Despite the heat continuing through most of July, the fishing has been nothing short of superb and a lot of quick early morning and night sessions, generally close to home, have turned up some nice fish. Unfortunately, because I spend July and August shooting loads of magazine features, I can’t go into too much detail about all the fishing, but here is a quick overview of what has been going on.
The long summer days are ideal for magazine work and very often I will spend most of my time out of the bank trying to get as much photography done as possible. This could be for magazine features, catalogues, the web, books perhaps, whatever projects I’m working on at the time. Some of it might not appear for a year or two, but that stock of images is absolute gold dust for a freelancer like myself. Whilst some of the pictures I can set up and take, a lot of the time I will be working with other freelance photographers, and it is amazing how much we can get done in a day; and what long days they are!
Very often we will be out at dawn to get some nice atmospheric fishing shots, then get the rods out and try and get some action, before spending the middle of the day shooting step-by-step sequences, catch shots, and all the rest of it. By the evening we may have visited three or four venues before going to one final location to get some nice sunset shots as the light goes. When I look at the quality of some of the photography in fishing magazines I have to chuckle to myself, we really do go the extra mile to make the work stand out and these summer shoots are the culmination of often weeks of work scouting out venues, getting all the kit organised and planning schedules.
Paradoxically, July and August are normally quite poor months for underwater photography for Stuart and me. The big problem at this time of the year is algal blooms which can, in the space of a couple of days, ruin the visibility in a venue. As the rooted weed grows though it begins to soak up the dissolved nutrient content in the water to the point where eventually the algal blooms run out of steam and the water clears, giving us a nice window for work in late August and September.
With a lot else going on this year we have put the underwater work on the back-burner for a little while, but have still been getting out to put together a new series for Total Carp magazine, with the first article in the latest issue. This I could probably describe as a little more advanced than the original work we did and we now have a library of around 20,000 underwater shots, so we are going back now and answering some of the questions and filling in some of the detail that we missed first time around.
There is still so much underwater stuff to do. For me I suppose it is more about knowing what is going on, rather than purely aesthetically pleasing pictures. Yes, it is nice to have both, but seeing what is actually going on is what I get more pleasure out of and we have a few interesting projects lined up for the coming months and years.
July also brings several Nash Roadshows to attend around the country. I really think the Roadshow concept – where we visit a day ticket venue for the weekend and give demonstrations and free instruction, is a brilliant concept. How often can you spend the day with some of the top carp anglers in the game, perhaps have a chance to learn some new tactics, and even catch a fish, and all for free? This month I joined the guys down at Broadlands Lake in Hampshire and Welham Lake in North Yorkshire and plenty of fish were caught at both events, especially off the top, which is always such a nice and under-utilised method for catching carp.
The Broadlands trip didn’t have the best start for me, but picked up later! With the weather being so hot and having no working air conditioning in my old jalopy, I decided to drive down to the venue quite late in the evening, after spending a few hours out on the Thames lure fishing with my dad.
The trip was great, even though it was a Friday night the roads were quiet and the cooling air made it a refreshing journey. Arriving at the gates at about 10:30 I made good time, but found that the bloomin’ gates were locked – something I hadn’t counted on! A couple of uncomfortable hours were spent by the side of the road on the bedchair that lives in the back of the car before dawn came around and any further thoughts of sleep were forgotten about. Next time I shall pay more attention to the details!
So, to the fishing…
A lot of the really hot weather at the start of the month was spent on features, which was a little frustrating. Now whilst a lot of people like to moan about the weather and find reasons why they shouldn’t go fishing there are always opportunities. In the heatwave conditions I knew exactly where I wanted to be, and that was fishing for grass carp on the surface. Commitments kept me from that particular lake though, a shame because they love hot weather and I am sure would have been very catchable. Being an all-rounder though really means that there is always something worth fishing for, something to consider if you spend your time fishing for just one species, with its inevitable peaks and troughs of activity.
