It’s always a pleasure going fishing with my pal Chris
because, despite what the conditions tell us, we are forever optimistic of a
result … yes I know, ‘a worm on one end and a fool on the other’ … but last
weekend we just
had to get out. I’d
been indoors editing some film and Chris locked in, writing his book for
Collins on winter. We were both suffering from ‘cabin fever’ and needed to come
up for air. Perch are now Chris’s favourite winter species and I find them
easier to catch than big roach, so perch were our chosen quarry.
An afternoons fishing would take place on Dorset’s River
Stour near our homes and the conditions were ‘challenging’, a rising river full
of snow melt and salt washed off the roads. Water temp. was forty two degrees –
not bad – but a full moon and bright sun didn’t help. At least we had a good
selection of excuses ; we sometimes need lots of those!
Our two previous visits to the river had indeed ended in
blanks, despite near perfect conditions. I had fished for both roach and perch
on both sides of the river and never had a bite, though remarkably, fish
rolling roach like in my swim turned out to be jack pike, cleaning their gills
I suspect after feeding on the liquidised bread I was throwing in. No, they
weren’t feeding on minnows, there were non there.
Chris did get one chance on each day, hooking a large perch,
the first of which broke him on a snag, the second slipped the hook after a
spirited fight, though just to prove he does occasionally catch perch, here’s
‘one he prepared earlier’, a two pounder but from a lake. The highlight of
these attempts was an otter swimming downstream at dusk, so close to Chris that
he could have tapped it on the head with his rod.
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| River Stour Otter - c. Stewart Canham |
In the same spot last weekend, while brewing a
refreshing
cup of Kelly Kettle tea
I was asking Chris how to spell the Latin for ‘there’s always a chance’ …
‘casus ubique valet’ … and we fervently believed there was a chance, if only
during the last hour of daylight. I had already tried two classic swims before
Chris arrived, dangling an enticing lobworm below a Cralusso flat float with my
pole, deep under the tangled branches of overhanging bushes.
Martin bowler and I had used the same technique during the
filming of
“Catching the
Impossible”, the result - perch of 4/6 and 5/4. We were told by Angling Times
that, at the time the ‘impossible’ five was the largest ever taken from a river
… since beaten of course, but when the monster swirled and gave us our first
glimpse we couldn’t believe what we were seeing. So the technique is deadly,
though not last Saturday, not even a hint of a bite. I did get a new species
though, a wren perching on the pole, adding to previous ‘perchers’, robin, grey
wagtail and several kingfishers, one of which fell off!
I moved down to join Chris among some ancient, overhanging
willows and tried the worm dangling trick again but still no bites, not even an
enquiry.
However, while trying to photograph Chris’s float I failed because it
had been pulled under by … a well timed strike and nothing. Hook gone. His
favourite float sank again during the magic hour. Surely this time it was a
perch but again the hook was bitten off. Obviously a hungry jack pike. We
caught nothing – nada – zilch.
When dusk had rendered our floats invisible the highlight of
the day ghosted into view, a barn owl hunting over rough pasture on the
opposite side of the river. Unremarkable perhaps, though it was the first time
we had ever seen a barn owl along this stretch of river in over thirty years of
fishing. It made our day.
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| Barn Owl - c. Stewart Canham |
Desperate to even
see
a bite, I headed off to Sway Lakes early next day and promptly caught a 2/3
roach on my second cast, taken on a paternostered tail of a lob. It was all
perch after that, twenty or so up to 1/12, mostly on float-fished maggot. My
desire to see a bite was more than satisfied and catching a beautiful big roach
like that on a cold day was such a pleasant surprise that it sums up the appeal
of angling. It proves that there is always a chance.
 |
| That OMG moment |
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| Two pounds three ounces of January silver |
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| A good old days brace - c. Chris Yates |
In the good old days you could catch a brace like this, my
biggest roach from the stretch in Wimborne of 2/9 and a perch of 2/3, a picture
taken by Chris on one of our
perching sessions. [It’s horrible quality because a mag. lost the
original and this is taken off the pages of the article by Chris.] It’s really sad
that so many of the fish have ‘disappeared’, our local fishery destroyed and
the local tackle shop gone.
Why the fishing has been so bad on our local rivers recently
is a complex issue which I’ll enlarge on in a future post. The stretch that
Chris and I had blanked on was once one of the most famous fisheries for big
roach in the country, perch too, but
in the last twenty years we’ve suffered the raids of thousands of
cormorants from the continent and more recently, other ‘colonists’ from Europe
who choose to eat their catch! When with Chris last Saturday, I found the
freshly constructed anchor for fixed lines hidden in one of our favourite perch
holes.
 |
| A best of 3/10 caught a long while back |
It’s easy to feel powerless in the face of these dramatic
declines in our fish stocks but one thing you
can do is join the Angling Trust. They are really getting to grips with
the issues of the day and becoming a political force in the corridors of power,
so please join. It costs very little - just a couple of bags of boillies – and
the Trust is already achieving a lot and could do so much more if every angler
supported it. So just join – you
know it makes sense!
http://www.anglingtrust.net/
- and read what they’ve achieved already.
