Fishing & Art

Another Dr Johnson once said “…angling or float fishing I can only compare to a stick and a string, with a worm at one end and a fool at the other” and he wasn’t wrong, however the fool was about to be educated! If you have a problem, if no one else can help, and if you can get him from Nottingham, maybe you can hire...‘The Iron’. Yes folks Iron was coming to the Iron, or to put it another way Ironfever was on his way to Messingham Sands just outside Scunthorpe (or for those of you who join us in the www.gofishing.co.uk chat rooms, S***horpe). The goal was to not only get me to catch my first carp, but also to teach me one or two new techniques along the way. Weeks in the planning, with the Met Office gaily giving out severe weather warnings, the day dawned grey, overcast and raining. With the precision of the British Military Iron was on time. With the incompetence of the American Military I forgot my Polaroid’s and my hat, and true to form the weather was warm and sunny although damned windy.

By eight o clock we were on the fishery and Iron was not impressed. No facilities, litter discarded on the bank, not to mention a lack of features in our chosen pond, the North Day Ticket Water. This came as a surprise to me as all fisheries in my area were similar to this. We set off in search of the tackle shop to purchase the venues own pellet brand, to find that we had to drive off site and five hundred yards up the road to another fishery to make our purchase. The proprietor of the other fishery was more than a little miffed we were only buying pellets and not sampling his café wares or fishing his water. Back at the venue and someone had jumped into the swim we had chosen, so another swim had to be selected. By now the sky had cleared and glorious sunshine glinted from the pool. While Iron set up for the techniques he wanted to show me, I tackled up a waggler rod. My first lesson was plumbing the depth correctly, quickly followed by shotting 101. While Iron finished tackling up, and baiting chosen sections of the swim, such as the margins, I set to catching the hoards of rudd and roach I was all too familiar with and there were some glorious fish.

The Candle
Ironfever has been singing the praises of the ‘candle’ method since we first mentioned getting a trip organized. What the hell we were going to do with a candle I couldn’t imagine. To me candles were what you light on birthday cakes, or used in amorous encounters, or they dribble out of a kid’s nose. At Junior School my brother proudly announced his new girlfriend was ‘Snotty Alison’ the kid with permanent candles.
“Is she nice?” my Mum had asked him.
“Yeah, until you have to kiss her!” was his reply.
Imagine my surprise when the candle turned out to be a piece of elasticated plastic whose appearance was more suppository than fishing tackle. In essence the candle was a controller float attached at the top end to the main line via a swivel, and a hook length attached to an elastic central core at the bottom. The bait was bread, plain old sliced bread. Well a thick sliced Toastie loaf to be exact. It was at this point that I realized that I’d left the sandwiches at home in the fridge!

Ironfever showed me how to tear off a piece of bread about the size of a fifty pence piece, fold it in half and pinch it together at the fold and then how to hook the bread by piercing the hook through the pinched and folded section. I was sure the bait would fly off on the cast as had happened to me so many times before when using the bait, but after Ironfever made a twenty yard cast to just beyond a bed of reeds where carp were cruising the surface I was proved wrong. Fish swirled the water surface, attacking both the bread bait and the candle.
“This is just little bits having ago.” Iron informed me as he dropped a folded piece of bread into the water at our feet. “See how the bread opens up on the folded hinge like a book, and the hook sits in the middle of that. Carp will knock the bread under the water and then take it aggressively.” he continued.
At that moment he brought the rod up in a strike and connected with a fish.
“Here’s one for Toombsy!” he chuckled as he landed a bream.
Quickly he re-baited and cast to where the fish were feeding. Something was doing a fair imitation of Jaws, circling the bread Iron had catapulted out into the swim.
“Now that is a carp!” he grunted as the bread momentarily sank and line whipped up from the surface as he lifted the rod, which curved with the weight of the fish.
The taut line sang as the stiff breeze whistled across it, as Iron applied side pressure to the fish.
“I’ve got to stop it getting to those…reeds just, like, that!” he groaned as the line went slack and he reeled in. “That was a big fish!”

Two more missed strikes followed as Iron told me to get ready to take over.
“The trick is not to watch the candle or the bait, but to watch the line in front of you. When that starts being dragged away, you have a fish!” Iron said as the line did just that and he once more lifted into a fish.
From the way the rod bent into its task I could tell it was another carp.
“Got to get it away from those reeds!” gasped Iron as he tussled with the carp which slowly moved into open water. “Let it tire itself and then…slip it into the net!”
A chunky common carp folded into the net, all muscle and scales. If fish were women, then carp would have cankles, the brute was built like a brick crap house!
“Now it’s your turn!” he exclaimed as he passed me the rod.
I followed his instructions and baited the hook and cast just beyond the reeds. Within minutes a fish had taken the bait and I struck, retrieving nothing but an empty line.
“That’s because you were watching the candle and not your line!” Iron intoned.
I baited my hook and once more cast to the ever diminishing freebies that bobbed on the surface. This time I watched the line, which after a few minutes shot towards the candle. I lifted the rod into a fish.