Instead, I found myself accepting a long-standing invitation to head south for a nigh’ts fishing with a friend on a largish, shallow lake. It was a long, very hot drive down to Surrey, but this was soon forgotten as I waded out into the bath-warm margins of the lake in my shorts and started fishing. The night passed quickly and suffice to say by the time I hit the road at 11am the following morning we had caught plenty of fish, particularly some stunning rudd. A species I have not angled for in earnest for many years.
Those rudd really rekindled my enthusiasm for the species and I decided that a local venue that had been on my radar for a couple of years should get some attention as it had the potential to produce a very big and almost unknown fish. With no night fishing allowed, it would have to be late evening sessions only. An hour’s drive each way for three hours’ fishing? Yes, why sit there all day when the chances of a rudd bite are almost zero? So far I haven’t found the rudd, and have only managed one session. It is a reasonably big lake and there might only be a handful of them present, but now I have made a start more trips will follow, but only after I scratch another itch…
After doing quite a lot of guiding last year I have really reined this in for 2013, mainly because I have been working on a new book project and have been trying to concentrate on this as much as possible – more on this another time. When the guys at Pure Fishing though asked me to take lure fishing legend Patrick Sebile out for a couple of hours one evening I just couldn’t refuse the opportunity to fish with one of the most creative lure designers in the world. I gave my mate Sam Edmonds a call, as I was sure he would also like to meet Patrick too, and so the team was assembled.
As it turned out, we only had a couple of hours’ fishing time, as Patrick was busy with meetings for most of the day and so the fishing had to be local. In the end, I decided that the Warwickshire Avon would be the place to go and when Patrick had a zander first cast on a new soft bait that will be launched soon, I had to smile.
As usual we all caught fish and it was my typical hit-and-run lure fishing – a few casts in each spot, before moving on. An hour on a stretch, then back in the car and move on. If the fish are there, especially in warm weather, they don’t normally take long to catch. We caught pike, perch and zander in and had some action in most spots; summer lure fishing really is great fun, the fish might not always be big, but just the excitement of feeling a fish hit a lure gets the adrenalin flowing.
I swapped notes with Sam and his dad Gary on weedless tactics, which I now have almost total confidence in. Roll on autumn and zander fishing on the Severn!
How did I come to be barbel fishing in July? I don’t know really, but another local-ish (I call anything under about an hour’s drive local) venue had to be investigated. I guess the main reason was that I was getting worried about how much longer the big barbel in this river would keep going. They certainly aren’t getting any younger and although there are plenty of smaller fish, there are really only two fish that I want to catch, down from four a couple of years ago. Those fish have been at roughly the same weights for a few years now, a sure sign that they are getting on a bit.
I had been a member of the club for a few years, but typically for me, had not even visited the venue despite diligently paying my money each year. That now changed and after another hot Saturday evening drive across country I found myself on the banks of a lovely little mid-Midlands river. I don’t think it is fair to the other anglers fishing there to disclose the river I am fishing, but I am sure those of you who are interested in such things will be able to work it out!
The river is almost a facsimile of the River Kennet I remember from my youth. Clear sparkling water flowing over clean gravel shallows before falling away into deep pools edged with dense beds of streamer weed. It looks like a river should, a river in (at least visual) good health and so different from many other rivers these days. I was hooked; more so when after only a few minutes of wandering the banks I found a group of barbel just milling about in the shallows – a couple of them were quite big too! On a Saturday evening the banks were almost deserted, crazy!
Eventually I realised that I was actually on the wrong stretch, at least for the big fish, but once I had got my bearings and had a good mooch about I headed for home knowing that a new infatuation was about to begin. The plan had been to just get my bearings before returning in the autumn, but excited by what I had found I knew I would be back sooner than that.
So far I have managed three nights on the river and they have coincided with some great conditions. Heavy rain has got the river up and the barbel have responded. Bites have come on every trip – the first within eight minutes of making my first cast – although the river that looks so benign from above the surface has thrown up a bit of a problem that has cost me a couple of big fish – more of that another time.
Still, a couple of scraper-doubles under my belt augurs well for the future and so I find myself barbel fishing with probably more to come in the coming weeks. Just when you least expect it a new project comes together and the river will be getting some serious attention, along with topping up the image library to the brim, and the odd trip back to the rudd lake.
Great times indeed!
