The Third Age Angler Posts

I checked to see the last time I had been fishing as I hadn’t been during the winter and it turned out to be the beginning of November, that’s nearly as long as I have been waiting for a Basal Cell Carcinoma operation on the NHS. For those of you who don’t know, BCC is a mild form of skin cancer caused by exposure to sunlight. This is my fourth one and I remember on the first one the consultant asked me if I had ever got sunburnt when I was a child. Did I ever? We all did in those days and took great delight in peeling the skin off afterwards! Little did I, or anyone else, know that I was storing up trouble for my Third Age. So, do yourself a favour and use sunscreen, especially if, like me, you are fair skinned and have fair hair. It is probably a case of shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted if you are older but try to make sure that your kids and grandkids protect themselves, they will thank you later.

Anyway, enough of the health advice, it is time to go fishing. I found a Sunday afternoon when it wasn’t raining, the sun wasn’t baking and I was free. I took the maggots out of the fridge where they had been for some time and looked inside the jar, they were very still but I know that they start to move as they warm up so I wasn’t too worried although I had had them quite a while. Car loaded I drove to the venue to find the car park full of cars with people standing around chatting then driving off. I wondered what was going on then realised that they must have just finished a match. I didn’t know if this was a good or a bad thing, will the fish have got used to people fishing and carry on feeding or will they be fed up and lying low? I briefly thought about going somewhere else but I hadn’t fished this water for some time and I had never blanked here so decided to give it a go.

Having plenty of time I walked round the water, I could see fish rising in the middle but not much activity elsewhere. I decided to fish in swim where I have caught before which is open and has a good view of the lake. I got a carp rod out and was using a mesh bag and boilie and cast out as far as I could. For my other rod I used a float rod set to about four feet deep and thought that I would try for some rudd. I used a couple of maggots for bait and cast out. It was quiet and the wind dropped then the church bells started to ring. To be honest I hadn’t realised that a church was so close and it must have been their rehearsal time as they went on and on playing different sets for quite a while. I must have got used to it as I only realised that it had stopped some time after it had, then things went quiet again.

Nothing much happened, I re-cast the carp rod at regular intervals and checked the maggots on the float rod but there was no sign of a bite. I adjusted the depth of the float as this water is deep but it made no difference, I still wasn’t getting any bites. I was thinking of giving up the float rod and trying on the bottom with my feeder rod when the decision was made for me. I was reeling the float in when the hook got caught in the weed, I tried pulling in different directions to no avail and ended up pulling the line as hard as I could until it broke. Fortunately the hook length broke as it was supposed to  and I didn’t lose my float. 

Out with the feeder rod, a small boilie and a method feeder, not far out, just where I had been feeding for the float rod. I had just settled down in my chair when there was flash of a kingfisher over my shoulder and into some bushes on the far side of the lake. I saw him several times after that, always going to the same spot so he must have a nest there.

Then into the pattern of filling up mesh bags and re-filling the method feeder for the next hour or so but no bites. I decided to change the boilie on the carp rod and found that it was really hard, I was able to scrape some off the surface but no further. It was as hard as nails, no wonder the fish weren’t eating it!

Time passed and the evening drew on, I kept scraping the boilie, taking off a layer at a time. I had my sandwiches and a drink, still no action. As it began to get dark I decided that enough was enough and packed my gear away. I hadn’t caught anything but had enjoyed my time on the bank so I wasn’t too unhappy. A lesson learnt perhaps? Not to fish in a lake straight after a match. I checked the match report when I got home and everyone had weighed in but they did say that the fishing had tailed off towards the end so perhaps I just went at the wrong time. Still, not long until the river season opens and I can get back to my boyhood style of fishing.

It looks the sort of place where you could catch a fish!

The other day I realised that it has been a few months since I have been fishing. In fact I have hardly been outdoors except to feed the birds and attend appointments. It hasn’t always been this way as I am sure that I went fishing last winter and the winter before but this winter I haven’t. Thinking about it there are several reasons for my non angling winter.

The first one is the weather, apart from one cold spell when the canal and lakes froze over we just seem to have had rain, rain and more rain and I don’t like it! I don’t like getting wet, I don’t like my gear getting wet and I don’t like my glasses getting wet! What’s more it makes the banks muddy and slippery and at my age I am not as agile as I was and am more likely to slip on the mud and fall over. When it does stop for a few days the rivers are in flood and the banks stay muddy and slippery. Then it rains again. I also don’t like the cold and the shorter hours of daylight and if I could I would hibernate!

