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FIRST WEEK ROUND UP
As opening days of the fishing season go, it has to be said I’ve had better! Having baited up a favourite swim on the Weaver every other day for a fortnight and anticipating a bumper bag of bream, my hopes came crashing down or rather splashing down when days of rain saw the river charging through when I arrived at my pitch for an all-night session. I gave it a go but with no slack water and loads of rubbish draping my line every put in, I gave up after an hour and a half having hooked only a waterlogged branch for my efforts. I packed up my gear and yomped up the hill to the top cistern in an effort to salvage something from the trip.
 I had to make up a suitable rig for still water as I had only taken river rigs with me and it was around half past eight before I finally had my first cast on the substitute venue. I was using corn on the hook in the hope of getting a few crucian or decent skimmers but I couldn’t get past the rudd and on the odd occasion when I did get through to the bottom small roach snaffled the golden grain. In the end I resorted to fishing crust on a short line beneath the rod tip which brought me a small carp of around two and a half pounds and later, my bait was grabbed by a common carp of about eight pounds. My chair tipped up as I struck into this one and I spent the first minute playing it lying flat out on the ground before struggling to my feet and eventually landing it.
Shortly after this the action quickly died away on the surface and on the bottom. So, with the prospect of more voracious rudd come the dawn, I decided to give it best and head for home.
Generally though the fishing has been its usual generous early season self on most waters. The river level dropped enough for the Monday night match to give Timmy Wright a twenty pound winning bream bag and there were good weights for Mark Emmison and Chris Parry at the opening match at Heesom’s pool (see match reports for details). Plenty of fish have been taken on the Anderton pools with good bags of crucian and tench on meat, corn, bread and pellet from the middle and junior pools and abundant silver fish on maggot from all the pools and the river when the water level has settled.
I have heard a report that two members were caught without a rod licence at Anderton by environment agency bailiffs this week so be warned make sure you have purchased yours before fishing (it is a club rule).
If you haven’t been out yet, I urge you to grab your tackle and get fishing while the early season action is still hot.
EASILY CAUGHT
 What is the easiest thing to catch in the angling world? I’ll tell you what it is, anglers! Any of you who have been fishing for any length of time will have items of hardly used tackle lurking in the darkest recesses of your fishing box, on a dusty shelf in your outhouse or wherever else you consign your junk to. These items have been presented to you as essentials that any angler who wishes to be successful cannot possibly be without. More often than not the persuasive arguments about why you need this stuff are touted by none other than the angling press who, quite frankly, should be ashamed of themselves. Lured by promises of doubled, trebled or even quadrupled catches we, the gullible angling public with more money than sense, shell out on some piece of fishing gimmickry which we soon find out is worse than useless. Let me run you through some of my ill advised purchases.
First off ladies and gentlemen let me present to you the one and only Newark Needle Floats complete with their own pin weights. These items first appeared sometime in the seventies. Invented, I believe by one Walter Bowen, they were launched with a plethora of publicity on an unsuspecting angling public. Apparently demonstrated as a sort of sideshow at a big match, the floats were set up in a large tank of water and thwacked with a piece of wood whereupon they shot below the surface where they remained for an inordinate amount of time, thus demonstrating their super sensitivity, surely what every angler wants in a float,
Well no actually, I thought it was what I wanted in a float until I actually tried them out. They were ugly unwieldy looking brutes with the peculiar orange plastic top with a split in the vane in which you slotted your line. Fastening at the bottom was achieved with plastic tubing which held the line against the lower metal insert. Also provided in the pack were what were described as pin weights, in fact lengths of metal rod like the one that formed the bottom float insert. They were held on the line by plastic tubing and made the whole rig look very clumsy and, quite frankly, I couldn’t see any self respecting fish coming anywhere near it so I used conventional shot instead. The biggest trouble with these floats though was the very sensitivity that was trumpeted as their greatest virtue in the publicity. A fish only had to momentarily suck in the baited hook before rejecting it again and the float would dive far below the surface giving the impression of a really positive bite. The result was of course, loads of missed, apparently unmissable bites leading to a very frustrating session. It is probable that the use of a pole would have converted more bites into hooked fish but they weren’t in widespread use at the time. Despite being the subject of an angling publication giveaway, it wasn’t long before they were given a wide berth by the majority of coarse fishermen.
