A Change of Attack

It's never a bad idea to have a plan B when it comes to a fishing trip. Especially a slightly speculative one, where you're not quite sure if conditions will be right. The original plan on my last outing was to target some large perch on Upper Tamar Lake in the company of Mr Garnett Senior. It probably had more to do with pure optimism than anything else. And we nearly didn't fish at all when on arrival one of the staff immediately decided to play the dreaded health and safety card: "people don't fly fish here, you can't do it" etc. Sadly you still get those at fisheries who are curiously anti-fly fishing. But after a long drive I wasn't about to give up. There were no rules stating this. Ironically enough we then asked to speak to his boss on the phone, who was a fly fisher himself and very keen on the idea of attracting more fly fishers to try for the coarse fish! Anyway, it was resolved- and out came the perch flies. And no member of the public died of shock or was impaled by a wayward cast (although we were in Cornwall, and the excitement might have been welcome).

It turned out to be a beautiful morning, but probably too early still for perch. The water was still chilly and there were very few signs of life close to the bank: the only guy getting bites on the lake was casting a good sixty yards. Even so, we tried a few places and options for a good four hours. Sunk lines and lures seemed the obvious way to tackle big depths, but I also tried a booby where snags threatened to catch our lures. It was pretty dead sadly- and the only perch I spotted was one of about four inches nibbling the tail of the fly at the end of a retrieve. A case of right place but wrong time? I think probably yes; a big volume of water needs time to warm up I guess, and bring the small fish and the perch who chase them into shallower water within double haul range. I would love to try boat fishing- but god knows what health and safety nightmare that could instigate. The universe might collapse. God forbid, someone might actually try something different or risk having some fun. There must be a rule about it somewhere.


So, what to do with a very pleasant but perchless afternoon? Simpson Valley were very friendly when I gave them a bell- and a catch and release ticket got our vote. A great shout because the conditions were wonderful: proper spring weather but with just enough of a breeze to ruffle the water and present a buzzer to marauding trout, which we could already see taking something at the surface.

Amidst the strange t-shirt weather, we found the fish quickly. As is so often with buzzer fishing, if you find the fish and get the flies to the right depth it's easy. Light patterns seemed to work best, and the fact that bites tended to come quite early after casting suggested the fish were shallow. Lightly dressed buzzers and skinny wet flies worked best, the real standout being a red ribbed Daiwl Bach:

We finished with fifteen fish between us, averaging perhaps a pound but very fit. You do have to be a little careful with releasing rainbows, so none of them was taken onto dry land, but all unhooked in the net. Plain sailing you might say, although as the wind dropped and it got disarmingly warm the fish did go deeper and we found the flies needed to be sunk a little better to keep catching. All good fun in the end and a lot of willing takers- perhaps with the exception of this little customer sitting in the margin, who sat there motionless:
He wouldn't have managed a rainbow trout but might easily have fancied snacking on some of the mating toads we watched, clumsily paddling the margins. Isn't spring magic?

Carp, Cameras, Cuts

How do you turn fishing into an even less predictable sport? The simplest way I know is to throw a camera into the mix. Articles are easy in one sense because you can combine the best parts from several sessions, whether successful or not. We all "edit" our fishing in our minds- remembering the best bits and fast forwarding the parts when nothing worked. When you have a matter of half a day, it's catch or bust. You have to pack your message into a tight time frame and still deliver. And fish don't read scripts. But in one sense I love the pressure. It's like fishing a match- every bite becomes important.

As part of a new little film project, I've been taking a look at different waters starting with the Basingstoke Canal, with Steve Partner behind the lens. And what a pretty canal this is- absolutely stuffed with roach and perch to offer bite a chuck pole fishing. The only conspicuous absence were the bream- although a detour on another stretch led to some classic tench fishing on camera, with fewer fish but of a lovely stamp. I also encountered some less welcome bonuses in the form of huge, horrible crayfish. We're so lucky in Devon not to have these foul, invasive critters lurking everywhere. I'm not the most squeamish when it comes to living things, but these buggers gave me the jitters. Euughhh!

