Forest Grumps

Feeding the neighbours sheep

Since we moved into the Cottage a little over two years ago we have got to know the woods around us very well. The diversification is good; some heathland, some deep woods, some light woodland and some estate park with larger trees and open aspects. There is a grand house, an old castle, a farm, a hop field and a small meandering river. There are footpaths, sheep paths, rabbit paths and even the odd deer run or two. There are uphill paths and (obviously) downhill paths – there’s even the odd level path!

The deep woods are predominantly sweet chestnut – many areas around Kent and Sussex are, their long, coppiced trunks ideal for hop farms - but there are two or three marvellous beech groves, some pine (used for growing and selling on), lots of oak and a remarkably ancient pollarded hornbeam. Being an old estate, there are copper beeches and an old pinetum which even contains a Sequoia (Giant Redwood) which is not 100 yards from our front door. But there are woods of impenetrable thick hazel and silver birch, a haven for animals, plants and birds alike.

We have acres of bluebells coming up right now and in a week or two they will carpet our landscape with a misted haze of cerulean which, when lit by long beams of mote flecked early morning sunlight, turn the deep woods into an ocean rather than a forest – as if a colour blind artist has been at work on the canvas.

So fortunate are we living here that we have found it only too easy to share our walks with friends and family. We frequently have visitors for walks, meals, coffee or tea and barbeques. But always walks. There is so much to see and to discover and then to pass on. Children love to run through the glades, looking up “walking” sticks, finding the grass snakes, picking heather, wild flowers and even foraging for mouth reddening blackberries. The sheep are friendly and inquisitive and usually a squirrel or two (or three) will put in an appearance. If we are really very, very lucky, we might see a roe or fallow deer, or perhaps a fox.

My daughter, not really an outdoors sort of person, recently brought her husband and my only (so far) Grandchild, Eli-Lew to spend a day with us and as it happened, at that time, we were taking care of our neighbours sheep and hens. Having six Grandparents means that finding a different name for each can prove to be a minor difficulty, but I am known as “Grumps” suiting both my (very) occasional grumpy demeanour and the need for an alternative to “Granddad or Grandpa. Naturally, living in the woods, or forest, the additional appendage to my name seemed appropriate.

Grumps scaring children at the ancient Hornbeam

Eli is a little too young to appreciate all this, at a month less than 1 year old, but I hope he will come to appreciate the outdoors rather than sit in front of a computer or TV all day as the youngsters seem to in this time of rapid technological overkill. Phil, his father seems to enjoy being outside and has dabbled with chickens and vegetables and is a keen photographer – and anyone who would rather cycle to work than catch a bus – even in winter – can’t be too afraid of the big outdoors.

Still, we had an invigorating walk, fed the Jacob’s sheep, the hens and the bolshie bantam and picked up a few pinecones for firelighters. We didn’t get wet or cold, Eli-Lew didn’t fall out of his back pack and we went back home for a brew and some home made Herman Cake (A future blog post – perhaps?).

I wish we saw more people in the woods, I would love more people to get outside and encourage their children to explore. There is far more to see, enjoy and to educate than ever there could be in a shopping mall or in front of a Playstation.

Scotney Castle – where we live – fosters the walking ethic with Geo-cache, well laid footpaths, clear signage and maps and we hope to see more and more families roaming the estate and learning about the environment in which they live.

As Land Rover used to say in their wonderfully evocative commercial – One Life, Live It!

Chickens...The Serial

As I grow older I find it quite difficult to find things to do that I’ve not done before. That is to say, to do something I would find interesting and - dare I say it – stimulating. I have never kept chickens myself. I’ve looked after them for others, I have killed and plucked one or two and I have eaten many, as well as their eggs. But the owning and maintenance of chickens is something I have not had the opportunity to do, but have aspired towards for some time.