Not our intended quarry but a very nice rudd all the same. Time was our enemy with minutes dashing by and Iron wanted to show me several other techniques such as the ‘method’ and the margin pole.

Since then I have used the candle on several occasions and adapted some of the techniques I learned to other venues. My local Mill View Fishery in Blyton controlled by the Scunthorpe Police Angling Club, a tiny fishery stocked with carp, descent roach and skimmers the scene of triumph. Talking to a regular we heard of the fishery’s ‘monster’ by the name of ‘Jaws’. My eleven year old boy Matty’s eyes were wide at the mention of the name, then he shrugged and tutted when he heard the gear wrecking beast was a vast…eight pounds… in weight, those pictures of specimen carp can sometimes cloud your vision. The following evening I picked Matty up from school and we headed off to Blyton for a couple hours of fishing.

As Matty set up the landing net I cast the candle over a few small pieces of bread. No sooner had the candle and bait settled on the water, than a huge mouth erupted from the depths engulfing the bait. Line flew from my reel; forget about watching the line on the surface of the water it hadn’t landed yet! The fight was over quickly; too quickly, Matty hadn’t managed to get the landing net together. At last he managed and slipped the net under the fish, the scales whipping round to just over eight pounds. Now keep this under your hats lads but I don’t think that fish was jaws, as ten minutes later Matty was waggler fishing in the next swim, and he had his hook straightened! Re-baiting quickly, Matty was soon into another carp of around five pound. After returning the fish, the lad just sat on his hands without casting back in.
“Are you not fishing?” I asked him.
“I’m too exited at the minute!” he exclaimed as I noticed his hands shaking.

Junk mail always annoys me, but it can also astound me as well. To be accurate it’s not the junk mail that astounds me, but the stupidity of the complete Muppets that post the stuff. I once received some junk mail from the Stannah Stair Lift Company, addressed to ‘The Occupier of the Ground Floor Flat’. I also class those begging bags that request clean, old clothes are placed in them, so that the Royal Society for the Prevention of Children can make some cash, as junk mail. Let’s face it, to me old clean clothes are simply called clothes and I wear them. I’m not uncharitable, or miserly, I’m just sodding skint! Daily a torrent of refuse is crammed through my letter box, everything from Avon catalogues to menu’s from the latest Indian Takeaway. Okay I will admit to actually buying the set meal for two from the Mysore House Tandoori after they had stuffed their menu through the letter box, and was mightily glad of the heaps of junk mail that I receive when I realised I’d run out of bog roll. Several hours after consuming said meal for two, I was the wincing owner of a ring piece not too dissimilar from blood orange. Consequently I have renamed the restaurant as the My Sore Arse Tandoori.

The local freebie newspapers are also classed as junk mail. They are rarely read, probably due to headlines such as ‘Edna reaches eighty and celebrates with a cup of tea’. Why do old people suddenly pretend butter wouldn’t melt in their mouths when they get to eighty? My Dad was in charge of a day centre for the elderly in the old dock town of Goole. One old lady there was always ignored by the other old ladies, yet the old blokes always had a wink and a smile for her. Turns out the old girl was a dockside prosy and had worked her way through the male populace of the town in her younger days.

Last Friday’s free news publication carried a headline that I did notice. At last I got round to the subject of fishing! ‘Otters to be released on local marshes’ it screamed above an image of what could only be described as a geek. The kind of bloke, wearing the kind of clothes, carrying equipment that would fit anyone from a train-spotter to a ‘dogger’ (not that I would know)!

Honestly here’s the fishing bit! ‘Great!’ I thought, ‘in-between cormorants, Eastern Europeans and sodding otter’s there are going to be no fish left!’

Now today I went fishing (see I told you I was going to get to the fishing). I saw tench, they swimming in the margins right by my feet. I also saw roach and dace (these were in my keep net). I also saw a nice perch of around two pound, this I caught and released in case it ate the rest of my catch. I thought the poor fishing today was due to the pike I could here thrashing in the reeds to my left that would occasionally send small fish porpoising over the water surface. Vast stretches of dull grey cloud covered the sky and spatters of rain hit my face as an almighty splash erupted from the margins. Swimming out of the margins a dark shape merged, swimming across the drain.
“Oh bloody marvellous” I thought “some plank is letting their dog swim right where I’m fishing!”

But then the ‘dog’ dove under the water and emerged several yards down to my right, clutching a bream between its jaws. This of course was no dog but an otter! Yup the week they announce they are releasing otters back into the wild because there are none, here is one fishing right at the side of me!

Now call me an old cynic, but something tells me that these naturalists never get out of their armchairs. Maybe they should take up fishing, and see some wildlife!

It seems like an eternity since the last time I wet a line. It’s not in fact; I did have a Saturday trip last weekend. Both ‘She Who Must Be Obeyed’ (SWMBO) and the lad joined me for a spot of tench fishing. We had the camera with us to take not only some stills but some video footage. I did catch a tench, as well as a large slab of a bream, but the less said about the day, the better. My attempts to stop smoking were thwarted that day, as I was sorely tempted to rip the nicotine patch from my arm and stick it across SWMBO’s cakehole! My attempts to make up for the lack of fishing by going this week have also been thwarted by the evil machinations of the divvy bint at the car dealership who has had me running back and forth and reorganising arrangements all week. So no fishing until next week, but that’s not stopped me indulging in a spot of reading, preparation and ‘float making’.

