Now because it is very topical, with the the season having just ended, and because it will annoy our illustrious Ed intensely, I am hoping that I am going to be the first one to get in my close season thoughts! But first of all I want to take a look back at the season just gone as to my mind it has been quite an interesting one…
As many of you will now be aware as the news is covering the hosepipe bans in detail, we in the south and east of the country are suffering from severe drought conditions. Here to the east where I am it is currently very bad indeed.
Certainly this year is the driest that I can remember for many a year. All the way through my tench fishing in the spring, to the river carp and rudd fishing of the summer and even right up to the Christmas festivities there was a very noticeable lack of rain. The summer was pretty horrendous on the rivers for the carp as the weed just grew and grew and the water got clearer and clearer and staler and staler. Eventually I had to concede defeat and leave the carp to it and concentrate on the rudd. But before all of that there was the fishing for perch last spring and the fishing for the tench at my most favourite of venues, Bawburgh.
The perch were somewhat disappointing and I am beginning to think that the big perch bubble we were enjoying in East Anglia may be slowly deflating now. Certainly the number of two pound perch that were very common just a couple of years ago have seemingly disappeared and my efforts through the spring did nothing to dispel that theory.
The tench fishing at Bawburgh was, as always, somewhat tricky but I did manage three fish over 9lb this year including a double figure fish of 10lb 8oz from a swim that I had never caught a double from before so that was very pleasing. Finances being quite low last spring (as they will be this one) I had to time my trips as best I could and, at the same time, make the most of the time I had so two to four day sessions were the norm but at Bawburgh in the spring sunshine that really is no hardship at all!
I have already alluded to the river fishing but I paved over a few cracks there. I certainly made a few mistakes along the way in fishing a new stretch, one of which was leaving the clearing of the weed to the feeding bream. Sadly they just couldn’t keep up with the pace and so I was left with a clear patch that really was only suitable for one rod – though I just about managed two. I also made a wrong choice in bait; though the bait itself is a great fish catcher it was way too soft to deal with the determined river bream and after an opening night of eighteen of them I was in a bit of trouble and despite my best efforts the bream were a nightmare all summer, though I did manage one river carp of 23lb.
The rudd made up for it though and many fish of 2lb plus hit my net and though I never hit the 3lb mark, my best going 2lb 10oz, George my fellow rudd botherer managed to pull out a 3lb 8oz beauty first go! There will be more to come next year I hope and maybe this time I will get to grips with the carp too.
The autumn and winter this year were very hard going. The first part of the autumn and winter brought lots of pike but in poor nick and low in weight. It also brought me down to earth with a bang when I had an accident at Grafham Water that saw me pitched into the reservoir, an experience I have no desire to repeat ever, but it brought home to me why we should always wear a lifejacket…
The second part of the winter saw a major shift in direction for me and changed my fishing, possibly forever as for the most part I became ghillie to my two friends Mike and Lydia and to my nephew Adam who at nine years old had expressed a desire to come fishing.
Watching these three progress over the course of the winter has been at times fantastic, enthralling and enjoyable in as a equal measure as it has been infuriating, annoying and boring! That they have all stuck at it through one of the crappest winters for pike and zander fishing in living memory has been a credit to them and I told last month in my diary piece how it had finally come right for Lydia and Adam, so I am not going to spoil the next diary where the season finishes off in spectacular style…
So, now we come to that great old chestnut of annual debate amongst all anglers – the close season.
It’s actually quite amazing really but increasingly I am fishing with anglers that cannot remember a time when there was a close season proper and everywhere was shut. I most certainly can as my birthday falls just over a week before the end of the season and invariably I would get something fishing related for my birthday and would usually have just one weekend to get to use it before everything shut down for the next three months.
However I also remember all the planning, reconnaissance and pre-baiting that we would do in the close season, leading up to that magical date of 16 June. It was just like a second Christmas, it many ways it still is, but with a certain amount of angling now allowed the junkie can get a regular fix, rather than having to abstain for a whole three months.
But times have moved on and now we are quite within our rights to carry on fishing the stillwaters all spring should we wish, so long as the owners of the water give permission. This has certainly led to some fantastic fishing for me, particularly with one of my favourite species, the tench. However if someone was to say that we couldn’t go fishing for coarse fish again on all waters for the entire three months then I wouldn’t be all that bothered, in fact I think that it is actually something that in the future angling may have to reconsider.
Why then do I say that? Well if you look at the argument that we as a group put forward when we are threatened by anti angling groups it is usually somewhat based around the fact that we are not killing our quarry, instead we are putting it back to conserve stocks and in essence this is true. However if you cast your eye around the rest of the country sports arena not one of them doesn’t have a close season to allow their quarry to breed in peace, we are the only one that continues to pursue them.
Ah, but I can hear you say we are not going to kill our quarry and that again would be true, but killing one or causing it to drop its eggs prematurely, or all over an unhooking mat is tantamount to the same thing…no reproduction that year. Now only on two occasions in my angling life can I say that I have caught fish that were extremely gravid to the point where they were almost certainly going to spawn within the next 24-48 hours and I can tell you that on both occasions I was absolutely paranoid about picking them up, let alone doing anything else to them, but fortunately on both occasions I was lucky enough to have help on hand.
Now that was me and I am sure that most of you would be the same but you just know that given the chance there will be some clowns that will stick such fish in keepnets or worse. In fact I am sure that this will be happening at the moment with the current legislation on lakes. The only thing is that the stocks on most lakes, particularly those that are heavily fished, are artificially maintained by man anyway so this situation doesn’t make as big a difference as it would do with fish on a river where stockings rarely take place.
Furthermore if the doom mongers are to be believed (and I personally don’t) our rivers are under more pressure than ever now, with cormorant and otter predation in particular being cited as the main reasons for their demise. Well if that’s true should we be adding the most apex of apex predators into the mix in the shape of man?
The final thing you often hear said in favour of lifting the close season is the problems that some Eastern European anglers are causing with their taking fish for the pot. Some say that by not being out there fishing we are leaving the waters open to the Eastern Europeans to plunder at will. Well personally I cannot see the logic in that one in any shape or form. If the EE’s are managing to do as much harm as some reckon they are across the country, including Scotland and Ireland where there is no close season, then what difference is us going the same way going to make. In fact I would say that the reverse is actually true because if you see someone on a river now in the close season with a rod in their hand then you know that they are up to no good, not so easy to deduce if everyone can carry one.
So there you go, those are my thoughts on the close season and now I am going to go and be the worst kind of hypocrite by trying to catch perch and tench, possibly bream too, when they are at their heaviest, because they will be carrying spawn!
So I have given the bear a prod with the metaphorical stick, let’s see how long before we hear his alternative views!
