The Fens – A Visit from Ron

A VISIT FROM RON

“You know what Chris,” says Ron Clay, pointing over the floodbank. “That’s the best car I’ve ever had that is. And do you know why..?

“Economy. D’you know, I put a tenner’s worth in before I left Rotherham – I bet I’ve hardly used two quids’ worth getting down here. Mind, do you know the worst thing..?”

I bite my lip. I want to say: “Don’t tell me, that crushing moment when you look at yourself in the mirror and remember you bought a Saxo..?

“Must be a bit like going out on the lash and waking up in the morning in a strange house, next to a woman with the physical charms of a warthog.”

But it’s a free country. If you want to drive around in a car that looks like a bread bin on wheels, be my guest mate. I bet if you lift the bonnet, there’s even a loaf of Hovis in there somewhere.

Our Ron

“Where was I – oh aye, the worst thing about it’s the colour. White. Because on’t Trent, the barbel guys know I’ve got a white Saxo and they drive around looking for it.”

John Weston fires off a ‘don’t be so bloody daft’ Ron look. I glance over the Twenty Foot just in case but I can’t see the barbel circus descending on us yet, cheque books ready to buy up the water.

In fact anyone who descends on this drain wants their head examined. I wouldn’t give you 10 pence for it.

Even as I put the first rod in the rests and tightened down to the lead, I could see my line stretching half way across. Colour and a nice ripple often spells success. This clear usually spells B-L-A-N-K in six foot high letters.

Part of me wants to move elsewhere but I’m recharging my batteries today, coasting into the last few sessions of a fortnight off work when I’ve been out every day.

It’s been a good start to the winter. Maybe my best one yet. But better than that, I’ve well and truly got my enthusiasm for fishing back. I was getting a bit jaded towards the end of the last one.

The blanks were piling up. March came and I’d caught three doubles since Christmas. I was on a downward spiral, zero confidence in the waters I was fishing and what I was doing.

I was nearing the point where I couldn’t be arsed any more. I pulled the boat in one freezing day, which was the only day I could get out in a fortnight. I knew I’d blank, but I still trolled up and down the pit. Cat ice crunched in the margins as I rowed back to the mooring. Between you and me, I came close to calling it a day as I drove home thinking why am I doing this.

My mates noticed. One or two kept phoning and e-mailing over the summer. When we going out Bish..? Where you starting off..? Are you back on the river this year – reckon it’ll do another 30..?

It’s probably thanks to them you’re reading this – but do me a favour, don’t tell them how close I came to quitting.

Taking my lad out maggot drowning turned me on to what fishing’s all about again. Seen through an eight-year-old’s eyes, every 4oz roach or perch is a monster. He’s still bragging about the day he caught 32 fish.

Ron Clay and John Weston sometimes get the same sparkle in their eyes. Whether they’re re-living the glory days of piking with the likes of Ray Webb and Rian Tingay, or verbally sparring as Ron launches into one of his ‘did I ever tell you about t’time in t’Transvaal’ tales.

“Don’t be so bloody daft Ron,” John interjects from time to time. They’re two Yorkshiremen but they’re chalk and cheese. Yet there’s a chemistry between these fellas, a bond that’s forged a friendship stretching back 40 years or more.

Fishing’s kept them together all these years. I just hope I’m still out there doing it with some of my mates when I’m their age. I wasn’t even born when they first started pike fishing in the Fens.

Mind you even they can slip up sometimes when it comes to choosing a spot. Like today for example. Six hours and the alarm’s bleeped once. One jack to Ron. Time to go ole podnas.

How about the Ouse tomorrow, I say, throwing the rods in the car. “Ten Mile Bank?” says Ron, his eyes lighting up. “Do you know Chris, the last time I fished that were with Ray Webb – must have been 30 years ago.”

He hasn’t fished that stretch of river for three decades. We haven’t even got there and he’s already itching for it. Sorted then guys – I’ll see you tomorrow.

Ron’s like a kid on Christmas morning as we survey the river the following morning. This stretch of the Ouse has been throwing up bream and tench nets nudging 100lbs all summer. Now the roach have come into their own, with regulars knocking out 30lbs of them a session on the King’s Lynn stretch. Should do a few pike then. Or so you’d think.

