Tackling the weeds

This is an old post from a few months ago which I had forgotten to put up!

(To my shame this is not uncommon, there are currently about 30 posts which I started but didn’t get around to finishing and sticking up on this blog. I scribble my doggerel easily enough, it is the posting bit I find so hard. Must do better!)

While I do love my coarse fishing, the seemingly never-ending battle with aquatic vegetation in all its forms does take away some of the enjoyment for me. As a game fisher I simply motor the boat to a clear patch of the lough to get away from the rafts of weeds but when I am perched on the edge of a canal chasing silvers or tench there is little I can do but try to clear a patch for me to fish in. Early on in my coarse fishing career I bought a weed cutting tool and a hook, both of which proved to be partially successful. They are small and easy to use and a little time spent hurling the twin pronged lead weight or slashing with the hook does work – to a degree. I could cut the weeds but it required a bit of time to clear a swim. The major drawback though was that these tools just cut the weeds, they did not rake the bottom. Some disturbance is created but nothing significant, certainly not as much as I’d like.

Raking a swim was something I had read about and, as a fly fisher at heart, immediately dismissed all that splashing, dragging and stirring as the work of the devil. How could any self-respecting fish hang around when all that commotion was going on? Any trout or salmon would be in the next parish seconds after the raking started. It is only since I have grown into the coarse game that I see my preferred target species, the tench, view such shenanigans very differently. Clouds of muck raked up from the bottom are exactly what the tench love, indeed that is how they feed. I have watched superb underwater footage of tench as they root about in the silt, filtering out the food and dispelling the unwanted goo. A well raked swim should present a veritable smorgasbord for not just tench but all the other fishes in the canal. I was finally convinced that I badly required a proper implement for the job. I needed a rake.

This is where my inherent Scottish meanness comes into play. The typical design of a weed rake is a pair of rake heads joined back-to-back with a throwing rope attached. New metal rakes are expensive items and the thought of parting with so much hard earned cash on something I would then hurl into a canal just didn’t feel right. I needed a more cost effective option, so off down to the Sunday market I went. The last Sunday of each month sees a flea market in the main carpark in Castlebar burst into life. Donkey jacketed traders from all over the area come to try and sell the usual range a dodgy tools, parts for tractors, old bits of furniture and any other tat which they can turn a Euro or two out of. Sure enough, when I turned up with the rest of Mayo’s bargain hunters on the last Sunday of January I found two very, very rusty rakes at a small and gloriously untidy stall. One was bigger than the other but that didn’t bother me so I negotiated a reasonable price (€8 for the pair). There was a derisory attempt by the seller to squeeze more out of me but we both knew he was already pushing his luck and we ended up shaking hands under a leaden sky as the first drops of rain fell on that January sabbath.

Back at home I examined my bargains in detail. Rusty, bent and warped (the rakes, not me), they should still be able to preform the lowly duties I expected of them, so I set about my task with gusto. Off came both wooden poles first, then it was time to get busy with the angle grinder. Suitably attired in visor and ear muffs, the old rivets heads were quickly ground off, so all I had to do was tap out the rest of them with a hammer and drift. Next I set about straightening both rake heads as best I could. I didn’t aim for perfection here, just a little bashing with a hammer to get some semblance matching flatness. Happy enough with that I next cleaned both rakes a little, getting the worst of the rust off anyway with a wire brush. One of the wooden poles was salvageable but the other was bent and twisted, so I cut that one up for firewood.

To fix everything together I got a mate with a welder to join them. Out came my drill again and a new hole was made for the rope to fix on to. All I had to do now was tie on a length of stout cord, knotted to give me some grip for throwing, and the job was done. I know the end result looks rubbish but I don’t care, I do not require much from this contraption.

When I was reading up about weed rakes there was general agreement that they needed to be heavy so they could be thrown a good distance out into a lake. Stainless steel was the recommended material, for the obvious reasons. I am afraid there was no way I was going to part the with €64 for ONE stainless steel rake (as quoted by a national hardware chain), never mind two of them! No, this rake of mine would only be slung 5 or 6 yards out into a canal about one metre deep, so it did not have to be overly hefty in the hand. Furthermore, I am perfectly willing to accept my creation lacks any degree of atheistic beauty but it should do the job of stirring up the silty bottom of the Royal canal and that’s all I want from it. At the back of my mind is the knowledge that all manner of nasty stuff has been lobbed into the canals over the decades meaning there is a damn good chance the rake may become irretrievably snagged in use. Even I will won’t mourn the loss of a rusty old rake if that happens.

Of course, Helen is seriously unimpressed with me bringing home more ‘rubbish’ at a time when we are trying so hard to downsize. A skip in the driveway the other week was testament to our combined efforts to clear out the house and garden, efforts which I am roundly accused of de-railing. Isn’t it amazing how partners fail to understand the dire necessity to own rusty garden implements for chucking into a canal? Anyway, I am now banned from further jaunts to the Sunday market (what she doesn’t know is my mate Ben goes along there every month, so he can look out for treasure on my behalf).

I am now prepared for the summer when those enigmatic bronze fish start to grub around the bottom of the canal and lakes in earnest. Last year flew past with little time for me to do much fishing at all but I did manage to scout out the midlands canals and have a good idea where there a few tench. Funny how some stretches hold tench while other, very similar looking, are devoid of them. Depth is uniformly two and a half feet along the whole of the Royal so that does not seem to be a factor (the Grand Canal on the other hand does vary in depth quite a bit along its length). Food availability, angling pressure, temperature differences and a hundred other factors could all explain why tench are absent or abundant. My hopes for 2024 are built on concentrating on the handful of areas that I know hold these slimy, red-eyed wonders. I know that May is the premier month for Tinca’s but I’ll be flat out ghillieing on the western lakes for the whole of that month, so I’m pinning my hopes on some balmy summer evening trips instead.

A lake within easy driving distance is also on my list for a good raking. It is very deep, even close to the edge, and the soft bottom is covered in luxuriant growth. To date, only the float has provided any degree of success with small roach, hybrids and perch, but it is hard work with 15 feet of water and trees right around me. You would think this was a venue which screamed leger and feeder fishing, but both have been useless. I suspect that’s because my end gear sinks into the weeds and muck, out of sight or smell of the fish. I am now thinking that raking close in might clear a swim sufficiently well to allow a well placed feeder to succeed. This lake looks very ‘tenchy’ to me but I’ve never heard of one being caught. Indeed, I have yet to haul out anything bigger than a pound in weight from this lake. Who knows, maybe the rake will be my secret to unlocking some monster tench fishing.

Then there is a small and rarely fished tench pond in Leitrim I have read about but not fished so far, mainly due to it being choked with weeds. I can find little in the way on concrete information, but I expect a few smaller tench as this is a very small fishery. I also have not one, but two potential tench lakes very close by here in Mayo if local folklore is to be relied upon. Neither one is ever fished, both are heavily overgrown and access to the banks would challenge David Livingston, but I’m going to try them out anyway. My newly created rake will soon be deployed in earnest, that’s for sure.

I am acutely aware that of actual fishing there has been next to none for many months on this blog. That sad sate of affairs has begun to change as from now on as I have moved from full time employment in the midlands to a part-time role and semi-retirement. I expect to be uncommonly rusty in all codes but I’m sure it will all come back to me once I start to spend time on the water.