My Story, Ron Clay Part 2

We get to know each other on the forum to a great extent, and sometimes we meet at fish-ins, but how much do we really know about each other?

We have members from across the world, ranging from manual workers, office workers, solicitors, policemen, writers, editors, photographers, soldiers, actors, film producers, angling guides, technicians, medical people – you name it and we’ve got ’em in our ‘family’. Yet most often we don’t really know who it is we’re debating with or having a laugh with on the forum.

So now’s your chance to put that right. This is where FM members can tell the FishingMagic community all about themselves. Tell us who you are, what you do, what your fishing is all about and what it means to you, tell us what makes you tick, warts and all.

Stories can be anything from 1000 to 5000 words long, preferably, but not necessarily, with a selection of pictures. Email the words and pictures to me at graham@fishingmagic.com and I’ll do the rest.

Ron Clay

Ron was born in Sheffield, 1942 and has been an angler for almost as long as he can remember.

In 1962 he formed the Sheffield based Northern Specimen Group as the result of fairly lengthy correspondence with Dick Walker. In 1965 this group was directly responsible for the formation of the National Association of Specimen Groups, most of the original work being done by Ron’s old friend Eric Hodson.

Ron emigrated to South Africa in 1967 and fished extensively over much of the sub-continent. He met his angling mentor, Dick Walker, on many occasions and corresponded with him for many years.

He returned to the UK in 1994 and today loves most types of angling, especially fly fishing for trout. He has been a regular contributor, both articles and forum postings, on FishingMagic for several years. His forum postings are often controversial, ‘fishing for bites’ as he often puts it, but they’re never intentionally nasty.

Ron ‘The Hat’ Clay, a widower, having lost his beloved wife some years ago, is well read in most things, deeply conservative, and has led a full life, most of it involved with fishing.

Part 1 here

My Story – Ron Clay Part 2

Fascinated by South Africa

The capture of exotic species was one of the things that lured Ron to South Africa

I was fascinated by such stories and got the idea that I too would like to visit this continent.

By the end of 1966 I became somewhat disenchanted by living and working in the UK, so I enquired about emigration to various Commonwealth countries such as Australia and Canada. Then about that time I happened to find myself in London. Walking through Trafalgar Square I spotted the imposing South Africa House, so I walked in and found all sorts of literature regarding emigration to “Sunny South Africa”.

I picked up some of the literature and read it on the train back to Sheffield. I discovered that there was a South African Emigration office in Sheffield. I phoned them and to cut a long story short I found myself, on the 2nd of August, 1967, sitting on a Boeing 707 of South African Airways with a one way ticket which had cost me the princely sum of £ 15.00.

I also had an official emigration and work permit for this country in my possession.

The first few years

Those first few years of living in South Africa I remember fondly. It was like living in a dream, almost like one long holiday. It was only a few months after arriving there that I met Margaret Harris, the girl I was to marry. We did the deed in October of 1968 and set up home in Hillbrow, the centre of Johannesburg flatland. Within a year or two, we built our own house about 25 miles from Johannesburg and ran two cars.

Ron and Margaret get married

At weekends we went to various places within a hundred miles radius of home and fished. Margaret also loved the great outdoors and there was never any problem with whether the wife would let me go fishing like there seems to be in this country, because we went together.

Carp fishing and the bolt rig

At first I fished for carp on the waters of The Rand Piscatorial Association on the Vaal River, Hartebeespoort Dam and Vaal Dam. It was fishing these waters that taught me to forget whatever I had learned in England about carp fishing because, quite honestly, English methods didn’t work.

Now places like Vaal Dam are huge – 30 odd miles long and up to 5 miles wide. To catch carp meant fishing at distance, and the accepted English Walkerian free line methods were next to useless. The locals mainly fished with heavy leads, using two-hook paternosters cast sometimes over 100 yards from the shore using side-cast reels, with boiled maize grains or paste made from maize meal as bait. Some of their baits consisted of balls of maize meal mixed with egg and boiled to make them hard! Some of them took out the baited rigs considerable distances using a rowing boat or canoe. The rigs were fished on a tight line and most of the time the carp hooked themselves.

So much for the idea that it was English anglers who had invented the bolt rig and the boilie!

During 1970 myself and Margaret spent some time in England on holiday. There we met up with my old friend Eric Hodson. He informed me that he and Peter Mohan had set up The British Carp Study Group.

After I had explained to Eric some of the successful methods I was using to catch carp, Eric suggested that I become a member of the group. This I did and I also wrote a few articles in “The Carp”, the official newsletter of the BCSG.

