Then, as a very small boy, I was fishing with my father, himself a novice angler, having pestered him to take me fishing. He eventually gave in. It was what small boys did back then, that and collecting birds eggs and suchlike is what ALL small boys did back then, unlike today when the computer game seems to reign supreme. I know that we had the better time, for sure. By the morning in question we had already been anglers for a year or two and had, by then, become reasonably proficient having been guided almost entirely by Bernard Venables’ iconic ‘Mr. Crabtree Goes Fishing’: a copy had been given to my father by a workmate.
By then we had caught the usual species of fish, all small: roach, rudd, perch, gudgeon, crucian carp (these latter fish – and they were true crucians – abounded in every pit and pond in our locale) My father had also caught a few tench, though I had not as yet made contact with one, and it was indeed a tench that I hoped for on our latest trip. The porcupine quill lay at half cock, a la Crabtree, above a knob of bread-paste, ‘laid on’ as we used to call it back then. My tired eyes were mesmerized into an almost trance-like glaze as i stared at the motionless quill, entering that hypnotic state that all fishers know so well. Rings appeared from around the quill. Immediately the trance was broken, and as I became alert, it tilted and slid away in a classic tench bite. Upon striking my cane “bottom” rod took on an alarming curve, and the old Bakelite Allcock’s centre-pin screeched as the fish took line. “At last! a tench” I thought, the first fish I’d ever hooked that took line! After an exciting battle that seemed in my small boys mind to last for ages, my prize finally swirled on the surface and, more by luck than judgment, was landed. Shaking like a leaf I peered down into the knotted mesh of the net and there lay not the expected tench but a huge pike! It was a big one as well; at least to me it was, used to nothing heavier than half pound crucians. It was a veritable monster indeed. We had not caught or, indeed, seen one before, only the wonderful paintings and drawings in Crabtree, and the photos in the Angling Times that had by now become a regular weekly delivery by the paper boy. Somehow we got the hook out and, after a moments admiration, slid all 3lbs of it back to fight another day, as our mentor Mr. Crabtree would have put it.
I can’t remember after all these years if we caught anything else on that fateful morning, only that I was exhilarated by the capture of that first pike. 9 o clock came and a sleepy small boy was ferried home in a state of euphoria; it had, after all, been a Halcyon day, and one that I would never forget. Little did I know then what lay in store in the years to come, for that little pike had a profound effect on me, and after its capture all I wanted to do for next 50 odd years was to catch more, and of course bigger!
The shape of things to come!
The swinging 60s arrived and we took up pike fishing properly, as it were, still guided by Mr Crabtree of course: huge slit cork Gazette bungs et al were the order of the day, and we did manage to catch the odd pike now and then, but nothing to set the world on fire. It wasn’t until the mid 60s arrived that now, as teenager, I began to go my own way. Being limited to how far I could walk or pushbike, my pike fishing was confined mainly to some local gravel pits and along with my pals we spent every possible winter hour chasing the pike that inhabited them. It was on these pits that I began to hone my skills in the various pike fishing disciplines: livebaiting, static dead-baitng and wobbled/sink-and-draw dead-baiting mainly. It was on one of these pits in particular that I lost my faith in artificial baits, or lure fishing as it is now termed. The water in question was gin clear, and time and again I would observe pike appear from nowhere to follow an artificial bait, be it plug or spoon, but seldom would they take hold. When an artfully wobbled deadbait was presented it was a different matter, and as often as not, in a flaring of gills, they would seize the bait! Heart-stopping stuff observed in the tap-water like clarity of this lake. Indeed to this day I have no love of lure fishing, only ever having caught one 20lber on lure; still, others do well with them so it is probably my lack of expertise and confidence in them that accounts for lack of success.
My inspiration: Peter Hancock with his 1967 Horsey Mere 40lber.
We began to get results as our knowledge increased and – it must be said – from the sheer amount of effort we put in. We used to get proper winters in those days, ice cold winters, and its a wonder that we didn’t die of exposure at times, being stick-thin and without the modern clothing of today. I would frequently be in pain from the cold – all day long! But nothing would deter us and we would often outfish our elders. I remember one particularly good day when I had taken eleven fish after walking miles around the various bays and inlets, wobbling deadbaits. I was asked by one of the adults ” “ad enyfing” when I told him what I”d caught he wouldn’t believe me. He, of course, had sat in one spot all day with a herring suspended below his bung. I didn’t argue with him, and I trudged off home as the frosty gloom of the winters evening set in.
All the while I would read each week of the captures of my heroes in the Angling Times: Dennis Pye, Frank Wright and others would be pictured with huge fish from the Norfolk Broads, and who could ever forget THAT picture of Peter Hancock with his forty pounder taken in front of the summerhouse on Horsey? However the Broads might just as well have been on the Moon as far as I was concerned: I had no way of getting there so we had to be content with our lot and make the best of it. And we did. Eventually I was rewarded with my first twenty, a fish of 22lbs when I was seventeen.
TO BE CONTINUED…