Then there is my age, I am well into the third age and things are becoming more of a bother to do. Given the choice of staying indoors in the warm and dry or going out in the rain and cold I am opting for warm and dry. That is sensible when I have got a cough or cold or the severe case of “Man-Flu” which I caught after Christmas and took me a long time to get over. As I said earlier, I am not as sprightly as I was and the thought of messing about on the muddy banks is less appealing.

Finally, and I am wondering if this is the most important factor, my local tackle shop has closed. It had struggled on for the last few years with irregular opening hours until at last the owner called it a day. When I came back to fishing during the Covid lockdowns I had to buy a few bits of tackle and had to do this by mail order as the shop was closed. When it re-opened I went back to the shop but I didn’t have much to buy although it was always handy for a pint of maggots. It was less than five minute’s drive away and I  could park just outside, so it was very convenient. Now, I have to drive to the next town, and struggle to find somewhere to park just to get my maggots. I always like to have a rod out for silvers and maggots are the ideal bait but now that it takes me an hour to get them I find that I can’t be bothered. During Covid I made my own but it was a bit of a palaver and I don’t want to do it again. I am wondering if it is a viscous circle, tackle shops close so people don’t go fishing so much and don’t buy as much so tackle shops close etc. etc.

So, I content myself with fishing videos on YouTube which I can watch in the warm and dry. There are loads of them but two of my favourites are “The Ginger Fisherman” and “Fish With Carl.” I have been following Carl since he was at school and doing videos with his brother and he explains things in a clear, straightforward way without any clickbait or exaggeration and I like that.

Anyway, I sat down on this rainy afternoon to put down my thoughts on why I haven’t been fishing lately and seem to have written a bit. Time to cross my fingers and hope for better days ahead, surely March will be better for us fisher folk!

I mentioned last time that the lake I have been fishing this year closes to us at the end of September and so if I was going to fish it before the deadline I had better get on with it! I loaded everything into the car on a nice sunny day. It was still chilly and a bit windy so I took extra clothing but in the end I didn’t need it as the swim was sheltered from the wind and I sat in my T shirt all day.

I took just about all my tackle and my barrow as the lake is about a quarter of a mile from the car park. Actually, it is a series of lakes but the one I like to fish is the furthest from the car! This means that it is very quiet and I can go all day without seeing another soul. The water was very still, the shelterbelt of trees was doing its job and when I got my breath back I unloaded my gear and set up. I was planning to float fish for a while and put my feeder rod out to see what I could catch on the bottom. I would bait up a section and put my carp rod out later.

My float was soon bobbing under and I was into a small roach and this continued for a while with me getting almost a bite a cast. The red maggots were certainly attracting the smaller fish but I thought that I would change baits in the hope of catching something bigger. A piece of bread moulded round the hook was the change and things went quiet. There were several knocks on the float which I think were small fish then a more decisive bite, which turned out to be a better roach. I moulded on another piece of bread and it went quiet. I was sitting enjoying the peace when the feeder rod tip bent round and the rod started jiggling in its rest. I picked it up and could immediately feel a fish, it wasn’t putting up too much of a fight so I brought it in to the bank and netted a bream of about one and a half pounds. I re-cast then went back to float fishing, I waited a while but there were no more bites so I switched to sweetcorn. I don’t know why but I never seem to have any luck with sweetcorn and so after a while I went back to maggots and was catching a fish a cast once more.

The best roach of the session

Knowing that the roach were there I thought that I would give my newly bought whip its first outing. I unwound the rig and found that it was about twice the length of the whip so when I raised the tip of the whip the float was still on the ground. I quickly reduced the rig to a more manageable size. I lowered the rig into the water and immediately realised that what seemed long in my living room, seemed much shorter when pushed out over a lake! Anyway the fish didn’t mind as I was soon into my first whip fish, another small roach which was quickly unhooked and returned to the water. I continued catching roach and getting used to the whip for a little while until I had enough and packed it away. It worked well enough, my only question is, is it long enough for my little river, should I have bought an even longer pole?

