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.
