Boxing Day on the Fens for pike and zanderTHERE ARE FEW events in my angling calendar as eagerly anticipated as Boxing Day – the day when the toffs go fox hunting and I go pike fishing.
I enjoy Christmas Day, but there’s a moment in the late afternoon as I settle back, bloated almost painfully with lunch, that I begin to fantasise about the Boxing Day which must surely come when I catch a truly huge fish. And from that moment I am committed to eschewing the TV temptations and getting an early night, in preparation. Over my 35 years of fishing my companions have changed but the routine has not. Waking in darkness with a splitting headache (because I did not, of course, get an early night) I stumble around the bedroom trying to dress in the dark, waking the entire family as I fall heavily into the wardrobe, then lurch off downstairs to crash around a little more, trying to find my flask and make a turkey sandwich. My tackle has lain where I left it after my chub fishing session two weeks ago, so I just rake together every bag and box which could conceivably contain pike tackle and chuck them all in the car. I have to virtually empty the freezer to find the deadbaits, but I find two bags of them, one of which turns out, when thawed, to be my daughter’s icepops. I have memories of picking up my mates on the way, but my regular companions in recent years, Tony Lovell and his son Robert, have this year – no doubt remembering me arriving late and shoehorning themselves into a car selfishly over-stuffed with all the irrelevant tackle I possess – suggested we meet at the fishery. This year’s venue suggestion was mine – a shallow Fen drain which produced massive nets of roach and small bream all summer. The drive through the thin light of a Fen dawn had a strangely exciting effect on me this year. It was, as forecasted, overcast, so dawn had no drama like the lights on a stage, just a gradual seepage of light which gently bled colour into the blacks and greys of the flat countryside. Across the calm ocean of soil, farmhouses were already wide awake, the pinpricks of light from their windows like stars in the sky. The light lifted wonderfully during the last 20 minutes of my journey, defining the patchwork of Fen peat as dark as yesterday’s Christmas pudding, and the contrasting fields of green winter wheat. Now and then I’d cross one of the many grey-green drains, straight as Roman roads. They look featureless, but experience has taught me how fecund they are. I slowed to glance along them, and with each, my great love for this place was rekindled. So when I arrived at the venue I was mentally buzzing with excitement. Tony and Robert were already exploring the drain’s bank in their 4×4, discovering that sometimes these byways don’t have a turning place for a mile or so. With my mere 2×4 I stopped short of the deeply rutted section beyond the pumping station, parked and attempted to assemble two pike rigs. I’m a Fen piker of three rigs; the freelined deadbait sunk, if necessary, by a few swanshot; the free-roaming livebait float rig; and the float paternoster rig which is, as Robert pointed out, just the float rig with a bomb attached. It’s all you need on the Fens.
I struggled a bit, having sustained a serious tendon injury in my hand. For reasons I suspect of pure optimism I had not considered how I might tie a tucked half blood with my left hand in a splint, but eventually, using teeth too, I made a respectable job of it. I had no livebaits, so the simplest freelining rigs went on, both baited with mackerel tails, and were sent into the deeper dredged water along the far bank. I felt quietly confident. The feeling didn’t last. The drain had been pumped hard in anticipation of a forecast wet spell, and now had barely four feet of water in it. On Fenland waters, that doesn’t necessarily matter, but I know that these shallow waters switch on and off, with nothing in between. You either get runs straight away or nothing at all; I can only assume the shoals of roach and bream are harried in this now weedless water into localised places, and you either find them – and the attendant pike – or you do not. After a couple of hours it was plain we had not. My occasional recasting was a feeble denial of the truth that we would luck out if we didn’t move. So we cut our losses and headed for a nearby spot on the map, a place none of us had ever seen – just a farm track which ended at a much larger drain. We had no clue of its ownership but we were prepared to take that chance.
When we got there, I was starting to believe in divine guidance. Not only did the farmer we stopped to talk to welcome us to park on the track, but the venue which presented itself was deeper and, at the confluence of another drain, much wider. Robert plumbed it at eight feet but it was an academic exercise – on one of the shortest days of the year, there was no time to go anywhere else. Once again I cast my mackerel tails, one this time popped up a little, and Tony and Robert cast roach and perch. I settled back in my chair with my binoculars and took in my surroundings. To the east a ribbon of white almost on the horizon and distinctive calls carrying in the Fen stillness brought mild excitement. Camped out on a field quarter of a mile away were around 300 whooper swans, clearly identifiable with their straight, upright necks and trumpeting.
To the west, the farmer had planted a strip of maize for the pheasants, now a strawy yellow. Male pheasants, iridescent and chestnut, strutted around them, sensing the oncoming spring and sauntering after every pale hen bird. Suddenly a bleeping alerted us all and we scanned along Robert’s rods for a rising or falling bobbin. But it was a trick being played by the Fen acoustics – a lorry’s reversing alarm perhaps half a mile further distant. We settled again, talking, laughing, reminiscing.
But the next bleep from Robert’s direction was the real thing, and after a short scrap a handsome 7lb pike rolled over the net rim, plump and deep olive green with ochrous yellow spots. We admired it for a moment before slipping it back. And then it was Tony’s turn, but the run resulted in a strike against nothing, and the return of a bait with the vampire punctures of zander attention. My turn next, the bobbin dropping off and the alarm screaming, but nothing on the strike – a completely unmarked bait. This happened three times, the third after I’d approached the rod with caution, lifted and felt a few knocks before reeling down; there was a brief resistance, but a frustratingly unmarked mackerel tail swung into my hand. I still cannot explain what was going on. The light was now failing. A white van passed behind us and parked on a bend some way off. The anglers who got out were clearly preparing for a night out in the hazy cold. And then Robert’s buzzer went again, and we trotted along to see what he was, by now, playing. The rod’s deflection suggested something respectable.
“It’s a zed,” he said as it rolled, and a few seconds later, a fabulous zander lay in the meshes. “I’m guessing 9lb 8oz,” I suggested, and Tony mutely agreed with a nod. But on the scales, we were proved wrong: “It’s a new personal best,” said Robert squinting at the scales needle in the gloom. “Ten and a quarter.”
Our fellow anglers further up the bank must have realised it was something special when the camera flashgun popped a dozen times. I hope it gave them enthusiasm for the coming hours of damp darkness. For the three of us, it signalled the last ten minutes of fishing but we were all deeply pleased with the day – Tony because he’s a proper dad, Robert because he’s a proper angler, and me because, as my daughter had said on Christmas Day, with wisdom way beyond her 14 years, it’s almost as much fun watching other people open their presents as opening your own. Happy New Year to everyone at FM! |
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