I had been keeping my eye out for carp and as it neared mid-day I began to see one or two cruising just under the surface and decided to put my carp rod out and also throw out some floating pellets to see if I could get them feeding off the top. As my feeder rod was sitting over the baited area I cast across the lake to the far side. I had just put the rod down and was setting up the alarm when line started being taken off the reel. It took me a second or two to realise what was happening then I picked up the rod and could feel a powerful fish. It was still taking line as fast as I could wind so I tightened up the clutch but before I had finished the line had seized solid. The fish had got in amongst the tree roots and there was no moving it. I thought that I would leave it and see if it would come free while I had some lunch. I left some line free so that the fish couldn’t feel the tension and tucked into my peanut butter sandwiches. 

There was no movement during my lunch so I decided to pick up the rod and put some pressure on. The only thing that happened was that the hook length broke so I found a new one and attached it, brought in my feeder rod and cast the carp rod into the pre- baited area. I then reached for my stalking rod and cast out a piece of bread crust to the fish which were now feeding on the surface. I have mentioned before how difficult these carp are to catch on the surface but I thought my luck had changed as the fish first came to investigate my Interceptor float and then looked at my bread. They were undecided until one fish sucked down my bait right off the hook and swam away freely, very frustrating! I tried again a few times but I couldn’t get them interested and they eventually disappeared so I went back to the feeder rod. 

After all the action of the morning the afternoon past quietly until a buzzer sounded and I was into a fish, was it a carp? As soon as I picked the rod up I knew that it wasn’t, the fight just wasn’t there, it was another bream which weighed in a two and a half pounds. I had no further bites and as I had to get home for dinner I packed up while reflecting on the day. I had landed around twenty fish, mostly roach but a few rudd in the afternoon, a small perch on the whip and a couple of bream. Not a bad session only spoilt by the one that got away, probably a carp but I wonder if it could have been a large eel. I know that we have them and it reminded me of another time on a different lake last year where I lost a fish as it swam towards me and got stuck in the tree roots and wouldn’t come out, I guess that I will never know! Next time it is back to the small river to try and tease out some fish using my whip.

A nice enough bream!

The sun was shining, the early morning chill was off the air and there was nothing on my jobs list that couldn’t wait another day, all in all an ideal day to go fishing!

I have been driving past my river fishing spot over the summer and as it is very overgrown and I usually wait until the winter when the nettles have died down. However, work has been going on to clear the undergrowth and on my last drive by I saw that the vegetation had been cut right back to the edge of the river so I decided to give it a try.

I loaded my gear into the car and was soon at the river. As I approached I could see that despite the recent rain the river was very clear and shallow. I could see shoals of fish darting away as I got near the bank, the sun behind me showed them up beautifully but also revealed my presence so stealth was going to be the name of the game.

I had a walk along the bank for a while and found several shoals of fish, all under the cover of banks of weeds and under trees, winkling them out was not going to be easy. Sitting well back from the edge I fed the swim with a handful of maggots which I could see in the stream. I then carefully cast my float out, trying not to catch the far bank or go into the weed banks. I quickly realised that I was fishing way over depth and pulled my float down the line so that I was fishing at about eighteen inches depth. Even this was too deep so I adjusted to about a foot and was soon into my first fish, a small chub. This had scared the fish but they were soon back and I had my second fish. Then things went quiet so I decided to move.

This swim was next to a tree which had several trunks and again I could see the fish but could I get to them? Getting down on my hands and knees I crawled up to the bank with the aim of just dropping my bait into the water as there was no room to cast. Unfortunately, I was fishing with a ten foot rod and it was not reaching the fish so I had to improvise some sort of sideways cast to get into the water. This worked and I soon had another fish, this time a small dace. Then the inevitable happened, I got snagged in the bushes and broke the hook length. I decided that as I was fishing in such shallow depth and could see my bait I could do without a float, which might be spooking the fish. Of course just casting a hook and maggot is not easy as it has no weight but I did manage to get it into the water and catch another dace.

By now, time was getting on and I had said that I would be back for lunch. I packed up my gear and took a walk up stream and was surprised to see that it had been dredged for about 50 yards before going back to its weed filled self. I could see the bottom but no fish, with the weed gone and their bankside cover removed they had gone elsewhere.

Driving back I was thinking of how I could fish this river more effectively and decided that I must venture into the unknown realms of whip or pole fishing which would enable me to lower my bait into the exact spot where the fish were. When I got home I looked up Whip fishing on Youtube and watched a few people so that I had some idea and ordered myself a five metre whip and rig for £19.99 from Amazon which arrived the next day. In the meantime I had planned for a return to my regular lake as it closes for fishing at the end of September and I wanted to fish it one last time so the return to the river would have to wait.