Gone are the days when buying something excites me, those times when I thought that spending my money on the latest DVD or CD would cheer me up or provide some interest in a busy, or tiring week. In fact, the opposite is true – I find it more delightful to not spend money. This is born somewhat of necessity, but it does add a frisson of challenge to try to do things cheaply, or better still, for no cost whatsoever. I am by no means a miser, but fun is fun, after all.

That was the requirement I set for myself when I first considered keeping chickens – it’s not as if eggs are the most expensive item in the shopping trolley, yet, at any rate – but if you add up the cost of feed, bedding, housing and all the protection, it could easily become an uneconomical enterprise and one that I would have trouble justifying. So the plan is to create a hen run and provide three or four chickens for minimum cost and maximum educational, culinary and entertainment value.

So, as a smallish coop had come my way, almost new and for a fifth of its original price, I considered that the time had come to commence the project. I have some old fencing posts lying around, and whilst these will not be tall enough when concreted in, they will at least be a base upon which to build. That is an additional requirement, I suppose; a coop and a run which can be extended. The other idea I have in mind is an extra portable run into which we can place the hens in various areas around the cottage in order to give them a varied feeding area as often as possible, whilst still sustaining maximum protection from the marauding rural foxes.

So, it has started. I don’t know when part two will appear and I cannot put a timescale to the overall operation because it will largely depend upon the availability of  low cost materials. But I will keep this blog updated and Tweet and Facebook details as and when they change. @SnowdogMikey is my Twitter address if you want to follow me….My Facebook page should be HERE.

Forty Minute Bread

Following on from my bread making blog, it isn’t always possible to have a spare few hours to allow bread to prove and prove again….but it isn’t necessary if you need something quick and tasty to compliment a soup or, say, cheese and Guinness!

That’s what Soda bread is for. Called damper bread in Australia, bannock bread in Scotland and soda or wheaten bread in Ireland, it is widely used as a quick alternative to yeast bread and can be delicious if eaten warm with some butter running off the top….

It’s basically a giant scone – the rising agent is bicarbonate of soda – there is no yeast involved, nor is it necessary to stretch the gluten of strong bread flour as plain flour is used. In fact, as little handling of the dough as possible is the best approach.

Yet a tasty, if somewhat denser bread is achieved – and in well under an hour…..here’s how…

Set your oven at around 200 degrees.

Put 500 grams of plain flour into a large mixing bowl and add 4 teaspoons of baking powder and a teaspoon of salt.

Pour in about 300 mils of buttermilk (this can be obtained from supermarkets but I usually add a couple of spoonfuls of plain yoghurt to milk) and mix without kneading too heavily – you just want to bring it together.

Shape it into a round and cut a cross into the top almost all the way through the loaf, then place onto a floured baking tray and bake for around 25 minutes or until it sounds hollow when you tap its bottom.

It’s even easier than bread.

There are also tasty variations – my favourite being the alternative to Soda Bread with Guinness and cheese – Guinness and cheese soda bread! Just substitute the buttermilk with Guinness and when you’ve shaped the dough into a round, plaster the top with grated mature cheddar – or any cheese that takes your fancy – it’s good to experiment. Then cut the cross and bake as before.

Or use wholemeal flour and a spoonful of black treacle for a dark, luscious and unctuous bread.

Then there’s walnut and cheese soda bread…..and so on until your imagination wilts…

Cheese Soda Bread and home made soup...

Bread Making

Why more people don’t make their own bread, I really don’t know. Can there ever be a better smell to pervade the house than that of fresh bread cooking? Even Estate Agents advocate baking bread and percolating coffee to enhance the ambience of a family home. Walking in through our back door when bread is baking – even though I know that the oven is on and the dough is in – is still as wonderful as it was the first time I ever made bread.

It seemed to me initially, that bread making was akin to alchemy – the purview of magicians, a world of wizardry – and that skills beyond my capability were necessary for the production of such a staff of life. I used to stand at bakers’ windows enviously eying the doughy delights of the bakers’ bounty (ok enough alliteration!) but I always chose the white bloomer, never being sufficiently brave to experiment with artisan wholemeal, six seed, granary or rye. It was only when the different types of grain had been explained to me that I began to try alternative loaves and an interest in baking my own was born.

Like many, I started with a Bread Machine, but unlike most I stayed with it because of a book my wife bought me which explained, not only the basic mechanics of the equipment but also the elementary alchemy behind the operation. This book also clarified the order in which the ingredients should be placed into the bucket and why. However, before the book was gifted I dabbled with the complete bread mixes that can be purchased at any supermarket and for a while had some great results, this kept me happy for a few months, especially as there were many different types of bread that could be made.



A bread-machine loaf

But I still thought I was missing out on something, a part of the overall magic was not yet present it was like going to Art College and doing painting by numbers - I neede to do more. That was when Frankie bought me the book – The Complete Bread Machine Cookbook by Sonia Allison – and I started to buy my own ingredients.



Of course, only three ingredients are needed for bread making – four if you include water - which brings me very neatly to another reason why I wanted to make my own loaves. The question occurred to me why bought bread contains so many ingredients and why the sell by date can be anything up to two weeks in the future. I understand the correlation between the two – that the ancillary additions increase the life of the loaf – what I don’t understand is our appetite for an unhealthy substitute for a hearty food, or our desire for a longer shelf life when bread is a relatively cheap commodity in the first place. Our propensity in this country to change the basic elements of our diet because it’s not cheap enough, pretty enough, long-lasting enough or sufficiently easy to cook is quite alarming.

I notice that a bagged loaf can be purchased in a supermarket chain for 40 pence and that it comes with a 10 day use by date, but healthier bread can be bought for £1 with a 5 day use by date. I think I’d rather pay an additional 60 pence for good health but perhaps I am simplifying the issue over much.

Be that as it may, I calculate that I can make a 500g loaf for as little as 36p should I wish to, so the price issue is pretty much eradicated. It takes a little of my time and I have the cost of the oven to factor in but they are mitigated by the enjoyment and the lovely smell in our cottage.

As for the use by date - well, we eat the bread as fresh as we can for up to 48 hours but by then it’s pretty much toast – literally. After that it’s bird food, and that’s it. Then I make another loaf. Simples.

So how to make your own loaf:

Take 500grams of Strong White bread flour and using you fingers mix in one packet (7g) of fast action dried yeast and one level teaspoon of fine salt. Make a well in the middle of the mix and gradually stir in, with a fork, between 300 and 400 mils of warm water. Using your hands blend the lot together and turn out onto a clean surface – you don’t need extra flour – just a clean work top. Touching the dough as little as possible with your fingers, stretch it with the heel of your hand, turn, pull back together and stretch again. It quickly becomes less sticky, and even if it’s too wet initially, it will smooth out into a soft malleable ball – just keep it moving. Remember you’re trying to stretch the gluten. After 10 minutes or so it should be quite stretchy and bouncy. Oil a bowl and put the rounded ball of dough into it, cover with a cloth and put it in a warmish spot. Leave it for an hour or two.

When it has doubled in size, pull the dough from the bowl and gently, with your finger tips, push it into the worktop for a minute and then bring it back into a rounded ball, curving it under itself with the sides of your hands. Flour a baking tray – I actually use a tray with baking parchment on top and flour that. Place your dough on top and put your cloth back on top while your oven heats up to its hottest temperature. When it has done so – turn it down to 190 and put the tray with the dough into the middle of the oven and bake for 20 – 25 minutes or until it sounds hollow when you tap the bottom.



A plaited loaf and some rolls for the freezer - all from the 500gram dough mix

That’s less than 300 words to bake your own bread. You need about 2 1/2 hours or so of your time, but you’re only actually doing something for 15 minutes of that time. I actually don’t need any more than 6 words to teach you how to make bread – Look It Up On You Tube – that will give you all you need to produce a delicious edible loaf – it may even inspire you further. Perhaps to experiment with different flours or to make rolls, pizza, nan bread or chapattis – the sky is the limit.