( I remember fishing the division 1 National with Northwich Joint Anglers in the late seventies on the River Witham at Spalding and at the draw Walter Bowen was demonstrating these floats and guess what ? yours truly bought 2 sets !! A fool & his money are soon parted . I also remember this occasion very well because the late, great, Ivan Marks was in my section and I beat him on what was his own water. I started to catch bream when the plonker next to me caught 1 and then filled his swim in and in the process killed both mine and his swims.... Ruddyroach)
I have been caught out too by ‘wonder baits’. One in particular stands out in my memory, Black Magic, was bait according to the blurb that was absolutely irresistible to carp. This it was claimed had been extensively field tested by leading carp anglers of the day. If my memory serves me correctly certain amino acids were incorporated into the formula that, when dissolved in minute quantities in the water could draw in fish from great distances like a magnet. Well I added water to the powdered bait, kneaded it into a firm but sticky paste and set out to fish the Junior pool with great hope in my heart. Now the Junior pool is not what you’d call a big water but the amino acids failed to stimulate the carp into giving me even the faintest sniff of a bite despite a considerable amount of freebies being introduced round the hookbait. I did catch a couple of carp but on luncheon meat that I fished on the other rod. Thinking that maybe the fish needed time to get used to the bait, I did try it a few more times without result before consigning it to the bin. My mate, also seduced by the advertising hype, suffered a similar experience and from then on we both developed a cynical view of all claimed wonder baits.
Although there are other pieces of angling white elephants that have caught me out, I will take a look at just one more that I didn’t actually buy although I seriously considered it. This was the mulletto (I’m not sure if that is the correct spelling). It was a sort of pulley system that stored a good quantity of pole elastic inside the top sections. If you pointed the pole top at a hooked fish it would yield copious amounts of elastic. By raising the pole tip, the pulley would lock and the elastic would then bring its usual resistance to the fish. Luckily I thought about it before splashing the cash and soon found myself wondering if there was much point in purchasing such a contraption. Suppose you were in a snag free swim. If you were going to faff about yielding elastic every time a fish pulled a bit it was going to take an inordinate amount of time to bring it to the net and if you were in a match you was hardly going to endear you to your fellow competitors when it was allowed to plough unchecked through their swims. On the other hand if you found yourself close to snags you were hardly going to allow your fish yards of elastic to enable it to find sanctuary. So at the end of the day I didn’t acquire one and I have to say I haven’t seen one in use for quite some time.
Before I close this piece I ask you to consider what may well be my own contribution to the angling junk bin (if I ever get round to developing the prototype). It is the zero density leger, a conventional weight balanced by a surrounding buoyant material so that it sinks at the slowest possible rate. I envisage it being used to fish on the drop at distance amongst loose feed sprayed in with a catapult. Maybe there is a need for a zero density feeder as well if the feed maggots need to be kept in a tight area. So beware, if you ever read of such innovations coming on to the market, think carefully before buying as it will almost certainly be the latest in a long line of must-have tackle that you don’t need at all!
PISCATORIAL CRYPTIC
Can you work out these cryptic clues? – Answers at the bottom of the page
1) Life jacket for a Warsaw resident?
2) Equal Mr Stewart’s achievements?
3) Bird sitting on a fish
4) Three of the Peter Pan pirate captain?
5) Predatory private in Dad’s Army
6) Big shot of the water bird world?
7) Bottom weight or financial record?
8) Cloth maker in river?
9) Plane coming down on the World Wide Web?
10) One hit and they’re all out
11) Sounds as if it might wriggle under your shoe
12) They cover fish and tell you how big they are
13) Sounds like a rug in a slight mist gets a famous angler.
14) Pike lure in the sink?
15) Pour with rain on Severn tributary?
16) Plunge down to gauge the depth
17) Publication for fishermen’s letters
18) Reflect and complain for a fish
19) Close teeth on fear
20) Buy your strikers from this group of male anglers
21) Sounds like the entrance at the end of a match 22) Burn fish? 23) On the extremity of a shovel or a hook? 24) Barclays unable to move? 25) Lunar High street chemists
FISH’N’HITS
An Angling Top Twenty
Is this the ultimate hit parade for anglers? If you can think of any more, post ‘em on the forum!
