A strange sort of a day

Arm update: pain has reduced markedly when at rest, but any movement brings stabs of pain in the shoulder and/or elbow. My wrist ‘locks’ sometimes for no apparent reason and is sore for a few hours after that happens. On the whole though, there is an improvement.

Having gone through a rough few weeks I figured I should treat myself to a bit of fishing. Thinking long and hard about the venue, I plumped for a small, secluded tench lake I know.  My main reason for choosing this spot was that I could fish there with minimal gear, thus reducing any strain on my damaged arm. That seemed to be a reasonable decision based on the knowledge available to me, but it turned out to be ‘problematical’ shall we say.

My previous, highly detailed plans for spring tench fishing had turned to dust, so this would be my first session of the year. Although this is primarily a tench lake there are other species present. I have caught roach, rudd and bream there before as well as the obligatory tiny perch. It is a water which screams ‘PIKE!’ but I have not tried for the toothy fish there. Perhaps I will come back here in the winter and fish dead bait?

Regular readers know that being organised is not one of my habits, but even for me locating any of my tackle has become a nightmare since we started renovations in the house. New plumbing and floors in every room meant we had to empty each room in succession, then repeat the process multiple times as the work progressed. Work is still ongoing, so I’ll wait until we have completed the last of the decorating before I round up all the fishing gear and organise it in one place. At one point there was fishing and fly-tying gear in no less than 5 different rooms. I figure that has been reduced to three rooms now, but I could be wrong with that bold assumption. For now, I had to do some detective work to find rods, reels and tackle but I gathered up sufficient odds and ends for a session. Ironically, I unearthed my beloved Korum chair, but it is too heavy for me to use right now, so it stayed behind and an old but very light rucksack/stool came with me.

Shooting pains in my arm when at the wheel are a given these days, and these becoming more frequent as the journey to Leitrim wore on. Taking my left hand off the wheel and allowing the arm to dangle straight down for a few minutes helped and with only light traffic on the road I made it to the tackle shop in good time. Maggots were purchased, a pint of mixed to be precise. A chat with the lads in the shop then I was back on the road again. In the time I was in the tackle shop a trailer had become detached from a jeep at the busy roundabout at the bridge, causing a huge snarl up which delayed me for a while.

On arrival I parked up at the usual spot outside a lonesome farmhouse. The west of Ireland is still dotted with these relics despite the chronic housing shortage. Often occupied by an unmarried farmer or an elderly widow woman, the peeling paintwork, dusty curtains and weed infested driveway single these abodes out from the rest of the houses. Sadness pervades these dwellings, each harbouring stories of loss or neglect. This one is inhabited, I have seen the green curtains twitch before as I parked up, but I have never actually seen the owner. Sometimes there are cattle in the field across from the house which may be owned by the curtain twitcher.

Both rods were already stowed in an ancient quiver which I hoisted on to my back along with the rucksack before setting off through the long grass to the stand, which is hidden from the road, but I knew was behind a small grove of alders. On approach through the long grass, it quickly became evident there was a problem: the old wooden stand had collapsed! Leaving my gear on the bank, I carefully ventured out on the remains to see if I could still fish. Yes, the bit that was left was stable and so I set up my tackle and fished from the narrow structure. This was far from comfortable and I also had the niggling worry that if I did hook a good tench the wooden stakes in front of me would be a nightmare to negotiate as I lad the fish to my net.

I’ve been thinking a lot about my float fishing. I have a tendency to fish very light, in particular the float being the smallest I feel I can get away with. That comes from a belief that the less resistance from the float the better and shy biting fish will be less spooked and so my hook ups should increase. Over the winter I have been reappraising this approach and am now being more open minded about float dimensions and thus overall rig design. I think my ‘lighter is better’ tactic works to some degree, but it obviously limits me in terms of distance. I dismissed this in the past, telling myself that with my poor eyesight I could not see the float tip if I cast more than three rod lengths out, so fishing close in was what I limited myself to with the float rod. Anything further out was targeted with my feeder rod.

For this session I decided to use a much bigger waggler to start with and fish further out than I usually do on this lake. I have seen tench rolling about twenty yards out in the past so that was where I started with the float. Being a relatively calm day, I was in fact able to see the float and my only issue was being able to catapult some ground bait accurately at that distance. My knowledge of ballistics is zero, so my guess that increasing the mass of my groundbait ball would add distance may have been incorrect and anyway, any super-sized balls disintegrated in flight. I did manage to hit the target often enough though, despite spurts of pain from my elbow when firing the cat. No pain, no gain, right?

Careful plumbing showed there was a small but discernible drop off where I wanted to fish so I adjusted my float to allow the bait to lie on the bottom. I added my bulk shot close to the hook link as I wanted to get the bait down quickly to try and avoid any silvers in the area. I was fishing with an eleven footer and a six pound running line with a similar strength hook link to a size 12 spade end.