Ron Clay’s got an argument on his hands if he tries to tell me the Trent’s the best river in Britain, I can tell you. They’re ripping up the record books around here. People who’ve fished the river for 30 years say they can’t ever remember it fishing this well.

I’ve been meaning to give this stretch the once-over for ages. Ron’s given me all the excuses I need to head for a bit of river I’ve driven past a thousand times but never got round to fishing.

This is one daunting river, it has to be said. There’s nearly 30ft of water down the far side, in a trench dug to speed the winter flow from a feeder river. Cast to the middle, let it sink on a tight line and your bait’s back in the margins. But I’ve got a feeling about this bend. I’ve got my hunger back to make it happen, if only because I know it’s beaten much better anglers than me.

Further upstream it gets a lot easier to read the river and plan your attack. But while I’ve caught plenty of smaller fish, I’ve only hit lucky and nailed a twenty three times in the eight years or so I’ve fished it. By the law of averages, it owes me another one.

“Do you know Chris, I reckon if we catch one here it’s going to be big,” John Weston says quietly as we plot up in the rushes.

Ron’s chirping away next door as I launch a dead 40 yards into the confluence with a 3oz lead to keep it on the ledge.

I’m a bit worried because I’m using 20lbs mono instead of the braid I’d normally use for fishing the river. The theory is it’ll sink, so I won’t have to reel in every time a boat goes past.

Being the world’s worst caster, I want it to stay there once I manage to hit the chosen spot. It’s just I’m not sure I’ll be able to pick up all the sunken line, bellied in the flow and hit a fish hard enough to drive the hooks into it.

There again, you worry about some daft things fishing. I mean, I’m worrying how deep it really is as I pass the line through my fingers, wondering why it’s taken this long to sink.

And it has taken a while to sink, it has to be said. I snap the bail arm shut, smack the rod back and there’s a pike on the end. This can’t be bad, I’m thinking. Fish first chuck before it even hit the bottom.

Show all 6lbs of it off for a picture on Ron’s new mega-pixel wotsit digi-me-flip, drop it back and rebait. Had a feeling it was going to be good today. Only problem was I was wrong.

“I’m off fellas,” says the bream man, pointing behind us as he sets off for his car. “Don’t wanna be here when that giss here.”

I look down the Wissey and the sky’s gone almost completely black. Uh oh. I’ve seen this before. One minute you’re there in a T-shirt, soaking up the autumn sun with every pore. The next, I can hear it coming as I grab the Barbour out of the rucksack, cover the cameras with the weigh sling and brace myself.

The first few stones hit the unhooking mat and bounce off like popcorn jumping in a pan. Then a wall of hail’s lashing up the river, my head’s stinging, the indicators are off all three rods and the bite alarms are screaming above the cloudburst.

I have to do the clips up almost as tight as they’ll go to stop the rain smashing the indicators off. If I get one now, it’ll probably pull the rod in.

Fabian’s run down the bank and dived under a zander angler’s bivvy. He might only be seven but he’s got his head around the weather out in the big bayou.

I’m soaked within seconds as I stand in the middle of a monsoon, in surreal half dusk. The air temperature’s dropping like a stone – the wind’s swung right round.

I reach for the drifter rod I carry for just this kind of occasion whenever I fish here. From blowing upstream towards the near bank, I can now see a clear wind lane almost straight up-river.

Bait the drifter with a perch and it’s great red vane yaws and spins as the gusts catch it. Fifty, 60, 70 yards – it’s getting hard to see as it nears the shadow of the far bank trees.

Then I can’t see it. Then I feel the line jerk tight. I wind until I can’t wind it any tighter and heave the rod back as I feel a sharp kick on the other end.

It’s on there, whatever it is, and I’m pumping it back towards me with the rod doubled over. Half of this is the resistance of the float, which I know from bitter experience can cost a hookhold if you don’t get a good firm pull on the fish right at the start and keep the line tight.

Then the line goes slack, the rain’s lashing down and I’m calling it a few choice names. The perch is unmarked but there’s a lump out of its back and no teeth marks – surely an eel isn’t going to hit a bait scooting along at 5 knots 10 feet off the bottom..? Whatever it was, it weren’t no pike…

The zander man emerges from his bivvy for a natter as the rain eases off. Fabian’s tucked away nicely, giving the last of his pasties the once-over.

