Everything’s here, warts and all, completely unexpurgated, in other words nothing has been removed. The fishing, the sex, the scandal, the lies – just a minute! ….. There’s some of that, yes, but it’s largely about fishing and fond memories.
Dedication
I dedicate this book to my long-suffering wives and girl friends over the years, particularly Lynn and June who were with me during my most obsessive years in angling. Women however, come and go, but a fishing rod is there for life. This book is also dedicated to my daughter Samantha and my carp mad-guitar playing son Lee, who always manages to catch bigger fish than I. In addition I also dedicate this book to my current girl friend Karen, who has yet to experience life with an angler.
CHAPTER 1
EARLIER DAZE AND REFLECTIONS.
I was initiated into the angling scene at a very early age, this was probably through the teachings of the great messiah Mr Crabtree, and indeed, I can never remember a period in my life when I did not have a rod in my hand. I suppose I was very fortunate in that I was brought up in an area that was close to a canal.
Families appeared much bigger in those days, which in turn gave me lots of friends with which to sample the piscatorial delights. You didn’t need a rod licence, for still waters then and the club which controlled the “Cut”, rarely sent their bailiffs round and when they did, they would usually let us fish for free, especially when they observed the kind of tackle we were using, which even in those days left a little to be desired.
A typical Friday afternoon on the way home from school would entail a visit to the local tackle shop for six pennorth’s worth of maggots in a brown paper bag. In fact I can remember causing quite a stir on one occasion when the maggot bag split upstairs on the bus, on the way home. A stampede of old dears bailed off the bus while it was moving and the conductor bailed me off.
One particular day I had purchased a bag of maggots before I attended school, during the day they had escaped in my desk and Grotty Mary, who sat next to me, told Mrs Hinds, the teacher, who gave me six of the best across the front desk! Funny how things change, you would have to pay good money these days to be whipped by a middle age woman.
I don’t know what it was that most attracted me to the local tackle shop, but it was always a magical place, like an Aladdin’s cave, it had something of a special smell about it also, and I would often spend a hour or so just looking at the tackle and gazing through the window at all the new and shiny built cane rods. Transport was a big problem as I was getting older and it wasn’t until the 1960`s that my father acquired a car.
If I wanted to travel for my fishing it was a case of struggling with a bicycle full of tackle. As I became older, I designed a trailer for my pushbike, this enabled me to travel much farther down the canal bank with my array of ever growing tackle. Often searching out new stretches of water, meeting different anglers and making new friends.
My first involvement with so-called specimen hunting probably occurred in the early Seventies, although I was fortunate in catching carp in the mill lodges of the mid-Sixties. I can now appreciate that “Walker” along with the “Carp Catchers Club”, “Still Water Angling”, BB`s “Confessions of a Carp Fisher”, and “Wood Pool”, probably accounted for the conversion of a number of pleasure anglers into the realms of the spezzi world, but in my case it was authors like Dave Stuart’s book “Carp and How to Catch Them”, Jack Hilton’s “Quest for Carp” and Jim Gibbinson`s “The Carp” (part of the Richard Walker Library), which first fired my enthusiasm.
When my good friend “Eric Hodson” brought together all the major specimen groups of the Sixties, a significant growth factor was experienced in the then named “Specimen Hunter”. In Manchester, towards the end of the Sixties, we had the Manchester Specimen Group that was run by angling writer and barbel specialist Chris Tabbron. The Manchester Specimen Group came about through contacts made with Eric Hodson the then secretary of The National Association of Specimen Groups.
For my own little contribution towards the Big Fish Movement, I formed a teenage group called “The Middleton Specimen Group”; we formed this merry band in 1972, the year in which the larger groups were beginning to take shape. The Middleton Specimen Group survived until 1976, when I reformed the group into what later became known as “The Manchester Carp Group” and what a blot on the English countryside that created.
The Manchester Group has survived in many formats over the years, we have always tried to have a strong political involvement in the angling world, and have been supportive of the Anglers Cooperative Association, (ACA*), National Association of Specimen Groups (NASG), National Association of Specialist Anglers (NASA) and now the more recent Specialist Anglers Alliance (SAA*).
(* now part of Angling Trust – Ed)
Many members have come and gone over the years and I have been very fortunate in making some very good friends through the group. I have always been a firm believer in the group scenario and my limited efforts in this direction have paid me many dividends, no more so than my lifelong love for the sport.