I had also brought along a feeder rod, this time the 14 foot Agility. This was planned to be used to hurl a heavy feeder well out into the lake to see if I could contact the shoals of bream which are out there. This is very hit and miss as I can’t pre-bait here (it is too far from home). Irish bream are ravenous feeders, and you need to chuck in loads of ground bait to attract and then hold them in one spot. Instead, I was hoping that since this is a smallish lake one or two cruising bream might stumble upon my feeder and hook bait. Previous experience has shown this to be a low yield method of bream fishing, but it was worth a go and who knows, there might be a really big fish out there in the green depths.

When packing I spent ages looking for my tench reels, but they are buried somewhere in the no-mans-land of the front room. In the end I gave up and grabbed a wonky old Shaky with a dodgy bail arm for the feeder rod. I recognised the line on it as some fairly recent six-pound mono so it would be OK for what I needed today. This 2500 sized reel looked way to small on the 14-footer, but it would just have to do today. Those missing reels will turn up one day, I just pray that happens before the end of the season! 

I’ve become very boring when it comes to feeders. I habitually clip on a maggot feeder, stuff it full of grubs and chuck it out with little more thought going into it. It is not that I don’t own a wide selection of different feeder designs, I have lots to pick from. No, it is laziness on my part, and this is something I need to address. I am also trialling a completely different feeder rig, one that my mate Ian showed me. He is a far better coarse angler than I could ever hope to be and over the years he developed a simple tangle free paternoster feeder rig. Today would be the first time I tried it and I was excited to see if it would work for me.

I use ten-pound nylon line for this rig; I find it is stiff enough without being too obvious to the fish. It is basically a twizzled boom with long ends. Check out YouTube for endless videos on making a twizzled boom, it is so much easier to see this being done than me trying to explain it. The main point for this rig is to leave long ends. The twizzled section should be roughly 6 inches in length. One leg becomes the part which joins to your running line by an overhand loop or a barrel swivel (whatever you prefer). The bottom leg is longer, say about 18 inches, and it ends in a link swivel so you can attach your chosen feeder. Your hook length is attached by a loop to loop on the end of the twizzled boom and altering the length will regulate how close your hook bait is to the feeder. The advantage of this rig is it will foul the mainline less when casting, something which has been a problem for me, especially when going for distance.

The sun came out and the wind blew hard from my left as I fished. Casting the heavy float was easy, the only issue I was having was the float tended to move on the line despite the stops. That meant I was checking and adjusting my depth frequently. A big fish rolled on the surface a few yards from me, probably a tench but I could not make out any detail so it could have bee a bream. The margins were stuffed full of pin fry, a great sign for the future. Because the last five yards of the stand were missing, I had to try and reach my favourite spots tight to the lily pads while at the same time controlling the line so it did not get blown into the reeds which grew closer to me on my right. This didn’t always work out and a couple of casts had to be retrieved through the greenery. Thankfully, I got away with this without breaking. Three hours slipped by without so much as a nibble so in the end I decided to call it a day and edged back off my precarious perch. On the way across the field I lost my balance and tumbled down into the wet grass. Somehow I avoided the cow pats but got wet and mucky. Picking myself up, I felt lucky I hadn’t landed on the bad arm or done nay other damage. I guess that fall summed up my trip to this lake today. As I climbed over the green metal style at the road I thought to myself, that was disappointing!

Car loaded, I set off homewards but as I approached Carrick again the idea came to me to try a few casts on Blackrock pond. It was only ten minutes from where I was and access is easy. I’ve fished the pond once before and failed to catch any tench but there were a few silvers around. After a dismal blank this morning I wanted to see if I could at least get one or two bites.

It was the work of a few minutes to set everything up again and get both rods in the water. I took off the large waggler and replaces it with one of my normal sized ones. This of course limited my ability to cast far but it felt so good to be back to my usual set up. We are all creatures of habit aren’t we. With only an hour to spare this would be a bit of a challenge. I had found some groundbait in the back of the car so three balls were swiftly made up a hurled in and I loose fed some maggots for good measure. The wind was all over the place, sometimes in my face, then behind me or gusting from any quarter. The minutes ticked by as I grimly fished on, cast after cast, maggots flying through the air from my cat, winding in and refilling the feeder – it was all go. Checking the time on my phone, I could only spare another ten minutes when thankfully the float bobbed, and I lifted into a wee roach. A second followed three casts later and I rounded off with a perch.

It had been a tough day with very little action, but I proved to myself that I can do a bit of fishing as I recover. That is important to me as I have been a bit down since I injured my arm for the second time. The thought that I might be months without doing any fishing kept niggling at me and I had been putting today off in case I found out that it was just too painful to fish. Even if all I am doing is catching a few silvers at least I will be outside and in nature. I firmly believe that is as healing as any drugs or treatments.

Despite an intensive search this evening, there is still no sign of that bag with my tench reels in it! Lord only knows where I have chucked that. So, what’s next? I will reduce my gear even further on my next outing and fish with only one rod. By ditching the feeder rod and associated gear I will save a lot of weight. I am now plotting a day in the midlands doing some canal fishing, probably on the royal canal. I’ll keep you posted…………….