Like most anglers, deep down, I have to admit to being a bit of a tackle tart. Money, or the lack of it, has always been a bit of a draw back when it comes to indulging in the next best thing to fishing - the purchase of fishing tackle. As a kid I made up for the lack of pocket money by making my own floats. These would be heavy, totally unusable constructions, made from drinking straws and bits of fuse wire. These days my efforts are a little more refined and totally useable. In fact I prefer my home made floats to anything I can buy in the shops. There is something totally satisfying in catching fish on gear you made yourself. Not only do I have to admit to being a tackle tart, I’m also a bit of a dinosaur. Mr Crabtree will always be with me, and so will his techniques. Even though I’m open to new techniques I much prefer to relearn the old methods of catching fish. So with this in mind I started preparations for my next sortie with the ‘tinca tinca’, the Dr Fish.

I’ve tried the margin pole and the waggler but this time I’m going to have a go using a method I’ve not fished for a long while and that is the ‘lift’ method. The recent passing of Fred Taylor brought a lot of mention of this technique as Fred made it famous in his writings in the 1950’s. My Grandfather would fish no other technique for catching large tench, as the lift was supposed to be the most sensitive and selective method available to the float fisherman. The lift uses a peacock quill or a waggler fixed at the bottom end with a float rubber, and all of the shot used placed about four or so inches from the hook. The lift can be used close into the margins and should a fish take you into the reeds your quill or float will ‘pop off’ your line giving you a better chance of not snagging. Now being a ‘tight bugger’ even the possibility of losing a float sends shudders through my wallet, so I will make some quills to use with the lift method and this is how I do it.

I source most of my float making bits and pieces through the interweb or I can be often seen on my hands and knees at barbeques. This is usually through drink, an attempt to make things up to SWMBO after opening my big gob (through drink again) or scavenging the skewers that everyone throws away. The major benefit of making my own floats is that for the price of one float from the tackle shop I can buy a pack of quills, inserts and balsa bodies that will make me about forty floats. It also gives me something to do of an evening, especially if SWMBO is still not talking to me after my antics at the barbeque. The tools and materials I use are very simple and consist of sharp scissors, two part epoxy glue, wet and dry paper, white acrylic undercoat and fluorescent yellow spray paint. I use yellow as I can’t see oranges or reds very well. I will show you all the steps I use for both wagglers and the quills I use for the lift method.

The first job is to select a quill and cut it to the desired length with sharp scissors. Don’t be tempted to use a craft knife for this as all the pressure coming from one side will crush the tip of the quill.

Now its time top get a little sticky. I need to insert a plastic stem with an eye so that I can attach my float to my line. I also need to seal my quills or after a while immersed in the water the float will become waterlogged and start to sink. In the case of the quills for the lift method buoyancy is a very important factor. The quill needs to support the weight of the shot so that the fish is not spooked and eject the hook when it lifts the bait.

To glue all my components and to seal my quills I use a two-part epoxy glue that I buy from the pound shop. Simply squeeze out equal quantities of resin and hardener and mix the two together well.

Inserts are bought with my quills and fitting them is simply a case of pushing them into the thinner end of my quill. Push them into the quill before gluing them into place to ensure a sound and straight fit. Once I’m happy with the fit of the stem I dip the stem into my epoxy and making sure it’s thoroughly coated with glue push it into the quill.

I now use my fingers to wipe away any residue of glue but make sure there is a thin coating on the surface of the quill. I now upend the quill and dip the top into the glue so that I have a small even blob of glue on top of my float. I now stand the float on the insert and allow it to dry. With my quills for the lift method, I simply place a blob of glue on each end of the quill to seal the float and leave it to dry.

Once everything is dry I now gently sand the whole thing down with some wet and dry paper, making sure to round off the top of the float, and to sand down the ridge that runs vertically down one side of the quill. Once everything is nice and smooth, its time to paint your float or quill. I keep this nice and simple and have invested in a number of cans of spray paint from Halfords. I have a white undercoat, a black undercoat, fluorescent yellow and a shiny clear lacquer. Painting is very simple with plenty of time given to allow each different coat to dry; first an even coat of white is applied. Then on my floats I spray black onto the base section of the float. Yellow is sprayed onto the tips and then once the whole thing is dry I give it two coats of lacquer. Because I’m a finicky old bugger and an artist with my final coat of lacquer I gently rub the white layer into the black so it gives me the effect of the old fashioned porcupine quills. That’s it, jobs a good one! Here are the finished floats!

Right I had better hit the hay as I will be using them tomorrow!