   
   
1) Twistin’ Trout Beatles
2) Come on Over to my Plaice Drifters
3) Barbel-Ann Beach Boy
4) Get Me to the Perch on Time Stanley Holloway
5) Just One Hook The Hollies
6) Bream, Bream, Bream Everly Brothers
7) Salmon Chanted Evening Perry Como
8) I’m Into Something Rudd Herman’s Hermits
9) Get Orfe of My Cloud Rolling Stones
10) I Pike It Gerry and the Pacemakers
11) Fishing on a Star Beyonce Knowles
12) Yellow Chub Marine Beatles
13) Cod Only Knows Beach Boys
14) I’m a Pole Man Sam and Dave
15) The Spinner Takes it All Abba
16) Ain’t Nothing Like the Reel Thing Marvin Gaye & Tammi Terrell
17) Crucian Down the River on a Sunday Afternoon Frankie Carle & his Orchestra
18) I Eel Good James Brown
19) Catch a Falling Char Perry Como
20) Do the Conger Black Lace
   
Answers to Piscatorial Cryptic :
1) Pole float 2) Match rod 3) Perch 4) Treble Hook 5) Pike 6) Swan 7) Ledger
8) Weaver 9) Landing net 10) Strike 11) Eel 12) Scales 13) Matt Hayes 14) Plug
15) Teme 16) Plummet 17) Anglers Mail 18) Mirror carp 19) Bite alarm 20) Match anglers 21) Weigh-in 22) Char 23) Spade-end 24) Bank stick 25) Moon boots
Below are a couple of poems sent to me by avid fans of this web site, you too can have your ditty published on this page, just send it in
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THE ANGLERS PRAYER
Our Fishermen who art on Riverbanks
Angler be thy name
Thy fishing season comes
Thy casting will be done
The weather will be heavenly
Give us this day lots of bites
And forgive us our laughter
As we forgive you
Your lies about the one that got away
Lead us to a shoal of fish
And deliver us a big catch
Fot thine is the carp
The pike and the tench
Forever and ever
Amen
By heck, this passion for poetry is catching. Here is an offering from a certain Phil Hogan
Angling an escape for a city boy,
By a lake or a river, what a joy
A dream with a stream,
A date with a bream
A watery passion,
A fishing session
A hobby that has bite
The kingfisher a welcome sight
Passers-by think you’re mad,
But it’s really them that’s sad
To feel the line tighten,
Makes my spirit brighten
A pastime in which time passes,
With rod and line,
Is how I spend my spare time
Fish are a joy to behold,
With many tall stories yet to be told.
And not to be outdone, Alan Coste has submitted this edited poetic gem (or “pome” as he calls it)
THE BARBEL
Rudd are red,
Tench are green mostly but sometimes they are a different colour,
And flaming barbel, who knows what colour they are,
‘Cos they’re rarely seen by me!
A Short Fishing Story
Last cast,
Got A bite at last,
For the snags she dashed,
 I was outclassed,
She got stuck fast,
Heaved ….. Blast!
Line smashed,
Rod trashed,
I’m Aghast!
Rod trashed!
Baited Breath.
With baited breath I cast a line, my minds eye sees the fish.
Who can tell if this is true or is it just a wish?
The time draws close, our yearly jaunt an adventure true you’ll see.
With friends so dear it’s every year, that’s the holiday for me.
Over food and drink we discuss the tactics that are best.
But don’t be fooled for we keep the best secrets to our chest.
 With baited breath I cast a line, my minds eye sees the fish.
Who can tell if this is reality or is it just a wish?
A laugh and joke a leg pull too, its all part of the fun.
For this year I share a room with Phil the bearded one.
Does he snore? I’m told he does, but so do I, who cares.
What counts the most is can he fish and will he be using tares?
Each has a chore a task to do, be it breakfast, dinner or tea. Don’t hang back let’s get it done so fishing can go everyone.o more dreaming ‘go forth and fish’ I’m told. Go catch a fish that will fill this dish and photograph it too.
With baited breath I cast a line, my minds eye wills the fish. To take a bite, then the fight, that is what I wish.
The muddy field and fence so high will not deter my rush.
my favourite swim is in my mind, behind that willow bush.
In wind and rain I sit all day, my mind set to the task.
‘Caught ow’t mate’? The cry goes out, ‘Oh bloody hell don’t ask’.
How can this be, I’ve done my best but nothing have I caught, now over tea the discussions will be fraught.
Have we done it? Yes we have, all have caught a few. Then lets relax and have a drink, all down to the ‘Red Lion’, I think.
Time runs fast and the week is done, an excellent time had by everyone. It’s time for home we are sad and blue, but looking forward to next year, true.
 With baited breath I cast a line, my minds eye wills the fish. Now in my net the ultimate prize with flanks of bronze and blue. I slip him back my duty done this moment to share with everyone.
Rodders 2005
I came upon this anonymous quote on the wall of The Red Lion pub in Bredwardine, Herefordshire, while I was on a recent fishing holiday on the River Wye. It tickled me so I thought I’d share it with you.
Lo! The Angler
He riseth early in the morning and upsetteth the whole household.
Mighty are his preparations.