Slightly conscious that summer is steadily running out, I've also been back at the carp. It was my Dad who had the slightly crackpot idea of trying small potatoes to try for a decent fish or two, and finally I took him up on the idea. Perhaps it wasn't such a leap after all- before the days of boilies, the par-boiled spud ruled supreme as the king of selective carp baits. At the very least I fancied they would be selective. It has to be a half decent fish to wrap its lips around a small potato, and back in the 70's and 80's Garnett senior used to catch bream as well as carp on them, once losing a giant fish on a big Swiss lake that took a spud and proceeded to remove line at a frightening rate.

We had to wait into evening to get our first runs on the spuds, a little cloud cover helping to get the fish down after a sunny afternoon. It would have felt plain wrong to bolt rig using this ultra traditional bait, so instead we freelined them- and if nothing else a small King Edward casts well! They're also protein rich. As the light began to dip we had that first pleasing, steady pull on the indicator and it was fish on. The fish were a decent size for a small pond too, with the old man taking the best of three at twelve and a half pounds- and a lovely looking common carp it was too. Are potatoes about to take over from boilies? There's more chance of Exeter City FC signing Christiano Ronaldo, but hey- the carp still like these less than fashionable baits.

Crucians, Cake & Coaching

After a brief but unsuccessful try for crucians on the fly at Tiverton AA's Little Yeo Fishery on the journey home last week, I decided to return with more conventional tackle. I'd been hoping to spend a morning with my Dad for a while, since we hadn't fished together in ages. Rather than attempt something way too serious for a Sunday morning, we decided to go tiddler bashing and pretend it was 1991 all over again, a time we'd get up early to fish cute little ponds for just about anything that was willing to pull a float under. It's strange, but in the midst of an era when many of us are keen to catch PB's and get deadly serious, I often find the opposite hankering- a desire to feel like a kid again and return to a world where happiness was dropping a bait by some lillies and feeling a crucian carp juddering on the line. I like fishing with my old man. He still favours a wicker creel over products with names like "specialist accessory system". He knows more about the ingredients of a decent sandwich than modern baits. He might not have taught me how to become a world champion angler, but he definitely taught me to enjoy fishing- a lesson that is the same whether you're three or thirty three. I'm not sure I know anyone else who gets so much fun out of a few hours on the bank- and that is never truer than when the fish are cute and the bites plentiful. It didn't seem to matter what we threw at them and we even snared a few using little pieces of ginger cake. One or two oddities also joined the party, like this golden tench: In the end we were supremely lucky with the weather- thunder on the horizon, downpour in Tiverton, but we seemed to be in a little oasis of sunshine. My new pole got a great work out, even if I only needed to use the top 4 all morning, for scores of pretty crucians, along with the odd roach, skimmer and tench. The best bait for hitting bites seemed to be worm section though- perhaps the crucians take this just a little more emphatically? They were like peas in a pod too, not big but very scrappy on light gear. Favourite quote of the day: "They must all be related- it's like Tiverton down there!" A very welcome day then, because even fishing can become like work rather than play if you're not careful. Other than my first books, the other vital bit of development for me this year is the process of taking my coaching badges. Having guided for a while now, I really wanted to make it official and get the certificate, which is pretty much vital if you want to take kids as well as adults fishing. Even if you've worked for years with youngsters, you simply have to get the right qualification- I believe it will be CRB check number seven if not eight in my professional career!!! On the concluding day of the course, everyone had to perform a live session, which was good fun. One of my giant soft pike came to good use with an exercise on landing and fish care- but perhaps the funniest and most original demo belonged to John Clare, who did a night fishing lesson by blindfolding his student, a hapless Simon Gurney!: And on a final note, those of you with Sky Sports might want to tune in on Friday evening. After a successful day's filming, I'll be in the studio with Keith Arthur to discuss some of the finer points of catching coarse fish on the fly- and hopefully also get a word in about the new DVD which is available on my own site as well as Amazon now. Really looking forward to this. Here's a skimmer, taken on a little bead head shrimp during a practise session on the Bridgwater to Taunton Canal: