winds around it and on to the spool. With the fixed spool the line is caught around the bail and then wound evenly around the spool.

To start with, you will be using single-strand nylon line or monofilament. The breaking strain of the line you use depends on the species you’re fishing for or how many snags and obstacles there are in the water.

There are many baits. The big five, though, are bread, worms, sweetcorn, luncheon meat and, more recently, boilies. And pellets. OK, so there are six main baits. Actually, there are seven because at number one is the mighty maggot.

Once you catch a fish, you need to have a net ready for when you land it. All fish should be landed carefully.

Catch and release. This means after you’ve caught a fish, release it back into the water as quickly as you can. Avoid handling the fish too much: wet your hands, get the hook cleanly out of its mouth using your pliers (or another hook-removing tool), and when you put the fish back, hold it in the river facing upstream for a bit to let it get its breath back.

The type of hook you want often depends on the type of fish you’re setting out to catch, but they’re all sold clearly marked. Most anglers these days use barbless hooks.

Taken from Mortimer & Whitehouse – Gone Fishing: Life, Death and the Thrill of the Catch (Bonnier Books)