Poles Apart White Knuckle

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!