I just spent a whole week without wetting a line. Yet I went fishing twice and had two of the most rewarding sessions it’s possible to have.
Remember what it was like when you were twelve years old? Watching a float. The thrill as it went under. The throbbing vibrations transmitted down the rod. Me neither, it was too long ago. So it was great to be able to revisit the experience by taking Casey Sather fishing last week. Casey is 12 years old, the son of Bob, one of my oldest and dearest friends. Bob never quite ‘got’ fishing till I took him out with a lure rod a few years ago. At the end of that session, with a half dozen fish to his credit, he was determined to do more and has been pressuring me to take Casey out ever since. We finally got around to both last week.
The Venue
For a venue we chose a hole-in-the-ground fishery just off the M25. The fishery had more rules, regulations and stringent restrictions than anywhere I have ever known. The fear society has arrived at last. All it seems to take these days is one article from one writer; if he suggests the possibility that say, too much oil in pellets could damage a fish’s liver, the paranoid fishery owner bans pellets immediately. No scientific proof is needed, just one uninformed opinion will do. But I digress as per usual – it’s the norm for a grumpy old man.
I stupidly imagined that I would be able to fish too. Wrong. There is simply too much to teach if you want to do it half right. From the basic tying of knots, attaching loops, how to hook a maggot, testing the depth, shotting and setting the float, casting out… there is a huge amount to teach and to learn. This ignores the tangles too – every newbie’s nightmare. I was fortunate in that Casey was a natural and perfect pupil. I rarely had to show him something twice.
Every fish had to be netted
The fishery rules insisted that every fish, even the smallest, was landed with a net. This was apparently, to prevent anglers tearing the lips out of 4 ounce fish by swinging them in. Ahem! (See what I mean?) The upside of this rule meant that Casey was forced to learn to use a landing net and an unhooking mat. That’s a tricky bit of hand-eye co-ordination for a brand-newbie but he managed it. As he was getting a bite every cast, he got a lot of practice and by halfway through the day he was well enough schooled to be left alone to fish for himself. The only time he needed any help at all was when a barbel grabbed his bait and taught him that not all fish are tiddlers to be trifled with, especially on light line. This one gave a lesson on how the reel’s clutch worked!
‘Teach me everything you know’
My second trip of the week was a day out with our youngest boy. Oliver is now 21 and determined to become a carp-angler. When he asked me to teach him ‘everything I know’ about carp fishing, I bottled it. I was instantly reminded of my father teaching me to drive all those years ago. Thankfully there are now options – driving schools and carp coaches. So I decided to avoid the stress and called Ian Gemson.
Child from hell – call in Ian Gemson from Smartcarping!
Now – you have to understand something. Oliver is my stepson. Since I first met him when he was aged 4, Ollie has been the Child from Hell, intent on destroying the world and conquering the universe. As the winner of the European Ritalin Awards for Appalling ADHD Children for five years running he was eventually sent a letter of surrender signed by all the world’s top child psychologists and was awarded a Golden Naughty Step. Teaching him anything was going to be… err… interesting to say the least. 
Ian Gemson runs SmartCarping and is a certified PAA angling coach. There is a world of difference between an angling guide and an angling coach. A guide can take you fishing and put you on the fish. The main concern of a coach is teaching his pupil how to fish and ensuring those lessons are learned. I went along with them to Thorpe Lea to observe this struggle between the irresistible force and the immovable object – and I was amazed.
Ian started talking and Ollie started listening. Ian demonstrated and Ollie observed. Examples were followed with full attention and follow-up questions were intelligently framed. I was witnessing not just the creation of a learned angler but the transformation of a boy to a man.
Ian covered so much ground he had the pair of us listening intently. Yes, the pair of us. Ian started with with safety and then moved on. Everything from lead choice to rig tying, bait selection and spodding, feature finding and testing the lake bed for mud, silt or gravel, the science and the fiction. The true essentials that separate the catching of fish by true design and the hope-to-get-lucky, chuck it and chance it, that the majority of carp anglers still practice.
I was realising just how much I had forgotten about carp fishing and learning new stuff that has come along since I got set in my ways. To say this was a rewarding experience is to belittle it. It should be compulsory for every angler to have a top-up course like this every few years. Due to the amount of actual training going on, it should come as no surprise to find that Ollie didn’t actually cast his baits out until 3pm, some six hours after arriving.
By 7pm he was a trained and accomplished carp angler and had blown his PB out of the water twice, catching fish from low doubles to above mid twenties, up to over 26lb. Using line markers and clipping up, casting to a marker float spot that had been accurately baited via spodding, Ollie caught fish one after another. He caught them scientifically at 65 yards range and with no luck involved. Once he had the fish feeding it seemed he couldn’t go wrong, the fish were coming to the net so fast that at one point he had four fish in the nets at the same time!
Truly a remarkable day and all made possible by the expert coaching of a delightful and knowledgeable coach. I give Ian Gemson’s SmartCarping 10/10. You should try a day with him too.