CHAPTER 2
THE TIN TACKS.
One of my earliest memories of perch fishing dates back to a care free time when the summers would last forever and the winters would be choked with smog. A time when the world was new and excitement would be around every corner, with lots of new places to explore and indeed lessons to be learned, as the mysteries of life unfolded.
Being born in a semi-rural area on the outskirts of a major city, I was fortunate in that I lived in a place that was surrounded by water. Much of which consisted of mill lodges, a few canals and the local farm ponds. It is many of the memories of the latter that I hold closest to my heart. I am reminded of the visits to one of those enchanting little ponds.
Many a summer Sunday’s afternoon my parents would take me for a leisurely stroll with a packed lunch and my cane handled fishing net which my Aunt Kathleen had brought me back from Rhyl. I would remove my shoes and socks and paddle in the cool margins, a scoop of the net would sometimes produce tadpoles, a stickleback, a snail or a newt, each being carefully placed in my jam jar to be added to the garden pond.
I would gaze beyond the weed fringes, looking down upon the pondweed and into the clear water as it shelved off into unfathomable depths. As the bottom sloped away you could watch water spiders and scorpions with sticklebacks darting in and out of their hidden jungle whilst very occasionally you would glimpse a very aristocratic looking fish with a crown on its head and with regimented perpendicular black stripes running across the length of its body…it was of course a perch. The Tin Tacks perch were rarely seen and would only be encountered well beyond the reach of my humble fishing net, but how I dreamed of catching one of these leviathans of the pond.
It was some years later that my father had taken on a contract to build some houses in a field next to the pond. I was eleven at the time and would often take my father his lunch and at the same time take along my new Spanish Reed fishing rod in order to spend a few hours on the Tin Tacks.
The Tin Tacks was actually two ponds, the nearest of which was in the process of being in-filled due to the land requirements of the houses my father was building, and the second pond which we used to picnic besides. The latter was much larger and much more scenic. It had a clay bank and sandy bottom at one end with numerous weed fringes and a marshy area at the other.
I knew the water held some good perch and I had been baiting the pond in the sandy area for some time. The ground bait was mainly chopped up red worm, which I would collect daily from the farm. If I was quiet, I could stand motionless and watch the perch move in, fighting among themselves for the free offerings. Indeed I fished the Tin Tacks at every opportunity, catching lots of good perch on both worm and maggot.
It was during a long hot summer when my father was building the houses, that I would lay-on for the perch, this was done using a peacock quill with swan shot to firmly pin the end tackle to the bottom of the pond, Upon a bite, the float would rise slightly, judder a little and gently move away towards the centre of the pool. It was good sport and the perch appeared quite large at the time, although in retrospect they would have probably only averaged half a pound in weight with maybe the largest fish reaching just over.
One particular visit, however, does stick in my mind, it had been a very warm day, but the sky had suddenly become cloudy and with the threat of a storm brewing. I decided to pack up early. I turned round to look for the lid of my maggot tin and was startled by the sound of the ratchet on my reel; the rod was violently arching towards the water as the top eye staccatoed against the surface.
Literally diving on the rod I felt a very powerful fish running toward the middle of the pond, the reel emptied and the backing line snapped, “No perch this”! I thought? I was to learn later that it was a carp, but that really is another story. The Tin Tacks had been in-filled by the early seventies, in fact the few houses that my father had built eventually stretched to fill the entire farming area, another lost fishing ground, gone forever, and they call it progress.
CHAPTER 3
SPIKE ISLAND AND THE NEWT POND.
Another farm pond which used to be a favourite was the Newt Pond, which was known locally as the “Letter S”, the reason for its unusual name was based on its shape which resembled a huge Letter S.
The newt pond lay in a field on the towpath side of the canal opposite a twin mill (a textile company had built two large identical mills next to each other), these were called the Laurel and the Baytree). A small village nestled at the end of a lane to the rear of the newt pond. It was an early mining village called “Spike Island”.
In fact, the word village was too grand a word for this settlement, which consisted of two rows of terraced houses with a small grocery store at one end. It was totally isolated from the local town and sat amidst agricultural land. Apparently, an early industrialist had built the village in order to cater for a small workforce of mixed agricultural and industrial workers who assisted in the transhipment of minerals between a coal-fired tram and the canal barges.
