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He is President of the Lure Angling Society, and President of the National Association of Specialist Anglers.
One of the things angling writers never quite get used to is the assumption that we always catch fish. To some extent, this misconception is our own faults, because we naturally tend to write more about successes than failures. I was pondering this during my fourth trip following three successive and total blanks.
A combination of circumstances can lead to a bad spell. The most important factor, at least in winter fishing, is when mild spells of weather coincide with the days when you can’t fish and when bad weather, particularly the sudden arrival of same, coincides with the days when you can go.
One of my blanks in the aforementioned seriesat the end of last year saw a cold front arriving at midday, after several days of unseasonably mild weather.
The fish know of the arrival of bad weather long before we do, and they go to ground. Similarly, they detect amelioration of conditions before we do. Should the fish come on the feed during settled bad weather, you can be certain that within hours meteorological things will change for the better.
So, what did I do on those three blank days and on this, the fourth (so far)? I certainly enjoyed myself. On each day, I was able to watch a red kite for a while (two on this particular day), while the cock pheasants joined me on the bank not ten yards from where I was sitting.
A whole host of such incidents constantly reminded me that I was out in the countryside, in quite an out-of-the-way area. And what’s more, I could stay warm, enjoy my food and perhaps even see another human, in the form of the gamekeeper. Surely all this is better than watching TV, drinking beer and being entertained second-hand.
I was pondering all this in the beautiful sunshine on my last trip of 1998 when the plastic bite indicator on my knee fell to the ground with a rattle. My first bite in four trips!
A pike had taken a sizable half-herring and was already heading for the horizon with it. My strike met very determined and lively resistance before I netted the fish, a solid 13-pounder. Then I noticed the huge jaw marks towards its tail end. There were two split fins, a lump out of its back and raking tooth marks down each flank. The pike that caused them, and failed to gets its dinner, must have been close to 30lb.
It’s now just after lunch. Time yet for another bite. Such is the optimism of anglers, even when things are slow.
Courtesy of Cambridgeshire Pride Magazine
