Ancient and Modern

Ancient and Modern

It is certainly not another attempt to re-capture those halcyon, and often rose tinted days of yore, but more about the opportunity to go out and enjoy a day’s fishing with a slightly different slant. A chance to use some tackle from days gone by to compare and contrast with what is available today.

Bubbling and swirling like a washing machine

Weir spillways, home to the monster perch pictured below

How great have those improvements been, did things need to be improved, do they still need modifying? More interestingly, perhaps, does some of the old tackle still work today, or is it really all obsolescent and should be consigned to the scrap heap?

Well, not a monster – but it is a fish!

Jeff Woodhouse – Old Father Thames?

Shocked back to life by the alarm going off at stupid o’clock, I’m out of the house fairly briskly having smugly done all the preparation the night before.

These autumn mornings can give you the chance to observe some brilliant sunrises, and today was no exception, as I sat and watched the first fingers of sunlight creeping over the rolling countryside, and tinting the underside of the high cirrus clouds a pale shade of salmon pink. A fishing portent for later in the day perhaps?

The valleys were still shrouded in mist, and being close by an ancient highway you could just imagine Dick Turpin come galloping out of the cover to relieve you of your valuables. I was musing on this as I stared back at the unblinking eye of a modern day highway robber, the Average Speed Camera, redundant today as all the traffic around me is stationary thanks to motorway road works merging four lanes into one.

The rendezvous at Marlow weir

Top – KTB ‘Kermit’s Transvestite Brother’

The eddies and converging currents combining to make the surface resemble the insides of a giant top loading washing machine. No time to lose, we are both raring to tackle up and get started. Jeff had brought a selection of modern baitcasting type rods, matched to multipliers and fixed spool reels, whereas I was operating a slightly different, more scattergun approach.

First outfit to hand was a delightful little Edgar Sealey ‘Octospin’ two-piece 7ft split cane rod, possibly of late 60’s vintage, a very recent acquisition of mine, and as yet, not used in anger. Coupled to this, and in an attempt to try and remain slightly contemporary, was a venerable Mitchell 324 reel.

A nice fit

Jeff was working the tail of the pool, with a selection of plug, spoon and wagtail type baits, in an attempt to whistle up one of the supposed resident pike. Given my lighter and probably frailer gear I was rather hoping I wouldn’t come across anything that big.

Mini bird’s nest

Fortunately for both the ancient tackle, and me, he decides to go with the current rather than fight it and came quite easily into the bank. I walked him downstream towards Jeff who had the net ready.

Not a monster, but I am always glad to see a perch, even if it’s only around the pound mark and perhaps far more pleasing was that the ‘old’ tackle had performed without a hitch. I gave the Octospin a rest, and continued with another less than new pairing of an ABU 5001 multiplier and a ‘heavy’ double handed spinning rod fashioned by my own hand from a Fibatube blank.

Cranking hard

Is it me, or is that pike smiling?

A move to Cliveden and out comes the Six-Shooter

For my part, I went modern and pressed my John Wilson ‘Six-Shooter’ combo into action. This single-handed bait caster/multiplier rig is happiest when flicking out plugs, and for me, at least, seemed to perform far better using a sideways flick than the suggested overhead cast.

The rod handle is particularly chunky, perhaps overly so, and if this really was designed by JW himself, then he must have hands like shovels and fingers like sausages, which might please Mrs Wilson, but didn’t do a lot for me.

Jeff waiting for an audience to happen by – Altogether now ‘They’re behind you!’

Firstly, the magnetic spool control changes settings all by itself. Whether this I due to me inadvertently catching it during use, or by the action of casting, is hard to say, but it needed checking every couple of casts to see if it had moved – again.

And every so often, coils of line would disappear between the spool and housing, causing a mini birds nest, not as disastrous as later happenings, but a fiddle when you have to break the reel down. And if I’m being really picky, the screws holding the reel together aren’t captive in the body (unlike the ABU) so when you have undone all three and jiggled the housing to get the reel apart some, or all of them, can, and will, fall out onto the bank, or worse, into the water.

Last item on the gripe front is that if you are switching tackle around like we were, it is confusing when the star drag on one multiplier loosens off clockwise, and on the next one you go to use it loosens anti-clockwise…

Old pro Jeff in action with the old biddies

Slightly bigger bird’s nest

The old dears made appreciative noises and asked what the little fishy was, one of them volunteering the information that her husband had caught a 22lb grouper, not quite sure as to the relevance of that news snippet, but it certainly wasn’t caught in that stretch of the Thames!

Anyway, Jeff was heartened by his capture and we continued upstream, switching baits and tactics. Spinners, spoons, lures, plugs, all got an outing. Floaters, sinkers, Creek Chub Pikies, spinnerbaits, even Flying ‘C’s took their turn at getting wet.

I swapped outfits once again (trying hard not to sound like Danny la Rue there) with a 10ft Shakespeare carbon rod and Daiwa reel boasting Twistbuster, ABS and everything else, probably air con, SatNav and airbags for all I know.

The results of using this are shown below, with no need for further comment, other than to say that I must have inadvertently switched off the Twistbuster’ for it to get in that state. I might say that I was a little less than impressed, but I did take time to sort it out rather than just throw it up the bank, which is my usual response when this type of thing happens.

And considering that the traces I was using had two swivels, and just about every lure is equipped with a swivel too, I wasn’t really expecting to see that kind of tangle. Didn’t happen on the Mitchell, but then that is old technology…

Must practice my Vulcan greeting

Back to the bait caster

Such strange behaviour renders it irresistible to another baby perch. So with the score at 2 – 1 to me, (Jeff’s fish was bigger, I must point out, because he told me to) and with no further success we decide on another move down towards Boveney Lock.

Setting up in one of the few places left open between moored boats, Jeff and I went through just about every lure we had had left in our boxes, and that was a few, in an attempt to find another fish. Even the ‘tame’ 4lb chub that insisted on teasing us by swimming past in plain view every few minutes could not be induced to have a go at any of the baits being flicked past his nose.

The only upside to this venue was its proximity to the very popular but uneven towpath, on which a steady stream of lady joggers and cyclists jiggled past. There might have been male cyclists too, but I don’t remember seeing them.

The kitchen sink isn’t in here, but just about everything else is

Back to Marlow weir and ‘one last cast’

In conclusion, this was never going to be a serious discourse on the comparisons between tackle from different eras. We used old rods with new lures, ancient lures with modern rods, fixed spools and multipliers, braided lines and nylon. All it proved was that no matter what you use, you can still have fun when you go fishing.

You certainly don’t need the most modern, and expensive, gear to guarantee success, nor do you have to slavishly stand on tradition and rely on old favourites when there are newer, possibly more effective alternatives available. An open mind never hurt anyone when it comes to fishing. If it works, use it, if it doesn’t just don’t be afraid to try something else!

A motley selection of the (very) assorted weaponry used on the day