We work out we were all on this bit of river last year, when an osprey paid a visit en-route for its breeding grounds.

I look up at a leaden sky and somehow doubt we’ll see another one today.

The clouds were massing over a windswept gravel pit I was guesting thanks to Rick the Chef. Every now and then, the sun broke through a gap and the spoil heap on the far side glowed like Ayer’s Rock.

I kept meaning to grab a camera out of the car but I was too busy watching the rod top and trying to work out what was going down 60 yards out on a plateau which stretches out from a line of half-sunk scrub willows.

I shrugged off the first few bleeps as liners. A shoal of bream bumbling past, the odd one brushing the line. Then I had a single beep, snatched it out of the rests on spec because I happened to be standing next to the rod and found myself connected to a jack.

I hit every bleep after that. I pulled out of one and missed a couple more over the next two hours. Then I sussed it. The alarm beeped and I picked the rod up, closed the bail arm and gingerly wound down.

I felt a bump, bent into it gradually, another bump-bump on the end and I pulled the trigger. Ye-e-e-es… A good fish kites off like a rocket, heading straight for a nasty looking willow poking up 30 yards out to the right. It crosses two other rods before I feel the line grating in the tree branches. To think people say pike don’t fight. I lay the rod over, sink the tip and hold it hard, smacking the butt with my hand.

I saw a carper free a weeded fish doing this in the summer. Probably not featured in Mr Crabtree’s recommended fish playing tactics. Then again, he didn’t have 65lbs braid.

Out it comes, good as gold. The float goes under on the right hand rod and comes up again, it’s brushed the line without snagging it.

I lift the middle rod, pass the rod I’m playing the fish on underneath it, Rick lobs the net in the margins and I feel slightly short-changed as a double with a big head and not much behind it glides straight into the mesh.

Ouch. That hurts. Ten minutes after I put it back, I’m still wondering how it managed to slash my index finger so deeply the blood’s seeping through the plaster. Rick calls me a wuss. That’s what I like about Rick. Mr Sympathy.

I miss a couple more while I’m still whining about not being able to hold the rod right, then the float on the right hand rod tight to the snags flickers and bobs. I repeat the tighten up gently and feel for the fish on the end mallarkey, instead of the usual wind down and wallop it.

The rod goes over – another good fish – and I’m off down the bank to a path I’ve already flattened through the nettles in case I hook a fish on this rod and I need to steer it away from the snags.

It only tries it on once and a sudden change of angle and a few thumps and tail slaps and it’s heading for the net. Thought it was a jack but it’s a bit better than that.

Rick reckons 16 or 18, it’s got the length but like its predecessor it’s belly’s empty. More telling are the lice under its chin as I unhook it. Lice on a pike in October..?

If you fish for pike you’ll know how no two days or waters are ever the same, I observe out loud. I started my winter on a pit just down the valley from here. Takes on there are usually real screamers, in fact I had one approximately every 15 minutes the first day I fished it, from first light until 1pm when I ran out of baits.

Mental. They were gagging for it. I dropped back one lean fish that should have gone 18lbs but just scraped over 15, the next rod went and it was on its way to the bank again.

I caught more that day than I caught on that pit in the whole of last winter. Within a fortnight, I’d caught more doubles than I caught last year. There seemed no rhyme or reason to it. One day you’d blank, the next they’d be going mad. One day they wouldn’t start feeding until 2pm, the next I had three fish in the dawn hour and we sat there runless for the rest of the day.

One day, we saw a pike porpoising on the top 50 yards out over a bar. I cast a bait at it and it took it on the drop before I could even put the rod in the rests. Next cast, I did the same again.

“Bish, look at that,” says Rick, fishing out his camera from his rucker. A glorious rainbow’s suddenly appeared over the spoil heaps, lit by the low autumn sun against the rain squall that blew over 10 minutes ago.

I grab a camera too and fishing’s forgotten for a minute or two, until a shriek from a bite alarm makes me drop the Nikon to deal with more pressing concerns.

The rainbow fades as I slug it out with another double. “You know what noble mon,” I said to Rick. “It don’t get much better than this.”Fishing with Ron and John gave me this bizarre premonition about Rick. Like, I bet we’ll be out there somewhere pike fishing and arguing about the best way to photograph a rainbow or some other daft thing in 20 years’ time. I only hope so noble mon.