I am a coarse fisherman. Somebody once told me I was the coarsest fisherman they’d ever met but I took no notice of the prat.
As a coarse fisherman I’ve had almost nothing to do with the more refined types who devote their lives to the pursuit and capture of salmon and the only real thing I know about this species is that ‘it doesn’t feed in fresh water’…times I’ve heard that. Apparently, the only reason people catch salmon on one kind of bait or other is because the fish gets annoyed; it grabs at the irksome lure purely because it’s getting on its tits – sorry – fins. I never had much faith in the theory myself, I mean, don’t they get hungry? All that swimming up-river and all that weir leaping and rapids-negotiation is going to sharpen a salmon’s appetite isn’t it? How about the salmon anglers who catch their fish on prawns? Now that’s a proper bait isn’t it, a pukka piece of pink crustacean with a scent and a rather nice flavour! Are the salmon men really trying to tell us that their fish only snap at them because they get wound-up and not because they’re Hank Marvin? Well I don’t believe them – and here’s why.
Being so coarse, I often set my stall out for barbel. ‘Often’ would suggest I have a decent barbel river on my doorstep. I don’t. I am Essex Man and I have to jump in the jam-jar and drive around 150 miles before I reach the places I want to fish. One such place is on the Severn in Shropshire and it’s here I like to do the occasional all-nighter. I dig-in late afternoon when absolutely nothing is feeding then sit back and wait for darkness. When it comes, the bites start as surely as a lamp glows on switching on the electric. Amazing. What was, for hours on end, a seemingly lifeless stretch of flowing water, becomes a river full of ravenous fish. I catch chub and I catch barbel. I get the odd perch and even the occasional roach. But it’s the barbel I’m really after and so far I’ve had them to nine pounds.
A few years ago, around one o’ clock in the morning and with a full moon illuminating the banks, my rod tip was fiercely pulled round by something that had no intention of stopping; I thought I’d lost it but somehow the butt found a purchase in a tuft of grass and gave me a second or two to grab the rod. But once I’d got a grip on the cork everything went slack and I filled the night air with the coarsest words and expressions you can imagine. I stood and reeled in a slack line but, gradually, I felt a sort of tightening and then I was away again! The fish pulled my rod into a perfect semi-circle and stripped the 6lb line off my reel with ease. Would it stop? Would it bugger! This fish just kept going at a speed I can only call frightening….then it leapt! In the moonlight I saw the unmistakeable form of a salmon which crashed down and leapt again! He was still on. I fought that salmon up and down-river for some twenty minutes, my arms and back aching and my tackle straining (no jokes)
Other brands of sweetcorn are available…
Eventually, I got the salmon close to the bank and got the landing net in hand. But there was a margin of rushes to reach over and (it’s hard to explain but we’ve all been there at some time I’m sure) I just couldn’t reach back far enough with my rod to bring the fish over the rim…I needed to reel-down a couple of turns but to do so would mean dropping the net and losing the ‘momentum’. Sure enough, the fish came off, but I was right out of curses – I’d done them all twenty minutes before. I was just gutted…bereaved I’d say. I’d never felt so wretched.
Recovering with a fresh cup of tea it occurred to me that that salmon had picked up two pieces of sweetcorn fished hard on the bottom. Now not everybody likes sweetcorn but you could hardly accuse it of being annoying could you? To the casual swimmer-by – such as a salmon – you’d think two pieces of sweetcorn were merely pebbles or bits of gravel among a million other bits of gravel. But that salmon made a special point – in the pitch black – of tipping arse – sorry – tail-up and snaffling my nibblets – don’t tell me he wasn’t hungry!
As it happens, the following year on the same stretch but on the other side of the loop, I got another bite on sweetcorn and caught a 6lb salmon. I do have a picture of it somewhere but I’m jiggered if I can find it. What are the chances of TWO salmon – at different times – being ‘annoyed’ by a piece of sweetcorn? None at all I reckon. For me the answer’s obvious: they were bleedin’ ‘ungry!!
Dave Staff