Sorry, no photos this week as I forgot my phone!

Being well into my third age I decided to give winter fishing a miss this year. Either it is going to rain, is raining or has just stopped raining, in which case the banks are treacherous and the river is in flood.  Or, if it is not raining, it is freezing and the water is frozen over and where it isn’t the banks are treacherous. I had a bit of a fright a while back where I was sitting on a low stool that I have had since I was a kid. I was sitting on a nice platform on the river bank and when I came to stand up, I couldn’t, my poor old knees had stopped working, I was stuck! I could have rolled forward and then stood up from the ground but there was not enough space. I would have fallen into the water! I struggled for a bit and eventually managed to get out of my predicament but it made me realise that I was getting old and needed to take care on the bank.

Anyway, I wanted to get back to my small river before the season ended. The land near the river was usually completely overgrown but it had been cut down recently and I wanted to see if there were any new swims that I could now access. The weather was warmish and sunny and it hadn’t rained for a while so the river should be fishable. In fact, when I arrived, it was quite low and I had to walk along and find a deeper pool to fish. Although the banks were clear the river itself is wild and overgrown so care has to be taken not to snag and I had several instances where I got caught up but luckily I didn’t lose any tackle.  I found my first swim where the bottom dropped away and threw a few maggots in. I was using a ten foot float rod and was soon trotting a float downstream, second cast and I was into a roach of a few ounces. A few more maggots trickled in and another bite, I was more or less having a bite per cast with the odd dace or rudd thrown in for good measure.

            I was enjoying myself but after a while I decided to move up the river to explore a bit. The first fifty yards were very shallow and I could see the bottom and a few fish darting away as I approached but soon came to another swim. A few maggots were thrown in and I was into fish again. The same pattern was repeated of a fish almost every cast and I was feeling pleased with myself, I had mastered this fishing lark, it was easy! Again, I moved on after a while and found another swim. This one looked deeper and very fishy and I was soon casting my line out and retrieving it from the undergrowth. The wind was blowing across the swim and taking the line into the bushes. I was lucky in managing to retrieve it every time, only one thing was wrong, I wasn’t catching any fish! My balloon was burst, within thirty yards or so I had gone from hero to zero! I decided to give it a bit longer but all I got was a tangle so complicated that I decided to sort it out at home as it was nearly lunchtime. 

            That was the end of my river fishing for the year, a good session which was spoilt a bit by failing to catch at the end. Still, I had fished two swims successfully and found fish. Not very big ones but I will try for them later in the season, a quivertip rod with an old fashioned ledger weight to get the bait right on the bottom might pick me up something bigger, perhaps a chub or two. For the next few weeks it will be back to the club lakes until the river season opens again in June. I hope that the vegetation hasn’t grown too much by then and I can still get to the river!

The first swim, not easy to fish but they were there!

At last I had a free day and was able to go fishing. The sun was shining, it was warm and there was a strong breeze and it was a great day to be out. I had in mind to go to a lake that I had not fished this year and which held both silverfish and carp so I loaded up the car with all my gear and set off. I hadn’t gone far when my car displayed an error code, it had been jerky yesterday but was running fine today and as I didn’t have far to go I decided to carry on and deal with it when I got home. When I arrived at the water there was a notice on the gate saying that the water was closed due to a match. My own fault, I should have read the club handbook! 

So, where else could I go? A quick think and I was soon on the way to another water which was not too far away and was actually on my way home. It too had a variety of fish so I could put a carp rod out and float fish for silvers. The first thing I did was have a walk round to see what was what and I had a chat with a guy who had been fishing for a while without much luck. There were a couple of swims that looked promising, both opposite an island and I chose the one which had some bushes which would shelter me from the sun for most of the day. Having had three operations for basal cell carcinoma I am aware of the damage that sun can do to your skin and always use sun cream during the summer.

Having got all my gear to the swim I tackled up and put out the carp rod with a method feeder and boilie then got my float rod rigged, put in some groundbait and maggots, plumbed the depth and sat in my chair ready for a bit of a rest. Unfortunately, or should I say fortunately, the float dipped and I was into a fish, a nice little rudd who was soon back in the water. That is how it carried on for a while with rudd and roach taking red maggots almost as soon as I cast out. Having mastered the art of catching small fish I decided to vary my tactics by varying the depth and trying two, three or four maggots but without much luck as I still kept catching small ones although for a change I got a nice little perch. All this time I was re-casting the carp rod after filling up the method feeder but was getting nothing to indicate that there were any fish about, not even line bites.