The Middy White Knuckle Margin Pole had arrived, and so had a set of rigs that Ironfever had tied for me, what a great guy! Several nights of intensive on-line tuition from Ironfever, and loads of tips from Toombsy and I was in my new car and heading to the Warping Drain. This venue is a favourite of mine and also a jinx. I’ve caught my biggest perch here of around four and a half pound the year before last. In the dim and distant past I have caught a tench here but I’ve not caught one for a long time and I was hoping I would break my duck!

Five in the morning and a glorious sunrise glints from the mist laden fields of the Isle of Axholme as a barn owl flaps lazily along the dyke that lines the road I’m travelling on. I reach the Warping Drain, and the morning is simply breath taking. The water is also gin clear with gobbets of weed floating on the surface and is reminiscent of the stage after a Sex Pistols concert! There’s also a mild breeze blowing from left to right straight down the water so there is quite a bit of movement. I followed my instructions and fed ‘meat in the left hand margin’ and ‘corn in my right hand margin’ and maggots down the middle while I tackled up with a maggot and caster rig which I fished at six meters with double red maggot on the hook. Let me say here that even at six metres, for someone with a disability the pole is heavy and awkward. I keep slamming the tip into the water as I cannot hold it still. I take my keep net from its arm and with the arm improvise a spray bar of sorts to try and compensate.

I’m up and fishing at a quarter to six in the morning, and get nothing but squashed maggots for two hours. I swap one of the maggots around on the hook and hook it through the pointy end. The float sinks immediately and my reward…a finger length roach, which drops off the hook. I bait up again, but all has gone quiet, until the float buries and this time the elastic comes shooting out of the end of the pole. This time it’s a perch, which I haphazardly steer closer to the net. I have to stand up to get the net closer and as I watch the fish come to the net I notice a huge tench right in the margins by my feet. The perch actually bumps into the tench which waits until the fish is netted and swims off to my left.

While I photograph the perch for posterity and this report I can see tench rolling amongst the meat in the margins, so I switch rig and hook bait to luncheon meat and go for the tench. Nothing, bugger all, not a bite! So following instructions I switch to corn over the meat! Nothing again! Now I’m flummoxed and switch back to the maggot rig with double reds on the hook! Instant take, as elastic literally flies out of the pole and I hang on for dear life. I don’t have a hope in hell of steering this fish, it is literally ‘white knuckle’ time!

The tench comes to the top of the water and seems to be tiring and I reach for the net. Big mistake, I need to unship a pole section, and then back to the net which spooks the fish that does a ‘Lord Lucan’ and slips away! Buggeration! Still where there’s one there’s another, so I re-bait and try again. It’s all gone quiet, totally quiet, then the float dips and there’s another perch on the hook! All well and good but not what I wanted. An hour or two flash by while I trickle maggots around my float. Finally another bite and the tench is hooked, and stays on! A beautiful light olive green fish graces the bottom of my net!

Fishing on your own is so relaxing, but then there’s never anyone to share your capture! A quick photograph and I release the fish. It’s only then that I think to get a bank stick and set up the keep net again, what a prat!

Over the next couple of hours I hook two more tench but they shed the hook, my mismanagement I think! The second fish gets his own back as the elastic catapults the float and hook back at me and hit me right in the middle of the forehead. The next two fish are a surprise, bream, the first scarred from pike, the second larger and pristine! I re-bait and drop the float back into my swim. A bite straight away and this fish bolts for the open water. It leads me a merry dance as have to keep adding and removing sections of the pole to keep up with it. Eventually it’s in the net, and I go to unhook it. Flapping and wriggling the fish won’t lie still, but eventually the hook is out and I straighten up. Crunch! The days fishing ends as I lose balance and crush the end of one of the lower sections of my pole! Total Buggeration! Although right at this moment I’m too chuffed with a perfect days fishing to care! Tomorrow I will be in need of a new pole, but today I am so exhilarated with my days fishing I don’t really care! Thank you Ironfever and Toombsy for the instruction, guidance and rigs! What a fantastic days fishing but the Warping still jinxed me!

I’ve attempted many different types of fishing in the past, for a range of different species. I’ve tried ledgering, trotting even stret pegging. I’ve fished for tench, I’ve fished for bream, I’ve even pranced around in front of ‘She who must be obeyed’ stark naked and fished for compliments, sometimes it worked and sometimes I’ve not always been successful (in what, I will leave up to you). There is one style of fishing that I’ve never attempted, until now that is, and that’s pole fishing. I’m not talking about cruising the interweb for Eastern European brides, I’m talking about the alien act of fishing, and I don’t want to offend anyone here but I’m going to say it anyway, fishing without a reel.!

Many moons ago I did buy a ‘pole’. It was sort of telescopic thing with one eye whipped to the tip that cost an arm and a leg from the catalogue. Well a ‘pole’ was what Gratton optimistically called it; however ‘waste of bloody money’ was the technical term for the contraption, which literally saw two minutes of action. I would point out that I use the term ‘action’ very loosely; it all depends upon your definition of the word. If your definition involves a gudgeon the length of your little finger then this was indeed a struggle of titanic proportions that left both combatants panting in exhaustion on the bank and worthy of the epitaph ‘big ‘un’ in the angling press. This was around the time that I discovered tench, so the pole was consigned to a corner where is still resides.

