JEFF WOODHOUSE
Jeff caught his first fish at the age of five, a mackerel from a Torquay fishing boat. That was the starting point 53 years ago and the sight of that living silvery image coming up from the invisible depths had him hooked for life. Since then he has practised virtually every type of fishing, although not always successfully.
He doesn’t just like fish, he has a love affair with them, in his living room, in his garden and at times, in his freezer. Lately he has spent more time either running clubs or assisting them to become successful. Now he admits to being too old to chase monsters, he’s happier getting as much fun as possible out of what’s before him.
In this monthly series Jeff indulges the rebel within himself, often controversial and always trying to think differently about the usual trends in fishing.
It’s often nice meeting other FISHINGmagic members and the other evening I met Jim Townsend who lives close to me. I’d invited him down for an evening’s fishing at The Compleat Angler, but no sooner had I done so than I almost regretted it. No fault on Jim’s part, of course, but the river was in a really sick condition because of the drought.
At this time of year the flow should be between 25 and 30 cumecs (cubic metres or 10,000 litres per second), but instead, I was told by an EA officer last week that it is down to around 15. You can see the effect from the picture of the centre section of the weir, those steps should still be a wall of white water. Another week or so and there will have to be restrictions of boat traffic going through the locks, either in terms of the times they can use the locks or the fact that a lock will have to be full of boats before it is used.
Well, I met Jim just before 8pm and I showed him the various few swims, but explained that I would pin my hopes on the tail end of some flow coming over the near side of the weir. This is normally a real race of 80 yards and more, but right now it’s just 15-20 yards. Anyway that was where Jim set up for with his quiver rod and my worry was would he catch anything?
I hate inviting people down and then they catch nothing. It’s so disappointing for me apart from what they must be feeling, however, we’re all accomplished anglers and should expect blanks from time to time. In this case, we were rewarded after two hours or so when Jim struck into a fish that took him on a real run (or should that be ‘reel run’?) so much so that it was soon obvious it was a barbel.
When he got it to the side I netted it and held it in the water for a couple more minutes whilst he got set up with the scales and weigh sling. It took the needle around to 9lbs 2ozs so not only was the target fish caught, but a good sized one at that and he’s been struggling for two years to pull one out of St. Patrick’s Stream. It was returned safely after a little concern because of the low flow, but it was quite strong after being rested before lifting it out of the water in the first place.
Anyway, congratulations Jim, but if the good Lord could see his way to letting me catch one too just once in a while, I’d be ever so grateful. You guessed it, always the bridesmaid never the bride, I blanked again and yet I was fishing just 5 or 6 yards away from Jim’s bait.
Mouth damage to carp and why rod and pole names send out the wrong message
I recently wrote to a leading tackle manufacturer regarding the naming or poles and other rods aimed at the commercial carp fishers. We’ve had this topic come up many times in the forums on FISHINGmagic, names like ‘The Terminator’, ‘The Exorcist’, ‘Carp Animal Tamer’, ‘Bully Boy’ tops, ‘Baggin Machine’, ‘BeastMaster’ and so on. I think it’s not only quite unnecessary, but it also sends out the wrong message to some anglers who are a little more mentally challenged (to put it nicely) than most.
I thought for once of writing to a manufacturer for his thoughts and sent out a letter to Middy Tackle chairman, David Middleton. I picked his name after seeing one of his adverts and wasn’t singling him out in any way. In the letter I showed these pictures of the damage that can occur to a carp’s mouth, but lets’ just talk about that.
The damage you see was done to some of the fish in a small lake where matchfishing with poles is common, and using strong elastics. When Stuart (whose pictures they are) asked the EA for advice they couldn’t put their finger on what caused it. Was it braid, was it superfine monofilament? When Stuart asked me, I suggested it was bullying tactics and here’s why.
Our club has a couple of small lakes, one of which is matchfished and even loaned out to visiting clubs, but we don’t experience this level of damage. This is mainly, I believe, because most anglers are told when the carp goes on a run, dip the tip of the pole under the water and the carp comes back with less effort. Why this should be I don’t know entirely, but I’ve expressed the opinion before in the forum that maybe the carp doesn’t mind being pulled through the water (level), yet he objects to being pulled out of the water (upwards).
Sounds crazy? Maybe, but one thing is for sure – it isn’t bolt rigs and hair-rigged baits on braid that’s causing the problem. Look at the carp with the boily, the hook is firmly in the front of it’s lip with the braided hook link nowhere near any flesh, exactly where you expect to find it 99.9% of the time when you use a hair-rigged bait.
The reason for this is when the carp sucks in the bait it travels to the back of the mouth (as normal) and when the hook pricks the fish, somewhere around the front lip, it bolts and drives the hook home there. Not deep inside the mouth as you might sometimes find with a hook-mounted bait and that is what causes the problem as the line, be it braid or monofilament. The line gets trapped in the corner scissors of the mouth and with the extra pressure, especially from 20 elastics and power top twos, put on from above, cuts and tears the flesh.
Yet many commercial carp fisheries ban hair rigs, boilies, bolt rigs and braid. I cannot for the life of me understand that, but then again I cannot understand why they still insist that anglers dip their nets for 10 seconds in some filthy, smelly 4-week old solution in a bid to protect their fish stocks. It achieves absolutely nothing. It’s not fresh enough, it’s not long enough and it just doesn’t work, but you try telling them.
Back to bullying – I was recently sent a newsletter from another club, a good club too, and in it there was a write-up by their match secretary: “After fart arsing about with it for about 10 minutes I managed to land it, but only about 6lb. It was time to up the elastic from 14 to 20 if I wanted to land them quicker.” I cannot claim to be a marvellous match pole angler, but I can (hand on heart) say that I have never used an elastic stronger than 12 and I have never played a carp (certainly not as small as 6lbs) for anything like 10 minutes. That is except for a 91/2 lb-er that I happened to have foul-hooked in the tail, but even that came to the net in about 10 minutes on a 12 elastic.
I put it to you that this is what causes the damage to carp’s mouths – BULLYING.
Mr Middleton was kind enough to give me a reply in which he claimed that the names merely reflect the strength the pole has and that all anglers care for their fish. Personally, I think that better names conveying strength can be found and as for all anglers caring for their fish, well maybe they would like to think so, but I have seen so many that fall well short of the mark. Not just amongst those learning either, very often it’s the die-hards and sometimes anglers whose brain cells are ‘out to lunch’ or hypocrites, might be a better word.
At least Mr Middleton promised to look at the possibility of putting a leaflet with all his products explaining how to care for carp. I hope he does, but I now appeal to all manufacturers, all consultants (including Daiwa’s Bob Roberts), and the press (including Angling Times’ Richard Lee), let’s have a campaign now to stop these silly names and to start educating anglers in better methods of playing fish rather than just how to bag-up (and you’ll never know how much I hate that term also) on the latest bait/method.