I decided to change my bait on the float rod in the hope of catching something bigger and put a piece of sweetcorn on the hook and then sat quietly while nothing happened! Still, at least it gave me the chance to get my flask out and have a cup of tea in peace. I decided that if there is one thing worse than catching little roach and rudd all the time it is catching nothing so I changed bait again, this time pinching on a small piece of bread. This didn’t do any good either so I went back to maggots and was soon into the fish again. It seemed that this was the bait of the day! I decided to ring the changes and rigged up my quiver tip rod with a method feeder to fish right on the bottom. I also decided to change the flavour and size of boilie on the carp rod to see if that would work any better.

I still haven’t got the hang of a quiver tip rod. I started using an inline method feeder as I was getting in a tangle with a conventional cage feeder but was wondering if that was the wrong thing to do. When the tip started quivering and I struck I would miss the bite and often if I waited a while until the take developed it would taper off. I decided to persevere and putting several maggots on the hook and filling up the feeder I cast out into the same part of the swim which I had been feeding with groundbait and maggots and fishing with the float. True to form the tip started quivering and lifting the rod I could tell that I had missed the bite. Deciding to wait a bit longer I was more successful and brought in a decent size skimmer of about a pound in weight. A little while later I hooked another one of about the same size and brought it into the net. All the while I was bringing in the method feeder on the carp rod filling it and re-casting. There was a stiff cross-wind and on one of my casts the wind took the line across a reed bed, much to my annoyance. I decided to leave the feeder where it was and hoped that if I got a bite the fish would swim away from the reeds and free the line. It was not to be and I reconciled myself to losing my feeder and wound the line in. When I got to the reeds I gave the rod a jerk and the feeder flew over the top and landed in the reeds near to me and I was able to retrieve it!

I had no luck on the carp rod at all although I was still catching on the quiver. I thought I had another bream but it was a perch which was followed by another perch. By now it was mid-afternoon and I thought that it was time to pack up. I would get home in time to phone up about the error code before having my dinner. So, not a bad session, I must have caught about twenty fish or more, mostly roach and rudd but with bream and perch as well. I was well pleased with four different species but not so pleased that I had blanked on the carp rod as I had previously caught there. On the way back to the car I passed the guy who I had chatted with at the start of the day, he was moaning about not catching much and asked about my day so I told him. There is something wickedly satisfying about doing better than the guy in the swim next door and trust me, it doesn’t happen very often! As for the car the RAC came out and cleared the fault code and it has been running fine since then. It ought to, it’s only three months old!

There are pros and cons of the little pond over the road. The main advantage is that it is literally less than a couple of hundred yards away from my house, I haven’t yet timed it but I reckon that if I had my rod set up I could be fishing withing five minutes of closing my front door. The other great advantage is that it has lots of lovely fish in it, rudd, roach, tench, carp and all kinds of ornamental goldfish, thanks to the local residents.

It has a few disadvantages though. It is slap bang next to a main road and the traffic noise is awful but it does ease in the evenings when the number of heavy lorries decreases. It has suffered terribly from weed, once summer has arrived the only way you can fish is to rake a hole in the weed and fish there, nowhere else is free. The club has been working on this and it will be interesting to see how it fishes this year. The other disadvantage is that the fish are small, at least the ones that I have caught! Beautiful, perfectly formed, but small! Oh yes, one more thing, it only fishes when the water has warmed up and is no good in the winter at all.

As the temperature around our way has picked up, I decided to spend a couple of hours there one evening and see if the fish were biting. Maggots are the ideal bait there and with memories of evenings spent catching a fish a cast I went to the local tackle shop only to find that it was shut for the afternoon. There are other tackle shops within driving distance but there also other baits so I decided to give them a go. When I got home I spent a successful few minutes lifting up the missus’s plant pots and gathering a handful of worms. Then it was to the freezer to grab some white bread which I keep for catching carp off the top but on this occasion it would be used for fishing for smaller fish.