Upon returning to the sport a number of prejudices have made me reluctant to try this method of fishing, past experience being the last on the list. I suppose it’s the current predominance of over stocked commercials that really put me off. Initially I sat and watched a match and at first was astounded by the skill of the contenders as a ‘seemingly’ never ending supply of fish were coaxed to the net. When I fished the same commercial myself, albeit using the waggler, I found it to be just like ‘hook a duck’ at the fairground when I was a kid. I don’t wish to insult anyone who enjoys the commercial pools which do serve a function, although I would like to see less stock in them, but it’s just not my ‘cup of tea’.

I was brought up on a steady diet of Mr Crabtree courtesy of ‘Fishing with Mr Crabtree in all waters’. I suppose I live in a bygone age where Mr Crabtree was a knowledgeable friendly fisherman who would take Peter fishing and show him wondrous things about fish, fishing and the countryside; an age where five children and a dog could really find secret tunnels and capture criminals and be home in time for tea with ‘lashings of ginger beer’. Let’s face it, today the famous five would all have an ASBO and Mr Crabtree would be on the sex offenders register!

It was someone who I think of as the ‘modern Mr Crabtree’, well a more accurate description would be to cross Mr Crabtree with Neil from the Young Ones, who started me thinking about learning to use the pole again. I am of course talking about Martin Bowler. I watched two videos from his website where he was trying to catch specimen perch using the pole! This put the idea into my head, but it was Ironfever from the www.gofishing.co.uk website that got the idea to ferment! Browsing various fishing websites I saw the Middy White Knuckle margin pole advertised for less than thirty quid, so I decided to give the pole another whirl. Now here is your opportunity to go fishing with DrCrabTaJ and follow me over the next week on a white knuckle ride as I get to grips with the Middy White Knuckle margin pole! Gasp at my gormlessness, be stupefied at my lack of skill, and cackle at my calamities as I go through the ordeal that every new comer goes through in learning a new skill. Join me next time as I go rig hunting and don’t forget all advice is not only welcome but desperately needed!

Toombs Raided (Nearly)!

And so the farce that is fishing begins. In warm summer sunshine I make my way back from the paper shop reading my copy of the Angling Times. A quick glance at the weather forecast brought a smile to my face as little dots of sunshine were plastered all over the map. I looked down to see what the Moonies had to say and with a full moon up your anus and more stars for Wednesday than decorate an American generals chest, the prospects for the days fishing looked stunning!

That evening I made a quick phone call to my Dad to arrange lifts to the river in the morning.
“Have you seen the weather forecast?” was my greeting.
“Yup the Angling Times says it’s going to be hot and sunny!” I reply.
“It’s not what the BBC reckons.”
There then followed the usual ‘what time do you want picking up’ followed by the ‘what time can you get here by’ conversation. Let me put you in the picture a little here. If I’m disabled then my Dad is knackered. One lung, diabetes, triple heart bypass, glasses and a hearing aid means watching my Dad get ready for anything is like watching the pilot episode of the Bionic Man, and if you mention going for a pint and the old bugger can hit mach six and singe the verge in his rush to the bar. My Mum passed away at fifty two from a stroke, so the combined family medical history means I was sodding doomed from birth. I suppose there is always the off chance Mum had a fling, but the seven strokes and two heart attacks I’ve had since I was thirty five means there’s no chance of that. Let’s just say when the Johnson boys hit the river bank it looks like a scene from Jackson’s Thriller! So with all probability of Dad running late combined with heavy rain and gales, its going to be typical summer fishing Wednesday.

Wednesday morning dawns…well it just sort of dawns. As mornings go, if this morning was a cocktail, it would be the kind your Uncle Fred makes with the cocktail kit he got for Christmas. Made from all of the dregs he could find in the bottles left over from the festive season, when he ran out of booze at his annual summer barbeque. Spots of rain, grey skies with the odd shaft of sunlight and a stiff breeze greet me as I take the dog for his morning walk. I say walk, but I should have called the dog Woodbine, as he’s twenty odd years old so I take the bugger for a drag. We get back to the house at a quarter past nine, load the car, and then my step mum drives us to the tackle shop. I grab a bag of Marine Halibut and a bag of Frenzied Hemp ground bait from the shelf, together with a tin of Frenzied Hemp and a pint of ‘mixed’ maggots. I comment about the weather as I spot Nev Fickling lurking behind the counter, then head out to the car.

Now this is where things go ‘tit’s up’ to use the vernacular. Dad passes me the club tickets he’s bought for me, and the Scunthorpe Police Angling Club tickets have turned up as well. This means the Warping Drain is a possibility. I’m all kitted up for the Idle, but I can tell from Dad’s tone of voice that he wants to fish the Warping Drain, probably in his usual spot. His usual spot is the only place I blanked last year, but just to keep the old bugger happy…

My step mum has an expression like Margaret Thatcher on valium, as she gives me instructions that she will be picking us up at four as we unload the gear from the car. We’ve stopped mid point on the section of the Warping held by the club, just before what used to be the ‘match section’ starts. We select two swims side by side with me to the right and Dad away to my left. As soon as walking becomes a problem you soon learn that all the best swims are just too far away! By the time we are rigged up and fishing it’s nearly 11:45.