He goeth forth with a great hope in his heart, and when the day is far spent he returneth, smelling of strong drink , and the truth is not in him.
We all suffer from those little problems and irritations in life and fishing, I find, is definitely no different…………………………………
DON’T YOU JUST HATE IT WHEN …………………………
Don’t you just hate it when
You’ve been fishing all morning since dawn without a bite and the bailiff comes round with his big dog, stands behind you leaning on his walking stick and says “You should have been here yesterday. There was a bloke on this peg, he must have had a hundred pound of tench.”
Don’t you just hate it when
You’ve been fishing all morning since dawn without a bite. You decide to make the best of a bad job and pack up before the bailiff comes round with his big dog demanding his day ticket money. You’ve just put the rod in your holdall when the bailiff arrives with his dog and demands his day ticket money!
Don’t you just hate it when
The bailiff comes round and his big dog sticks his big wet nose right in your crotch!
Don’t you just hate it when
You’ve spent all day with two carp set-ups out using the latest “fool the smartest carp” rigs and the best nutritionally balanced, “almost guaranteed to bring you bites”, bait on your hooks, without so much as a single bleep from your indicators when along comes this snot nosed kid and hauls out a double figure carp with an old fibreglass rod lured with free lined floating crust presented in the margins!
Don’t you just hate it when
You are fishing a match on a difficult day when the bloke on the next peg gets up and goes walkabout twenty minutes after the start. You stick on your peg and catch a few fish, enough to see you well up in the match placings. The guy on the next peg arrives back with half an hour to go and promptly catches a couple of big netters to win the match and beat you right out of sight!
Don’t you just hate it when
 You fish at the top end of a venue on pellet and after a poor day, you find out that at the other end of the lake there have been fantastic catches using caster and maggot. The following weekend you fish the bottom end with caster and maggot and have a poor day, only to find out that there have been fantastic catches at the top using pellet on the hook.
Don’t you just hate it when
The weather forecast tells you that there is no chance of rain so you leave that heavy fishing brolly at home and then it absolutely heaves it down and you get soaked to the skin!
Don’t you just hate it when
 The weather forecast tells you that there is going to be heavy and prolonged rain not clearing until the evening, so you pack your heavy brolly despite the fact you are going have to lug it a mile down the river bank to your chosen swim. You fish all day under a cloudless sky until you have to leave in the early evening. The clouds roll in as you stow your gear and it heaves down with rain coupled with very strong winds that makes it impossible to walk with all your gear under an open umbrella. You get soaked to the skin!
Don’t you just hate it when
There is big ugly bloke (too big to argue with) sitting in your extensively prebaited swim when you arrive at the lake.
Don’t you just hate it when
You are sitting at the lake getting a fish a chuck when this big ugly bloke (too big to argue with) arrives and tells you that you are fishing in his heavily prebaited swim!
Don’t you just hate it when
 You sit patiently for half an hour on the bank sorting out a badly tangled rig, finally getting down to just the last couple of easy loops to untangle. In your haste to get back to your fishing, you pull the wrong end of a loop too quickly, get yourself an enormous bird’s nest and have to break it off and set up all over again.
You’re probably sitting there thinking “Yeah, I feel like that too but he hasn’t mentioned……………”
Whatever it is, share your “Don’t you just hate” with us by putting it on our forum, accessible form the button on the home page. Go on, get it off you chest!
EXCLUSIVE!
PETE LEICESTER COMES CLEAN ABOUT MEGA BREAM HAUL
 After frequent denials about his haul of bream from the Weaver including those posted on the forum of this web-site, Pete Leicester finally came clean about his catch last night. It seems that the report of his catch of bream to 9-1-0 in the Angling Times may have some truth after all.
“OK, I admit it” he said “I’ve been trying to keep it quiet because I’ve heard that Matt Hayes and John Wilson have got together to take a contract out on my life. Professional jealousy I suppose.”
Speaking from a secret hide-out under heavy police guard he revealed that he had been signed by Sky to make a series of angling programmes.
 “It will break new ground for coarse angling. We will be doing a series of hour long programmes covering amongst other things, Mahseer from Marbury brook, Sailfish fishing in the top cistern and an attempt on the Great White Shark record in Anderton Marina boat basin.”
Angling Times announced that they have signed the modest angling superstar as their new columnist.
 “Hayes and Wilson have been dropped.” said the publication’s editor. “We are grateful for their past contributions but Pete’s approach to angling is fresh and invigorating and the country’s leading fishing paper has to move with the times.” he added.
