“Two brains are so often better than one for angling purposes”
“Every day is a new challenge that might not fit your original plan”
IF EVER I needed a friend, it was surely over turbulent recent times on the bank. With restrictions easing, I’d finally arranged a reunion with my mate David West Beale, over a year after our last shared fishing trip.
How wrong we were to assume it would be a carefree day out! Unless you’ve been hiding under a rock, you’ll have seen media coverage of the destruction we found on the River Tone. Environment Agency staff had taken the kind of approach to habitat management that Vladimir Putin brings to world peace.
Had I been alone, I might have felt too depressed to continue fishing, but I was damned if I was going to let others’ actions ruin a long overdue trip with a mate. And so, after a frustrating delay as we documented the damage and made a formal complaint, we moved on.
Besides letting off steam, two brains are so often better than one for angling purposes. Like me, David is an angler who loves tinkering. Whether it’s messing about with lure presentations or trying homerolled flies, there’s always an idea or two cooking. Today we contrasted different lures and retrieves, looking for that successful formula. No matter how long you’ve fished, every day is a new challenge that might not fit your original plan.
Predatory fish, especially, seem to get more challenging every season as pressure grows and standard tactics grow stale.
I began the day with big spinnerbaits for pike, but soon it seemed like this would be a day for the smaller and subtler lures that Dave was casting. It was his cuter soft plastic offerings that were getting most of the attention. I soon followed suit!
Presentation was the next issue, because heavy winds are not ideal for slinging two-gram lures about on finer gear. Luckily, I knew some nearby spots where we would be less ravaged by the sort of crosswinds the Somerset Levels are famous for.
Between us, then, we started to suss out the right recipe. A combination of his shrewder lure choices and my local knowledge dovetailed to bring a really enjoyable afternoon’s sport. Perch aren’t huge fans of towing water, so it stood to reason that the calmer spots ought to be best. And so it proved, with bites suddenly coming thick and fast.
Even further fallout from our EA complaint couldn’t spoil the day. Having bounced a cast off far-bank cover, I had a wonderful hit on the drop. What I assumed to be a jack pike turned into the best perch I’d tempted all winter! Call it karma if you wish, but it felt like a catch born of true teamwork.