| 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. |
GOOD NEWS WEEK This is ‘Good News Week’ as the old song goes, but the lyric ‘Someone’s dropped a bomb somewhere,’ was me, in a sense. Remember my piece on the death of a tackle shop, that being Marsh Tackle and Country Sports in High Wycombe? Well, now I’m very pleased and relieved to say, it’s no longer closing. I had a very nice friendly phone call from Roy Hawes the owner, which I probably didn’t deserve, and he explained to me that the deal with the restaurant man had fallen through. So, Roy has decided, after selling off lots of his existing stock at truly bargain prices, to restock and carry on. I really am pleased for both him and the anglers here in High Wycombe and surrounding districts. For Roy, it was his hobby. His plant hire business is thriving, I even saw one of his diggers on a news report on TV the other day. The skip hire business he bought about ten years ago he has built up into a real going concern and all credit to him for it. In fact, a friend and I were working on a film set in some private grounds the other week and there was one of Roy’s skips there. They’re everywhere! So as I had said, he doesn’t need to earn a living from his tackle shop, he’s a millionaire already and this is simply his hobby. Just as long as it turns over sufficient to pay the staff and a little left over for a drink, he’s happy. I do have to say that their maggots are second to none in the area! The shop will remain in Downley, High Wycombe, for the time being and next year he hopes to move into slightly smaller premises. So he is downsizing, which makes good economic sense, but hopefully this will allow the business to continue to serve the local community. So I didn’t get the story wrong so much as events have changed the course of his decision and I really am pleased. I tell you what Roy, when you move into the new shop, the first bottle of bubbly is on me and none of that Asti stuff either. Good luck for the future! A pleasant day on the club water I spent a very pleasant day on Saturday on one of our club’s small lakes. I was a member of another club 10 years ago that then had the licence on it, but they never looked after it, always full of litter and camp fires where tyres from a nearby dump were regularly burned. Two years ago the club dissolved and this club I belong to acquired the licence.
Boy is it nice now. We’ve reconstructed the swims, dragged a lot of the garbage out (including some tyres), and we’ve stocked it with a good variety of fish. There’s bream in there to at least 91/2 lbs and someone suggested 15lbs, but I’ve not had this confirmed by our head bailiff and I haven’t seen any that big. There’s also tench and crucians as well a roach, rudd and perch. It’s the bream, though, that Barry Edney has been targeting and the picture is of him with a 7lbs 7ozs fish taken a few weeks ago, but just before I arrived he slipped one back in that he says was spot on 8lbs. Anyway, on Saturday I thought I’d try to catch him up with a secret little session, but they weren’t playing, just swimming around close to the surface probably getting ready to spawn. I tried our usual method of sweetcorn under a float, but that didn’t work at all. I put a sleeper rod out for the small stock of carp with two mini Maple-8 boilies from a handful that the very kind Mr. Marsden gave me at Clattercote and that took two bream. Incidentally Graham, I’ve now run out of those boilies and would it be cheeky of me to scrounge some more off you (hehe!) Well, it’s not the cost it’s what he does with them first. Some sort of ritual involving rolling up the right leg of his overtrousers, putting on a bait apron, bearing his chest and then blessing them, but why question it when it seems to work? (And you promised you wouldn’t give away my secrets! – Graham).
Back to the plot and my best fish went 7lbs 121/2 ozs, so Barry is still in front. I didn’t take a picture of either fish because the time it would have taken to set up didn’t seem fair on them as they both seemed pretty exhausted to begin with. Both swam off okay after holding them the right way up for a minute or so, an important point when releasing bream at this time of year, I’ve found. Another incident was when a fox walked nonchalantly across the opposite bank 30 yards away. He got into one of the swims, sat down and looked across as if to see what I was doing. That was worth a picture I thought and I reached behind for the camera, turned my head away for a second and when I looked back he was moving slowly away. Another incident involved two young emperor dragonflies. I was amazed by how territorial they can be and these two obviously wanted to claim the same area of the lake in front of me. It ended in a clash where the jaws of one were clenched firmly around the thorax of the other and was carried away, one alone returned. As one chap put it on a ‘Just Fishing’ programme, “Nature is neither kind nor cruel, just blindly indifferent.” It’s those kind of scenes that make fishing worthwhile. Superstitious nonsense? For many this will be “Good news week” after a 90 day lay-off from the rivers. I hope you enjoy this season, but I won’t be in such a hurry to join you on opening day. For one, I don’t feel the urgent need to wet a line in the river and secondly, it’s too early for the barbel yet. Also, you can say this is superstitious nonsense, but the phases of the moon are wrong until late in the month. I might, however, do a little river carping sometime soon in our club’s narrow little river. Last time I tried though, I took two light rods of 1  When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission, which supports our community.
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