Pete promised that he would soon be back in circulation revealing that he had located a venue that held 5 pound roach and perch up to 9 pounds that he intended to have a crack at. He refused to elaborate further but our sources have indicated that they think it may well beEden’s Pool.
The club is indeed lucky to have such a piscatorial mega-star within its ranks!
Backcasts
I have been angling for well over forty years and looking back, it is amazing how much things have changed. How did I ever manage with the sort of tackle that was available all those years ago? How many kids today would stick with angling if they couldn’t fish the artificially maintained commercial venues they have today. I would like to wallow in a spot of random nostalgia that I am sure will bring back memories for our older anglers and will amaze the more junior amongst us.
DO YOU REMEMBER?
Tank ariel rods. Twelve feet of steel, as stiff as a poker and weighing a ton, more suited to body building than catching fish
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You too can have a body like mine if you fish with a tank ariel!
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And who can forget those little tin rectangular boxes with a sliding lid that contained a variety of lead shot sizes all jumbled together (no partitions).
As soon as the boxes got wet they rusted and the top wouldn’t slide. You would push and push and the top would suddenly give and the shot would all fly out and get lost in the long grass.
Then there were the aluminium bait boxes. The lids were easily bent and wouldn’t fit the box without a lot of banging and bashing. When you came to open them again the lid would then be jammed and finally fly off with your maggots joining your shot in the long grass. What’s more, if you left the lid on the box on a hot day your bait would cook to a crisp in no time at all. With some Indian spices thrown in Tandoori fried maggots could have been on the menu.
Do you remember buying those wax paper packets that contained a coil of hook to nylon. These weren’t spade ends but tapered shanked jobs with a spiral cut into them so that the silk whippings would have something to grip onto. Beautiful jobs they were too but unless extreme care was taken with the uncoiling a badly tangled bird’ nest would be the usual result.
Silk lines were just a little before my time but I am told that they had to be taken off the reel at the end of a session and dried on some sort of device or they would quickly rot. The monofilament available to me was shiny springy line that jumped off the reel spool in big coils again with the likely result of a nasty tangle. George Reece, the local barber used to have a great skein of the stuff on the back of his barber’s chair thus giving you the option of filling your reel after the tonsorial operation had been carried out.
The bait scene has changed of course. Six penn’orth (21/2 p in today’s money) of multicoloured gentles, the old word for maggots, would last me at least a couple of trips. Matchmen used to produce their own variety of very soft succulent maggots known as gozzers. This involved putting a chicken or pigeon breast into a biscuit tin half filled with sawdust and standing it in a dark corner of a shed or garage. As soon as the fly, I’m not sure it was a specific species, had laid a single batch of eggs on the meat the box was closed. When the gozzers had come out of the meat they were collected and used only on the hook with ordinary shop bought maggots used as feed.
Casters weren’t exactly unknown but we used to use them as a mixture of floaters and sinkers, not the most efficient method I must admit. Oh and here in mid-Cheshire we used to call them botts.
Sweet corn wasn’t used, I’m not even sure if you could get it then. Meat had little use then either, except on your butties and pellets certainly weren’t available. On the other hand bread and cheese pastes were used much more widely than today. As for flavourings, about the only one I was aware of was aniseed which was supposed to drive roach barmy (It never did when I used it). Oh and sometimes we would blend custard powder or strawberry blancmange powder into our bread paste. Little rudd in particular seemed to love it.
Then there were your fisheries. None of your namby-pamby commercial pools back then. You had to work for your fish. Half a dozen fish in a whole day’s angling wasn’t a half bad result. Get the number of fish into double figures and you’d boast for a week. Kids today, they don’t know they’re born! The point was because they weren’t easy to catch you would really appreciate those that you did. On the whole the fish were small. I had been fishing for five years before I caught my first fish over a pound. These days there’s a strong chance that you will catch a double figure carp on your first trip but it doesn’t mean you’re a great angler. In fact I believe that too much success too soon means that many novice anglers quickly become bored and drop out of the sport.
Another thing, there’s no mystery in the sport any longer. Everybody knows the biggest fish in the pool and they’ve given him a name for God’s sake! Even the rivers have stated to lose their mystique with double figure barbel getting nicknames. Way back when I was a lad, every little pond had its legendary monster maybe a big pike or maybe a tench. Nobody had actually seen it on the bank but everyone knew someone who had been smashed up by it. For the most part these leviathans didn’t exist but it gave of something to dream of as we pulled in a small roach every couple of hours.
Of course angling has come on in leaps and bounds since those far off days and I wouldn’t really like to go back to how it was then but if we did, I know I would still go out fishing and enjoy it. I wonder how many of today’s young anglers would?
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