I reckon just about everyone who goes fishing will, at some point, be asked to take someone who wants to start fishing with them. Now in the past I have taken loads of people that are either novices or hadn’t caught a lot of predatory fish before, hell it’s part of being an angling guide after all, but never before had I taken a member of my own family fishing, let alone a nine year old member of my own family!
From out of nowhere my nephew Adam suddenly expressed an interest in going fishing; in fact he was really keen to go. Now we had been before a year or two earlier but this was most definitely too early for him, he wasn’t really interested and, in fact, spent most of the day trying to fight with me! But this time he had asked to go and as I was in charge of him for the whole weekend we had a whole weekend of pike fishing in front of us, what could possibly go wrong?
Well to start with the so called expert could get the choice of venue very wrong, and that he did – spectacularly! With the choice left to me I went for a stretch of the Great Ouse near to the famous sluice. I had always liked the look of this spot but had never actually fished there and I really should have gone somewhere that I knew as the worst thing you can have with kids is them not catching. Well Adam had the chance to see straight away what it was like to blank as we caught precisely nothing all day long. However what it did give him was a chance to practice casting and that in itself was a cause of amusement.
The problem with most nine year olds is that they are as keen as mustard and keeping a lid on that enthusiasm can be difficult. To start with getting some degree of timing wasn’t easy and the bait and rig were going at all points of the compass and at varying distances from the bank, causing Adam to rant and moan but it was quite amusing.
Slowly though it came together and eventually the distance became pretty good even though the accuracy was still all over the place, mainly because Adam was casting more sidearm than overhead. I had gone to the trouble of kitting him out with my shorter boat rods rather than my full twelve footers as these were just too ungainly for him to wield properly. In fact it’s a bit of an urban myth that when you are teaching kids to fish in the first instance that its better for them to start with a long rod. That may have been the case in the past when most kids started with a float rod, but these days the chances are that more and more kids will start with carp or pike and twelve footers are a bit too heavy and a bit too ungainly for a youngster. The boat rods however were just nine and a half feet long and with short butts were absolutely ideal and finally I got Adam casting overhead and into a rhythm.
The amazing thing about the first day was that after spending a whole day without catching a thing Adam was even keener to go the next day, but this time it was going to be different, well so we hoped!
The next day dawned bright and cold and we headed for the Ouse again, only this time to the noted stretch in Ely where masses of silver fish congregate throughout the winter. I had packed a feeder rod along with a jig rod, the idea being to catch a few baits with the feeder rod and let Adam have a go with the jig rod to keep him occupied whilst we were waiting for a run.
Again keeping the lid on Adam’s enthusiasm was difficult as he was expecting the pike rods to go off at every opportunity, to be honest so was I, and the lack of action in the first hour was somewhat surprising. So it was an opportune moment to get the jig rod out and let Adam have a go with that but this proved to be a pretty harrowing experience to say the least.
Thanks to overhanging trees Adam had to cast sideways and, despite being constantly reminded to look behind him, evasive action had to be taken on numerous occasions to avoid being impaled by a flying jig! After an hour or so spent ducking and weaving more than Amir Khan I was getting worn out and thought it might be prudent to get the feeder rod out and see if that was a bit safer!
The feeder rod turned out to be a master stroke and after I managed to knock out a couple of small roach and bream I lost control of that rod for the day! It really was great to see him so rapt in attention at the quivertip. As usual his enthusiasm had to be tempered somewhat as every knock of the wind (and indeed from his own feet) saw him striking if my attention wasn’t 100% on the job in hand. But eventually he started to make contact with a few fish and a number of skimmer bream, silver bream and roach were landed, each one being eagerly grabbed and put into the net, all of them that is bar the skimmer bream of about 10oz which, being too big for bait, I told him to throw back – mistake! After being told that you gently slip the fish back and not hurl them halfway across the river there were no further faux pas!
In fact there were other fish landing issues that crept in throughout the day. Adam did have somewhat of a tendency to try and reel everything through the tip ring, a habit that needed knocking on the head as he tried it with the bait rods, lure rod and the feeder rod, something that could have lead to a rather expensive accident!
The day soon slipped by though and the anticipated pike or zander was still to put in an appearance and it looked like we were going to have another blank but then it happened. The livebait on the near shelf of the river was nailed, the float instantly disappearing and Adam was on it in a flash. Unfortunately the excitement got the most of him and the previous explanation of how to strike and play a fish went out the window, replaced by a toe to toe battle in which neither party were prepared to give an inch and one of the participants, despite my pleading was determined to reel what looked like a mid double figure pike straight out of the water!
This epic toe-to-toe struggle was only likely to have one outcome and with the reel yielding begrudgingly and the rod bent double the hooks couldn’t stand the strain and the trace and float shot past my ear hole and into the willow tree behind us. Adam looked devastated but his next reaction was the one that made me think that perhaps an angler is born. Rather than the expected tantrum and tears Adam actually turned to me and asked what he had done wrong and could we put the bait back there quickly as it might come back.
So it wasn’t to be. A blank weekend was suffered, but somehow it didn’t seem to have been an effort at all. Thirty years ago, about half a mile upstream I lost a big pike when I was a similar age to that which Adam is now. Losing that pike set me on the path to being a predator angler as I so wanted to catch a fish bigger than the one I had lost. Hopefully thirty years on the same river has played the same trick on Adam that it played on his uncle and maybe another pike angler has been born.