During 1971 we were joined in South Africa by Don Wittich – an ex-member of the Coventry Specimen Group, and his family. We fished together lots. Don, Mary, Margaret and myself became very close and many were the weekends we spent together fishing and under canvas at many venues in the Transvaal and Orange Freestate. I also spent much time fishing with Trevor Babich, a deep thinking South African Angler and conservationist, who at that time was chairman of the Rand Piscatorial Association. I learned a great deal from him.

Ron with a big tench

During 1973 I decided to send an article to my old friend Colin Dyson who at that time was editor of a much condensed Angling Telegraph. The article was called “The Mealie Pip Trap” (mealie pips being a South Africanism for maize grains). In the article I described how carp have a tendency to hook themselves if there is a sufficiently large weight on the line and the line is kept tight. Eric Hodson told me on many occasions how profound this article had been and of how it had influenced carp angling techniques in England.

Weary of carp so onto trout and bass

By 1974 I had grown weary of carp fishing and started out after other species, especially with the fly rod. For many years I had loved fly fishing, having learned the art on Ladybower Reservoir and the Wiltshire streams. Both myself, Trevor Babich and a few others formed a fly fishing section in the RPA and amongst other waters we acquired the fishing rights on a large farm in the Eastern Transvaal Highveld about 160 miles from Johannesburg. We were also given a 130 year old farm cottage to spend the weekend in.

Ron’s son Sean plays a trout on fly gear

A nice brownie for Sean

Many were the times when I would pack up work early on the Friday and we would set off on the 2 1/2 hour trip to our weekend hideaway. What great memories I have of this place. Stocked with rainbow trout it had three fairly large lakes formed by damming two crystal clear streams.

I also discovered bass fishing.

The American Largemouth and Smallmouth basses were introduced to Southern Africa ca 1922. Since then they have thrived in a perfect climate. They were an ideal fish to stock into many vast impoundments of that country and I loved fishing for them – American style of course.

Other species, fly fishing and writing

I also fished for many other species, including tigerfish, various species of catfish including Vundu and of course the fabulous yellowfish of the Vaal River system. These fish are closely related to the European barbel, are incredible fighters and are avid takers of artificial flies.

And talking of fly fishing, there was a period lasting 12 years where I fished with nothing other than a fly rod for something like 20 species in many parts of Southern Africa!

On the writing side, I also contributed to several books and magazines in that country.

Then great sadness

In 1987 I suffered the first of a number of major blows. My wife Margaret died quite suddenly. In addition I was left with an eleven year old boy to bring up and cash became very tight as international sanctions hit the country’s economy hard. I had to sell the house I had built and move into a much smaller place to obtain the funds to send my son Sean to boarding school. It was the only thing I could have done as I had a demanding executive sales job with my company and had to travel countrywide much of the time.

By 1993, things were getting tighter still. All I can say is thank goodness for Maggie Thatcher who still maintained trading links with South Africa and as a result, I didn’t starve.

Return to England

In 1994 I was offered a job in England. I decided to sell up and move back, leaving my son with some very good friends. He had finished school by then and had a secure job with a large gold mining company.

Returning to England was fraught with difficulties. The Company that offered me the job was bought out and the job offer went with it. So I was left sitting in England, living with my Dad and unemployed.

Hornsea Mere was a favourite with Ron

But I soon found another job, located in Warwick. I set up temporary home in Leamington Spa and really enjoyed my time there. I fished intensively every weekend, on local rivers such as the Leam, the Warwickshire Avon, the Severn and the Oxfordshire gravel pits. I also fly fished for trout on Draycote Water.

Hornsea Mere pike for Ron

I discovered that my English angling skills, those I had learned in the 50s and 60s had not deserted me and in a few years I was able to boast of quite an impressive list of specimens. I made friends with quite a few local anglers incuding Tony Miles, and also renewed my long friendship with Peter Stone of Oxford. We went out fishing on several occasions and Peter was kind enough to put me onto a lot of waters.

In 1998, the Warwickshire company I worked for was taken over and they decided to move to Woking. Rather than try and up stakes to a very expensive part of the UK, I was offered a job in Sheffield, the company being based in Orgreave about a 1/2 mile from where I was born. Talk about the wheel turning full circle!

Ron now loves catching good roach like this one from the river Idle

I renewed my great friendship with Eric Hodson and for a couple of years we fished together a lot. We had some rather large catches of pike which I kept very quiet about. I also started fishing the Trent for the barbel when they were just starting to get popular. In those days I virtually had the river to myself.

I’ll not say too much about the last few years, other than one of the largest influences on my fishing life has been this website, FishingMagic.

I have made many new friends through this site, and as I have just passed the age of 65 and am contemplating retirement, I look forward to making many more.