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!
