The Alternative Angler – No Going Back

Never mind smelling the flowers, don’t forget to take time out to see the satirical side of fishing life and grab a laugh along the way as well. So here’s a regular column from Kevin Perkins to remind us that life is for laughing at, or taking the p*** out of, whenever we can.

No Going Back

If ever a swim just screamed “fish” this must be it…..

The clock radio jarred me back into life at 5.00 am with all the subtlety of a defibrillator set to ’70’s perm’, and increasing age is affecting my reaction speed to the extent that the inane baboon of a broadcaster managed to get off half a dozen words before I could hit the snooze button. Anyone who can be that bright and cheerful at that hour in the morning has to be on medication, and if they’re not, they should be, preferably dispensed from a bottle with a skull and crossbones on it….

Oh well, toast and several Nescafe injections (someone should market a caffeine laced patch, a Cafforette or some such; half a dozen applied down each arm would set you up for the day and they would make a fortune) and we set off to the car park, sorry M1, for the crawl round to the M25, keeping a wary eye open for speed cameras, as the limit was set to 50mph. Somewhat academic when you are lucky to exceed 5mph at that time in the morning, as evidenced by us covering two miles in fifteen minutes. Anyway despite all this, we got the venue, and proceeded to shovel as much loose change as we could find into the parking meter until the required total for a few hours parking was reached – £ 6.00! (Perhaps they should charge people for being stationary on the M25, to make up for the shortfall from those redundant speed cameras……).

Not to worry, we unload the gear and rapidly set off for ‘the’ swim, only to be greeted by a pleasant surprise when we get there. Not only is it empty (always a bonus) but the local club have constructed a fishing platform giving you complete coverage of the entire weir pool. Absolutely fabulous, and all credit to Old Windsor AC, and it really lifts our spirits, what a day we are going to have now.

Textbook weirpool, early morning, nothing doing!

Well, that is after getting our marks from the judges for our descent down the slightly damp, but exceedingly slippery ramp. Had we been at the Winter Olympics I think my downhill descent, with the added difficulty of rod bag over shoulder, would have scored perhaps 5.6. My son’s trip was helped by the stabilising effect of the carp barrow, so a still creditable 5.4. All joking aside, any poor sod in a wheelchair using this ramp (who it was designed for) would have been pitched over the edge at the bottom and straight into the weir pool. Not clever.

Anyway, we were here now, and glorious setting, glorious failure would just about sum things up. How could somewhere that looks so ‘fishy’, a venue that has always produced something in the past, fail to deliver? Now, I will freely admit my angling skills are probably just above mediocre, but I can usually manage to fool at least one desperate gudgeon into taking a bait, but no, nothing. Not a perch (target species) chub, bream, roach, bleak – nothing. Maggot (all colours) worms (two types) corn, pellets, bread, float fishing (high up, midwater, just off the bottom), legering (straight lead, mini feeder, cage feeder) – nothing.

The lock cutting, home to fish that just weren’t hungry

I know there had been some rain the day before, but the water was only carrying the slightest tinge of colour, the air temperature had risen a couple of degrees in the past week, and there was plenty of grebe and heron activity to show at least some fish were about, so I was baffled. In desperation plan ‘B’ swung into action, and we peppered the pool with the small selection of spinners and plugs (Mepps, Droppen, Midi ‘S’, Toby) I had brought along on the off chance, but again, nothing at all.

Plan ‘C’ was next, and as the lock itself was closed for repairs, meaning a complete lack of boat traffic through the lock cutting, perhaps the fish were shoaled up in this peaceful haven. We trudged round and went through the same procedure as above, with, by now, predictable results, nothing, not the slightest twitch of float or quiver tip, nor interest in lures.

This is a venue that I used to fish, admittedly a few years ago, on an almost weekly basis, and it the past I would have bet my house that I could have caught something, anything, but not on this day. It’s like those people who lust after their old school pals on Friends Reunited, only to find that 30 years on, Tracey, teenage vamp of the Fourth Form and cause of many a callous on young boy’s hands is now a fifteen stone, chain smoking single mother of five kids by five different fathers – illusion shattered.

I did have many fond memories of Romney Island, and on the way home, I decided I would never go back; somehow I felt it had let me down. But the very next day I thought, bugger that, I not going to give in that easy. I will go back armed with both Plano boxes full of lures and thrash the water to a foam, if I can’t tempt something with the selection I’ve got in there, then so be it. Failing that, the only other thing niggling away in the back of my mind is I might have been able to do better presenting a bait in the crease of the weir pool if I had used a pole, and all the necessary accoutrements – but that means I would have to buy all the paraphernalia first, and I not sure I want to spend that much money just to prove a point to myself!