Spike Island was located at a canal head that was on an arm of the Rochdale canal, built to meet the needs of the Hunt Lane Coal Pit, which was located, a mile and a half further up the valley floor. This was connected by an iron tramway. The barges, once full, would then carry minerals down the canal to Manchester, Liverpool, Birmingham and elsewhere. The pit was however short lived, first the tramway was lifted and later the canal arm in-filled, thus leaving the village isolated. Spike Island never really caught up with its surrounding towns, and the village still had gas lamps well into the sixties and until its time for demolition.
“The Island”, as it was known locally, had a reputation for housing a community of unsavouries, the type of people modern sociologists would bracket as rough working class, and this sentiment would often be amplified when their village folk crossed the canal and visited the town’s hostelries. These people were of course, no different from anyone else, and it appeared that the locals on the town side of the canal had had some bad press passed down over the years and unfortunately the mud had stuck.
As I came of age to wonder by myself, I was often drawn to the banks of the newt pond, in the earlier days I would search for great crested newt, they appeared plentiful in those days and we would catch them on canes with string tied to the end, tying a worm directly onto the string. It was nice to watch the newts taking the worm, and the newt would cling to the bait until you lifted him ashore, it was great fun.
It was in the severe winter of 1963 that a gang of us had gone sledging on the ice covered newt pond it was while I was sledging that I first met up with Pete and Ronnie who lived on Spike Island. There were two gangs of us all happily playing together, as kid’s do, when it wasn’t long before Pete told of his summer fishing exploits on the pond.
I had mentioned the newts I had caught but asked if there was any fish present. “Yes there is.” replied Pete, “What kind?” I asked. “Perch.” he said, “Some big daddies.” “I’ve never seen a perch in here” I said, “Would you mind if I tag along when the weather gets better?” “No, course not.” said Pete, “I live at the first house on the Spike next to the shop.”
The winter of 63 was a very severe one and it seemed like forever before the winter snows finally went away and the local ponds became fishable again. Jack across the road had given me a greenheart rod for Christmas and I had to wait for many months before I could actually try it out. I didn’t tell my parents of my new found friends on “The Spike” as it was one of the areas I was not allowed to visit, but Pete and Ronnie turned out to be fantastic companions and it wasn’t long before I got to know many of the people, who lived, on “The Spike”.
Pete and his brother Ron were very lucky in that they had an enormous amount of land attached to their home and their father had built for them a large garden pond along with a number of sheds in which they kept, little short of a mini zoo. They had everything, rabbits, guinea pigs, a ferret, newts in the pond, pigeons and a sampling of the newt pond’s perch! “Well there they are,” exclaimed Pete “the genuine thing! Perch from the newt pond.”
With the lack of electricity in the Spike, no one had television, but with their animal collection and love for nature and the surrounding countryside, they had ample reward for what they lacked in consumerism. One of the problems I found with the newt pond was that it was situated in the middle of a field; which was attached to a paddock, and contained horses from the nearby stable.
As a much younger child I had once been chased by a horse, and ever since, have always had a fear of them and indeed tried to avoid them at all costs. So I was always a little apprehensive when the horses were in the field at the same time as me. Fortunately, a large tree lay in one corner of the pond and when the horses came charging over the hill for a drink, I simply climbed the tree and got out of the way.
It all worked out very well as a deeper section of the pond could be fished whilst up the tree. I spent a number of years fishing the newt pond and eventually caught some good perch in the company of Pete and Ronnie. In time, my parents even got together with Pete and Ronnie’s parents, often visiting one another’s homes. It was strange how they soon got used to our television set, Pete and Ronnie would spend hours in front of it, and I think it was a real novelty for them.
It was quite sad really when the Spike was due for demolition, this came under one of the Government’s house clearance policies and my friends moved to a different part of the country and we lost contact with them. The newt pond, like the Tin Tacks was also in-filled and it too now lies under a private housing estate, along with the ill-fated, Spike island village. Indeed, I no longer live in the area myself, but was surprised on a recent visit, to find the place totally beyond recognition, it all seems like little but a dream now.
Nick Melling (a.k.a. The Monk)
Much more to follow…