It was a nice evening and I was soon on the bank and I decided to plum the depth to see what effect the club’s weed cutting had had. The usual technique is to fish shallow and above the weed but I found that I was able to fish deeper this time. I cast out into the usual kind of area and peppered the float with groundbait, no maggots to feed this time but I figured I could manage without. I sat back, relaxed and waited. It was a still evening and the float was just a tiny dot on the surface, I have learnt that bites on this water are very shy and didn’t want to miss any. Time passed, I brought the hook in regularly and checked the bait, the traffic grew lighter, the birds were singing, all was right with the world, well almost everything, a bite would be nice!

The bird song was getting more intense and although I can recognise some birds, others elude me. I got my phone out and opened the Merlin App which quickly recognised the usual suspects, robin, wren, blue tit, great tit and then a song thrush. I haven’t seen a thrush for several years and it was good to hear that one was around. You know that old saying about doing the same thing but expecting to get a different result, I reckon that it applies to fishing so I decided to give worms a try. It didn’t make any difference though, a couple of hours had passed without as much as a knock. It was getting dark and I was thinking of packing up when the decision was taken out of my hands, yes, I got a tangle. I don’t know how it happened, I lifted the rod behind me and cast out but nothing happened except the float rattling around the rod! One look told me that my time was up, there was no way that I was going to be able to untangle that bird’s nest before it got dark and if I just cut the line and tackled up again it would be just as dark! Time to go home then, at least I didn’t have much to pack away and I was soon home. Just time on my walk to reflect on my session, a blank, and decide that it wasn’t my poor fishing technique it was just too early in the season for the fish to be biting. I will be back in a few weeks and hope that they have woken up by then.

I just thought that I would include this photo of the water on a different day as I had no fish to show!

The weather forecast looked the same for this week as for last, one bright day followed by clouds and rain and as I don’t like getting wet I decided to go fishing today. I couldn’t go back to the river as it is seriously in flood so it would have to be one of the club’s still waters and I decided on one which I haven’t fished for a while but where I have always caught something. The only problem with it is that it is about a five hundred yard walk from the car to the swim I like to use in the end lake in a series of three. It had been a clear and chilly night so I wasn’t in any hurry as I wanted to let it warm up a bit. This allowed me to make a quick trip to the tackle shop for maggots and a visit to Tesco to fill up the car, not that I had far to go.

Back home and thinking about what gear to take, in the end I decided on everything as I didn’t know what conditions would be like at the lake. On arrival I quickly saw, wet and wetter! I loaded everything on the barrow and splashed my way across the field to the swim. I must be getting old as I had to take frequent stops to catch my breath. Either that or the muddy ground was making it extra hard work pushing the barrow! When I got to the swim I could see just how high the water was, usually there is a beach which slopes gently into the water but there was no sign of it and instead the water was halfway up the vertical bank behind it leaving me nowhere to go but in the field behind. The wind was chilly and blowing from behind and anticipating this I brought my umbrella which I tilted and pegged down to give me some shelter. I know that you are supposed to fish into the wind but on this water that is not possible as that bank is overgrown with trees and bushes and there is nowhere to reach the water so I just had to make do. My feeder rod was already set up with a lead and was soon out with a red maggot on the hook. I then had time to set up my float rod, throw in some groundbait, cast out and sit down in the shelter of my brolly. 

Time passed, I altered the depth of my float to try and find the fish with no result. It was nice enough sitting in the sun and admiring the view but I wanted to catch some fish! I usually fish in fairly out of the way places but wherever I am there are always sounds to be heard. Today there was some birdsong, but not a lot, a few aeroplanes, including a big dark painted passenger plane, maybe belonging to the military and a brightly painted biplane. A buzz saw was whining away in the distance and closer by the wind was sighing through the trees. When you are outside for any time you notice the wind, when I was putting the umbrella up it was quite strong and I had to stop it being blown away but it went up and down all day. Sometimes the float was bobbing through little wavelets while at other times the surface was still and quiet. After about an hour without any success I decided to change tactics and put a small method feeder on the feeder rod but as I was changing over one of the rings came loose and was rattling up and down the line so I decided to pack it away and get a carp rod out of the bag. There are three rods in the holder and I wanted the one set up with a method feeder, I couldn’t see which one was which until I undid them and took the tip protectors off, guess which one it was, you are correct, the last one I tried. I was keeping an eye on my float while setting up the rod and this time when I looked around I couldn’t see it so I put everything down and picked up the float rod and landed a nice looking roach of several ounces. I popped him back and put out the carp rod with a buzzer and cast out my float rod again.

