Woody’s Angle – Happy New Season!

Jeff Woodhouse

Jeff caught his first fish at the age of five, a mackerel from a Torquay fishing boat. That was the starting point 55 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.

The Drought

AT OUR REGULAR meeting in January, John Sutton, our region’s Fisheries and Biodiversity Manager at the EA, said that we needed three months of above seasonal-average rainfall. Clearly we have not had this and now the Thames area is looking at a hosepipe ban in April as a precaution against other measures that might be taken later. I doubt that we’ll see stand-pipes in the street, but even that cannot be guaranteed.

Flooded Fields – we missed them completely this year

In addition to it being a very dry period, it has been one of the coldest winters for some years even though temperatures haven’t been low enough to cause major freezing of the rivers. In fact there was only one day when I went on a lake only to find it was covered by a thin layer of cat-ice. It did melt after only an hour or so, but caused problems as remaining ice flows drifted across the lake tugging at the lines and causing the alarms to drive me mad.

The last winter I can remember like this was 1997 only then it did get really cold. So cold that the Thames froze over almost completely, leaving just a small channel in the middle for the ducks and geese. I well remember buying iceberg lettuce and porridge oats for the swans (ok, call me soft) on our local pit who’d had one cygnet the previous year. The fishing was off for weeks, more than a month even, but it was fairly short-lived.

When the summer weather eventually came it started well, but by the start of the season we were having severe downpours. I can remember being in hospital that first weekend of the river season and seeing the rain coming down like stair-rods (“Il pleut comme vache quel pisse,” as the French say) through the window and thinking that perhaps I was better off in hospital, in a perverse sense! Despite all of that rain it did little to the general water table in the hills.

It’s this water table that is important to us in the Thames Valley. It’s the slow trickle through the aquafers, down the Windsor anticline and seeping through the gravels into the Thames that keeps the river flowing strongly and continuously throughout the summer. Odd spells of heavy rain like we had then only cause flash-flooding and don’t sustain a long term level of water.

Anglers complain that even when the heavy rainfall arrives and flooding occurs that the sluices are opened up to run the water off as quickly as possible. They believe that because the water isn’t allowed to soak into the flood plain it’s another reason why the general level is very low for the rest of the summer and why the fishing is also poor. Believe me, by the time flood waters get to the river, IT’S TOO LATE!

Allowing it to flood the plains only serves to take some pressure off the main flow. The flood plains themselves do not hold any water since they comprise, around here, of mostly gravel. Any overfilled lakes near the river that are fed through the gravels will soon return to normal levels along with the river once the flood water recedes. All a heavy flood succeeds in doing is upsetting those celebrity sorts that live by the river in Bray and Windsor.

So we’ll have to wait to see what the summer brings this year. It will probably be very hard with slow flows and gin-clear water, but we anglers are now getting very used to that. Whatever happens, there is almost nothing we can do about it except preserve what little fresh water we have for drinking.

Back To The Stillwaters

With the close season upon us again, it’s a welcome chance to get back on the stillwaters. Particularly those that are well stocked and set in pleasant surroundings. I don’t want fish that are too easy to catch, but it’s nice to know that the ones I will visit will produce some fish to wipe away the last vestiges of the winter blues.

Now some might well say, “Ah, he’s fishing commercials.”, but you couldn’t be more wrong. These are club waters that are well managed and normally a delight to fish and only available if you join the club. Not that there’s anything wrong with buying a day ticket on a commercially run water because for me there are only two types of stillwater, good ones and bad ones.

Judge me, is this a commercial carp or not?

Bad ones I would define as having no aspect whatsoever, just simple bare-banked holes, no reeds, no overhanging bushes, a thousand-and-one senseless rules, and only one species of fish stocked. That’s right, I don’t like fishing those either, but more from the point of view that I don’t feel welcome on them, even though my money is. I saw one last year, they had toilets and there was a mobile cafe in the car park, but I’d be damned if I’d want to wet a line in that place.

Many of you have said in the forum how you’d like to see more regulations, more training, more policing of commercials to eradicate the bad ones. Fine, but who is going to pay for it? You, is the answer and yet so many of ‘you’ already say that the rod licence is too expensive and that the EA don’t do a good enough job already. Yet ‘you’ want to place an even greater burden on the EA without any extra financing, because these bad owners won’t pay for it. Rest assured!

However, there are some commercially run waters (that simply means, privately owned and run for a profit) that are excellent and occasionally are worth the £ 10 or so per day they charge to fish them. They have been well planned from the outset leaving plenty of bankside vegetation in place, stock a few different of species to give a balance, car parking and access is easy even for disabled people. It’s wrong to put these in with the poorly thought out and ill-managed ones.

In fact the ones I will be targeting are run by clubs and I feel sure they will provide us (Connor and myself) with a lot of pleasure. This year we’ll be making it a little different again, perhaps trying the short pole and whip methods. Last year we fished with floats and Avon rods and I like giving the old centrepin a good thrash on occasions, but it’s the variety of different methods that can be used on these waters that give them the interest.

So, I’m looking to start the new season, 1st of April is the start for me, and way back in the dark ages it was celebrated as new year’s day, with hope and a different viewpoint yet again.

Knock, Knock, think my way, or else!

Speaking of ‘commercials’ though, what is slowly but surely eating away at my passion for angling is that these days, anglers seem so eager to criticise each other. It’s not just as simple as “My dear chap, I don’t use that method/fish that venue/use that rig, but if you are perfectly happy and confident with it, then fine.” The new attitude appears to be far less tolerant than in the past and there is no greater case in point than towards those who fish commercials, like “They must have no sense, whereas I have.”

There was perhaps always a little animosity between what came to be known as specimen anglers and matchmen. It probably amounted to no more than the specimen anglers may have had access to a water that the matchmen didn’t and specimen anglers didn’t like the idea of fishing for money as it seemed like greed. and the art was cast aside in the interests of more fish. However, those that crossed from one to the other soon learned that there was a fine art to be learned from all sides.

What has happened in recent years, it appears to me, is that an internecine war seems to have erupted between different styles of fishing and the targeting of different species, whether carp, barbel, pike or other fish species. It even comes down to isolating the attitude of individual anglers for even having voiced an opinion, let alone cast a line in a different way. The debate, more an attack in reality, isn’t so much about the disagreement, but soon rallies on how evil and despicable that person is and how he should be banned completely from the sport.

It’s not surprising also, that others join in on the attack like a pack of animals, after all this is the tribal nature of the human being. An angler on the attacking side feels secure that he is amongst many similar thinking anglers, that is until the topic changes and he finds himself on the receiving end. It’s all very silly and rather childish, but moreover it really is killing my enthusiasm for a sport I love and one which I feel we need each other now more than ever.

So if I have one appeal to make to you all at the start of this new fishing year, it is to learn to be more tolerant of each other and your different ways of angling. There are some, no doubt, that could do with a little education, I’m thinking of litterbugs in particular, and there are some practices in need of modification perhaps, but that can be achieved without humiliating or belittling someone. Don’t knock something new or someone for trying it if you yourself don’t fully understand it.

That’s my rant over and with that I will wish you all a happy new licence season whatever your species and however you wish to sit by the water and enjoy our sport.

Tight lines everyone.