WORMING
This morning I spent a few minutes reading the e-mails on the Forum about ‘worming’ or fishing for salmon and trout with a worm as bait. It brought back some memories from many years ago.
The first bait I fished with was a worm. This was in those days of what seemed to be continual Summer that we used to have in the years just after World War Two! The quarry was gudgeon in the Peak Forest Canal and what a grand bait a little wriggling worm was, too. It was fished on a bent pin attached to a cotton line and a bamboo garden stick. However primitive and inefficient the tackle, I caught some of those lovely fish and was addicted to angling from that time on.
As well as often using worm as a bait for coarse fishing for many years, my interest in trout fishing was also triggered by worming. In those days I was a member of Hayfield Angling Club in the Peak District of Derbyshire. Running along side one of the Hayfield waters, Kinder Lodge, was the River Sett which has its origins somewhere on the Kinder Plateau that lurks in the mists high above the village.
There used to be a good head of brown trout in the Sett. I was then very inexpert with a fly rod (the first time I set up a fly rod I threaded the fly line through the governor ring and then wondered why the rod did not have any ‘action’). I fancied those trout and I used to fish the river during the coarse close season with a seven foot fly rod and DT 4 floating line and a straight-through 3lb breaking strain hook length with a wriggling worm on a size 14 hook.
I spent many happy hours worming for trout in the Sett. My favourite ploy was to find a long glide and toss the bait in at the top and let it trundle down with the flow. It was during one of these expeditions that I caught a specimen fish of another variety. There had been rumours flying about that the weir pool by the camping ground wall harboured a monster brownie that had snapped several fishermen over the years.
I decided on an early morning session just after sunrise and crept down to weir pool with rod, line and a dozen juicy worms gathered the previous evening in search of the alleged monster. I hooked and landed a couple of six ounce trout in the first few minutes and shortly afterwards my line went solid as the hook was pulled very steadily and very hard by a fish that stayed in the current but did not charge around the pool as the trout tended to do when hooked.
I began to think that I had attached the hook to a tree root or some underwater debris such was the lack of variety in the resistance tactics. Then I saw a glimmer of silver in the dark depths and I was able to very gradually reel it in. I was eventually very surprised to net an extremely healthy roach which went just over the two pound mark on my scales. This was much the best roach I had ever caught and I guessed that it had been flushed out of Kinder Lodge overflow some time ago and eventually settled to life in the weir pool, thriving on whatever food items the River Sett had brought down.
It is something I have noted time and again in all types of angling; the unexpected turns up and lots of ‘fish of a lifetime’ are caught by accident like my roach. A two pound roach in those days was one of the ultimate goals in coarse fishing and many a good angler never managed to catch one in a lifetime spent in pursuit.
Early Season Trout Fishing
I’ve been on the bank twice this month and had an indifferent time (Caldwell speak for blanking). Since 15th March there has been a series of heavy frosts by night and, during the day, piercing sunlight and flawless blue skies with a westerly breeze. In the early season this usually adds up to poor fishing conditions.
Two exceptions are that things improve quickly when an occasional bank of cloud arrives and takes the bright sun out of the eyes of the fish, allowing them to feed a bit more comfortably higher up the water. The other alternative is to fish with an intermediate or sinking line and get down into deep water.
The overwintered fish, if they feed on or near the surface, seem to do so precisely two yards outside casting range. The new entrants, meanwhile, skulk around the bottom whilst getting used to their surrounding. By asking around I found that black/green or black/red lures were getting results fished deep and pulled through steadily. There has been erratic buzzer hatching but when the hatch is on teams of two or three flies have been taking in mid-water. Let’s hope thing improve for next week.
Licences Reminder
Annual rod licences are due from 1st April. I’ve paid for mine by Direct Debit and, if the system works, my new licence should drop through the letter box any day. All trout anglers are obliged to have a Environment Authority licence and face a court appearance and fine if they fish without a valid licence. I always know where my driving and fishing licence are. Mrs C chips in with…. “But I bet you don’t know where your marriage licence is, though.” Come on, Mrs C, let’s get our priorities right!
Tight Lines!
Eddie Caldwell