I mix up the groundbait, mixing in some hemp and a handful of sweet corn flavoured with Liquid Brasem, fed a couple of orange sized balls into my swim, then nipped across to see if Dad needed any help and I take the ground bait with me. This is my first mistake, as Dad hangs onto the bait and my mixing bowl. I start the session on feeder, using a Zebco light feeder rod with a 1oz test curve tip, a light maggot feeder on the main line, through to a swivel and a light hook length to a size 14 hook. The wind is starting to pick up now, and I know what I’m like with tangles, so this seemed to be the best solution. What a mistake that was! Within fifteen minutes I gave up on that idea and switched to my Mach Three rod, with a bodied waggler through to a 14 hook, baited with sweet corn. This stopped the tangles, but the wind was making life difficult, both casting and spotting bites.

I’m muttering to myself having seen Dad’s chosen gear. He’s using his ‘old’ fibreglass Goldcrest rod circa 1974 (he moaned this was too heavy so I bought him an up to date rod for his Christmas box) along with his closed face Abu reel (bought with his rod when I was eight) and a hideous home made porcupine quill float. He’s fishing hard on the bottom with about five inches of his float above water, using a size 14 hook baited with maggot. We are now an hour into the session and not one single bite have we had! I change to maggot and cast out to the tiny bay on the far side of the drain, I’m rewarded with an instant bite. It’s so fast I miss the damned thing! With a sense of impending doom I get the funny feeling that I’m about to become a fully paid up member of Toombsy’s Raiders and bloody blank! I re-bait and cast in again, this time I hit the bite and reel in a finger length roach. This was it? The best that the tench Mecca could provide was not enough to fill a Czechoslovakian finger roll! A few more ‘sprats’ added to my tally and then bites dried up.

You see the thing about being a ‘pleasure’ fisherman is you don’t have to catch a monster to be successful. Call it defeatist but I hadn’t been water licked (watter licked in the local dialect), I’d caught something! Dad meanwhile had caught bugger all, not a single bite! I started to muse on the brilliant ‘Pre-baiting’ videos by Toombsy as www.gofishing.co.uk.
Okay many would be embarrassed by the size of the fish I was catching, but at the end of the day if a fisherman of Toombsy’s calibre can blank, hell a fish is a fish! I looked at the clock and it was 2:45, an hour and fifteen minutes left!

“Tim!” was the shout.
I knew it had to be urgent. Timothy is my Sunday name. Like Ronnie Corbet in ‘Sorry’, if I get‘Timothy’ I know I’m in trouble. Usually I’m referred to as ‘Are Kid’, but ‘Tim’ means it’s important. I scrambled up the bank thinking the silly old sod had fallen in. Falling in, I am sorry to say, is a regular occurrence with my Dad. It’s been happening for as long as I can remember. Bearing in mind the old bugger served most of is life in the Royal Navy, show him some water and he will fall in. As a kid I used to have a secret code I shared with my Mum. If we came back from fishing, and I climbed out of the car shaking one leg, it meant the soft old sod had fallen in again, and Mum would fetch dry clothes desperately trying not to laugh!

I reached the top of the bank and was buffeted by the strong winds. Sat among the reeds I hadn’t realised how much the wind had picked up.
“Are you all right?” I yelled at Dad.
“Landing net!” was my reply, as I saw the bend in his rod and heard the wind whine and whistle past the taught line.
Grabbing my landing net I slid and slithered behind him, and caught my breath, as a tail thrashed the surface of the water before the dark shape of the fish made another break for freedom. The fish rose to the surface again before rolling and diving once more.
“Give it a gob full of air!” I told Dad as the fish surfaced again before diving once more.
I have often heard anglers say that Bream don’t fight, what rubbish! A couple of minutes later and we had the fish in the net. Five and a half pound, Dad had saved the day! I took the opportunity to grab the groundbait bowl and went to mix some more.

No sooner had I got my hands in the mix then a shout went up.
“Tim!” again as I climbed the bank, noticing the rod doubled over again.
Fighting again, the fish was eventually tamed and another five pound bream slipped into the net.
“I’m catching them on one white and one red maggot, if you want to know!” said Dad.
As I walked back to my own swim I could here the strains of a song floating on the wind.
“One red one, one white one….and one with a bit….and one with a fairy light on to show us the way!”
Back in my own swim again another shout of ‘Tim’ was followed by a ‘never mind’. The silly bugger had fallen in this time but had climbed out.
“Tim!” went the shout again, this time I just grabbed the net and helped him land a six pound fish this time.
As I sauntered back to my swim, my step mum arrived to take us home. With Dad wrapped in a towel as he changed into dry clothes I photographed the fish and returned them before packing up.

What a fantastic day! It rained twice but other than the strong wind, nothing to complain about. Well the Moonies had got it all wrong, for me at any rate! Just one thing bothered me about the fish. For such large fish, each one showed a lot of damage in the forms of rips along the body. Something had been at them, which means to me there are a lot of big pike in the Warping Drain too!

Next time…The Idle!

So the target is the river Idle, the name giving a false impression as this bit of water can whip through at a rate of knots, especially when the pumping station, where the river joins the Trent, is throbbing away. I once saw the pumps turn on and was stunned at the power as the brick building that houses the pumps seemed to take a breath and literally swallow the river.

The Idle is a river that flows in the veins of my family. I grew up with stories of my Great Grandfather fishing it. My Dad, in his maudlin moments, will tell me how he carried his Grandfather’s tackle to the bank as a boy. The old man had served in the Great War and having ducked or flinched when a shell landed near the artillery piece he was manning, was accused of cowardice. His punishment was to be held down in front of the big gun, with his thumbs under the wheels, where they were crushed as the gun rolled forward each time it fired. Returning home after the war, too ill to work through further injuries, deaf from the noise, his lungs ruined from mustard gas he earned money from fishing matches. By all accounts he was bloody good!

My Great Grandfather is the small boy in the back row on the left of the picture.

We have a tradition in my family, where a grandfather will pass on his fishing tackle to the grandson. I can remember going with my Dad to Archers tackle shop in Balby in Doncaster with my Great Granddad’s fishing rods. Split cane rods slick and shiny with varnish, with ‘Archer and Son’ painted just above the butt. I would spend hours in Archers tackle shop as a kid. If anyone remembers ‘Open all hours’ with Ronnie Barker, Archers was just around the corner from where it was filmed. How I spent hours in there I don’t know as you couldn’t see any tackle, you had to ask for it. The shop was only big enough for one bloke or two kids to stand in the doorway. Dad showed Mr Archer the rods.
“Oh I think my Dad made these, I’ll just fetch him.” said young Mr Archer.
I can remember thinking ‘Bloody hell, he’s one hundred and eighty and his Dad’s alive?’, but sure enough as I peered from behind my Dad, like a scene from ‘Are you being served?’ young Mr Archer rolled old Mr Archer into the shop. The wizened old man snatched the rods out of my Dad’s hand and pieced them together.
“There’s summat wrong wi’ these!” gurned the old boy as he pulled the handle from the butt of the rod and a swan shot dropped from the hollow handle onto the counter.
“Thought so, these are Dick Johnson’s rods; he always was a lame bugger and needed the extra weight!”
There are still times when rigging up I will take out a swan shot and just sit and marvel at the skill and craftsmanship of that old man. In our modern age of carbon and computers and of ultra modern techniques I doubt that there are many ‘fishermen’ that would appreciate the intricacies and dynamics of their own tackle and tactics.

Last year my boy and I fished the Idle on several occasions. On the first occasion we arrived early in the morning just as the sun was creeping over the horizon and kissing the fields with gold. In the distance on the hill I could see my Dads house and my childhood home. The river seemed to be running very slowly and we tackled up with waggler gear and soon had a couple of descent roach to about a pound in the net. Suddenly it seemed as though someone had turned on a tap and the river was whizzing past us. There was nothing for it but to change to the quiver tip, unless I wanted to keep untangling the lad all day. Rigs were simple, a small maggot feeder threaded onto the main line, followed by a bead and then a swivel to which I tied a size 14 hook to a two and a half pound hook length. For bait we were using maggot and sweet corn, with a mixture of halibut groundbait, hemp and maggot in the feeder. The fishing was steady but enough to keep a ten year old happy catching roach, perch and skimmers all day. Things quietened down around two in the afternoon, until suddenly my rod tip whipped round. It had been doing this all day, however when I lifted the rod this time, there was a thud on the end of the line. Whatever I had hooked was big! I had tied the hooks myself using the knotless knot, and was using hair rigged sweet corn as the bait.

The lad jumped and grabbed the landing net and had sunk it into the shallows by my feet as I played the fish, but to my horror the line went slack, and I slowly wound in. My hook and bait were gone! All that I was left with was the kinked end of my line. Somehow the knot had come undone leaving the fish with my bait and hook. At that moment I heard a ‘tutting’ sound behind me as an old man struggled down the bank.
“That’s a shame lad!” he said as he then asked for my ticket and suddenly he looked sharply at me, and I thought I was in trouble.
“You wouldn’t happen to be Dick Johnson’s lad would you?” asked the old boy.
It took a while for me to register what he’d asked, as my Dad’s name is Richard too, although he’s known as Gordon. Before I could reply the bailiff shook his head.
“What am I thinking about, he was my dad’s age and you’re just a young ‘un!”

If I go to my Dad’s, carefully wedged into the roof of the stables is a bundle of cane, bound about with lats of willow. If you take it down and twist it towards the light, just above the cork handle you can see the neat copperplate brushwork that reads ‘Archer and Son’ and if you gently tip it end on end, you can hear the swan shot rattle inside.

Tomorrow it’s the Idle!

I suppose an introduction would be of some benefit to those who have not had the good fortune to meet the erudite and self effacing DrTaJ. I have the good fortune to work as an artist and illustrator; I have an absolute passion for fishing. I’m also fit, athletic and intelligent. It’s usually at this point that I wake up and find that I’m a grouchy old bugger with a limp, the IQ of plankton and all the speed and grace of the common, all garden slug; and what I thought was Kylie tenderly nuzzling my neck, is in fact the doddery old dog that shares my house. This ‘blog’ is intended as an exercise in getting the assorted rubbish that flaps around between my ears into some kind of order. I suffered the first of many strokes on 9-11, and due to this I sometimes see things a little differently to some people, so be prepared.

Today is the start of the fishing season, and I’m not fishing, instead I’ve had to content myself with drawing instead. Although I will imagine you may get a glimpse of the way my mind works from the image, but at the moment art is the last thing on my mind.

For some reason I can’t seem to get my head around the ‘lack’ of a closed season on certain venues and this is why I always start my own season in earnest on the ‘Glorious Sixteenth’. In the past transport has been a big problem because of my disability, with either the eldest boy, my Dad or in the last resort the ‘push-bike’ providing the required lift (or wobble). This season things will be delayed because of a momentous occurrence that will alter my life dramatically. On the thirtieth of June I take delivery of my car. I have to admit that for the last seven years I’ve felt like Patrick McGoohan in The Prisoner, without the bouncing balls (well there was the time the top fell off the Belisha beacon)!

With my fishing horizons suddenly expanded, I started to plan the year’s campaign. Advice came thick and fast, especially from Ironfever at the www.gofishing.co.uk website who has kept a look out for suitable venues, so that soon the old envelope I was making notes on became full and I started a note book. With oil prices that are increasing faster than a concessionary rod license and my list of venues increasing by the minute I knew I would have to plan and budget very carefully. As the notes and maps started to clutter the living room, my Dad asked if I would make copies as some of the ‘little old boys’ at the fishing club wanted to have a look at what I was up to. So here we have it, my assorted jottings, ramblings and reports with a little artwork thrown in for good measure.

Years as a Scout Leader kick into action and leaving aside all comments about my ‘woggle’ I start to look at the resources available. Geographically I’m fortunate to live in an area with some of the best fishing available in the UK. On the borders of Lincolnshire, North Lincolnshire and Nottinghamshire, is the town of Gainsborough hugging the river Trent. Like many areas these days commercial fisheries abound, ranging from the ‘muddy pool’ scraped into a farmer’s field to quality venues catering for match fisherman and the pleasure angler alike. The area is also blessed with a multitude of drains and rivers, both large and small, as well as canals. All of this within an hours driving, in any direction, while the river Trent divides the area into east and west.

The species of fish available cover a broad range, and although in the past I was happy to catch anything that ‘tugged my line’ over the next season I want to start and target specific species, and in the process learn new techniques and skills. This will mean more expense I’m sure, as I will more than likely need to invest in more diverse equipment. However I’m very lucky in that the town also boasts an excellent tackle shop, that not only stocks a wide range of quality product, but they will also take the time to not only pass on their wisdom, but also demonstrate, space allowing. This season the main species I would like to target are tench not having caught one for a long time, Barbel also feature high on my list as I’ve never caught one. After landing a four and a half pound perch the year before last, I would dearly love to repeat this experience, so I will take these aims into account with my planning.

Fishing is ‘bloody expensive’! This could be my Jewish ancestry speaking or the fact that I’m tight, I have been known to wring out flies that happen to land in my pint glass. With my bait bill for a day’s fishing creeping ever higher and the average price of a commercial about the £5 range, each trip is getting to the £40 mark, if my boy comes with me, once I include paying for the petrol for my trip. With this in mind, the cheapest way of fishing a large number of different waters is to join a fishing club. Bearing in mind the species I wanted to target there was one club that instantly sprang to mind, having the rights to a ‘magical’ water on their book. I’m talking about the Scunthorpe Police Angling Club and the Warping Drain. I was fortunate to have grown up in one of the villages close to this ‘tench paradise’, and at one time was intimate with each section, although not as intimate as I was with the string of young ladies who seemed to tag along with me on ‘fish’ watching expeditions. The Warping Drain is shallow, often gin clear and was a Mecca for tench fishermen. The tench may not be record breakers in size, but with bags in excess of ten to fifteen fish in a session they provide excellent sport! The Warping also holds perch and boy what perch they are, with four pound specimens lurking in ambush.

The Scunthorpe Police Angling Club hold numerous waters in the area on both sides of the river Trent, ranging from ponds, drains, pits and even sections of the Trent itself. Excellent value for money, membership was my first purchase. The second was a yearly book for the river Idle, running parallel with the Warping Drain, with about a mile in-between the two waters. This little river holds a good head of roach up to 2lb, chub and barbel and one or two monster carp, escapees in the recent floods. With books purchased I just have to wait for the first days fishing. Although I’m longing to plunder the tench on the warping, the Idle will be the first venue I will tackle, in two days time. In the meantime it’s back to work, drawing naked ladies for a fantasy book, although why a woman wearing nothing but a bikini would need such a big chopper is beyond me!