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The afternoon passed, there was no carp action, not a buzz, not even a line bite to give me false hope. A blue tit came and sat in the bush beside me for a while, the sun started to go down, I got chilly and as there was no action I decided to call it a day. As I was packing up I heard the unmistakeable sound of a carp slurping from the direction my crusts floated but try as I might I couldn’t see it. It confirmed what I already knew, that there are carp in this lake and that they feed on the downwind side, still no hope of fishing there though! I gathered all my gear together and struggled through the soggy field back to the car park, pausing to have a chat with another angler in the first lake who had only caught one small roach, I had lost count but must have landed around fifteen and felt smug about it! So, another session, I didn’t blank, didn’t break anything important, didn’t get tangled up and didn’t fall in! All in all a successful outing and I am hoping for another dry day so that I can go again soon.

I hadn’t consciously given up fishing, it was just that I didn’t go! It was thanks to a Christmas Present that I got the itch again and finally went! The present was a book, “How We Fish” by Paul Whitehouse and John Bailey. John who? I hear you ask. Well, he is the guy who does all the work behind the scenes for the TV series “Gone Fishing” and is a consummate angler. I don’t think much of the TV programme as a fishing show but the book is fascinating, giving lots of details of the guys fishing lives and how they set up for the programme and is full of anecdotes. It got me in the mood again and I was waiting for a milder and drier day so I could get back to the river that I fished last summer and see how it was.

Anyway, back to the swim to set up and I decided to trot maggots at a depth of about eighteen inches and see what happened. The river was quite clear and I could see the bottom in places but not in my swim, which had a bit of depth. First cast and the float bobbed and I had caught a little roach. I swung him to hand and quickly unhooked him and popped him back. Second cast and another roach, this continued for a while until I got something a bit bigger, as I reeled it in I could see a nice perch of a pound or so which put me in a bit of a dilemma, should I swing him to hand or use the net? The bank was quite steep and high and I was fishing with very light gear so thought that I had better play safe and use the net, the only problem was that I had left it behind me and it was out of reach. Putting the rod down I made a dash for the net and returned to the rod to find that the fish had slipped the hook and made off, so much for barbless hooks! That will learn me, get everything ready and to hand before I start fishing in future. Of course, I already knew that but didn’t do it on this occasion for some reason. I consoled myself with the thought that the fish had got away safely which was better than breaking the line as I swung it in and leaving the hook in its mouth.

Not surprisingly the swim went quiet after this and so I picked up my gear and walked upriver where I found a swim that I didn’t even know existed as it was so overgrown in the summer. Someone had been working on it quite recently as there were newly cut tree branches on the bank which proved very helpful in reaching my float when it got tangled in the vegetation! I was soon fishing again and some more small roach until I decided to change bait to a worm that I had found in the garden with the result that I caught some more small roach! I had brought my feeder rod and decided to give this a try with some bread crust but didn’t have any luck so decided to move again. As I walked upstream I came across a dam of trees, branches and debris which was keeping the water back and making a deeper swim upstream where I decided to give it a go. It was another swim that was inaccessible in the summer although it was only a few yards from where I was fishing last summer.

The swim was on a tight bend with some fast-flowing water and some slacks and I soon had another little roach on the bank. Then life began to get more interesting as I caught a couple of dace and chub instead. Time was getting on and the weather was getting duller and colder so when I caught the hook in a branch I decided to pack up and go home rather than tackle up again. This was when I found that the feeder rod wouldn’t come apart. It has been stiff before but I have always managed to do it but not this time. Fortunately, at ten feet long I know that I can fit it in my car and so it wasn’t a big problem.

So, what had I learnt? That the river is quite different in the winter and much more accessible. As long as it is not in flood it is easier to fish as I could get to swims that I didn’t even know were there and could trot a float down much more easily than in the summer as the weed wasn’t there. I had enjoyed being out in nature and had walked past a group of snowdrops in bloom and seen a kingfisher as it darted past and then came back for an encore a few minutes later. I really envy those anglers who get photos of them sitting still as all I get is the quickest of glimpses as the flash by. They are beautiful birds and I don’t mind sharing the fish with them. I had enjoyed myself even though I had only caught nippers and have promised myself that I will go again soon, all I need is a nice day and yes, I do know that I am a wimp!