Give it a go.

Wild Garlic (reprised)

What can I tell you about wild garlic without appearing to be a nutritionist nerd, a gastronomic geek or a ranting rambler? Well not much because it is positively one of the tastiest, most versatile, and earliest free foods available.

Normally, you would look for the gorgeous green leaf in mid-March and early April, but it’s in February that it starts to produce its pungent Pandora’s Box of flavours and it’s in February – when the leaves are positively at their newest, just out of the ground – that they have the strongest flavour. Milder than garlic, but stronger than chives, wild garlic has many names: 'bear's garlic', 'devil's garlic', 'gypsy's onions', 'stinking Jenny' as well as ‘ramsons’ are just some that I’ve googled, but many nations and cultures have their own names for this wonderfully versatile plant.

Freshly picked….

                                                  

It can usually, though not always, be found by water of some kind or another, running or still and it can usually be detected nasally before visually, it has a smell that seems to displace all other fragrances around it. Later in April I have found beds of Garlic near the local river Bewl which have intermingled with bluebells and primroses, but the predominant fragrance is that of the garlic – it carries across the meadows for some distance if the wind is right.

Yet the leaves are only a part of the story. The roots are milder, more subtle and delicate and add a wonderful depth to soups, roasted vegetables and even Sunday joints of meat. The flowers can be added to salads, used to garnish the soups or placed in a vase on the table to add a wonderful smell to the dinner table over and above that of your lovingly cooked meal, like adding an additional sense of the overall flavour.

Please be aware though, that digging up wildflowers can be illegal, and it may also be irresponsible and anti-social – there’s enough for us all to share though, so think of others when you’re out foraging. I like to pick enough for one meal at a time, and in any case, picked garlic does not keep for very long at all. I’ve tried putting the leaves into a vase to keep but they’re gone within 24 hours really. As always food is much better as fresh as it can be.

There’s a very nice recipe here:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2011/apr/04/wet-wild-garlic-risotto-recipe

But there are so many other dishes that you can use wild garlic in; one of my favourites is roast chicken wrapped in garlic leaves. If you check back HERE, there’s further info on wild garlic soup from my previous blog which is also easy to make and delicious.

A mixed bed, but the predominant smell is garlic…….

             
Remember, be responsible when foraging and make sure you are certain of what you are picking, but please try some wild garlic this year – I’m sure you will enjoy it.

Don’t just do something – sit there!

This is another published article....I hope you like it....

When I was a kid, my father and I used to love the verbal antics of Stanley Unwin and the great Doctor Spooner. The latter was brought to fabulous fame by the late Ronnie Barker in a sketch by The Two Ronnies. My Dad and I spent hours in Unwin dialogue or inventing new Spoonerisms which would have us falling about on the carpet or giggling wildly in the streets of Germany, where I was brought up as a child. Much of the Germans’ strange views about the British may well have been brought about by my Father and I staggering down the streets of Hanover with tears in our eyes as a new phrase or expression tumbled out of our mouths. For some reason, the juxtaposition of syllables, words and phrases always seemed to be just the funniest thing in the world.

Doctor Spooner, particularly, was a favourite of mine and I still often chuckle at some of the reversed phrases that had me in stitches as a child. Some of his expressions have even made their way onto Birthday cards – ‘’No, no nurse I asked you to prick his boil!” or ‘’I’m sorry for the mix up Mr Smith, but apparently the Doctor said I should slip off your spectacles – my mistake!’’ My favourite original occurred when Dr Spooner was asked what he wanted for breakfast:

“Hot toated bust, my man, with my thanks.”

However, now that the years are creeping on I find that my childhood comes back to haunt me and Spoonerisms have slipped into my daily language at an alarming rate that Wogan would refer to as continuous Senior Moments. Only recently whilst abjectly trailing my wife around a local supermarket I asked her if she had remembered to buy the Granny Gravules! And on another occasion, meaning to refer to myself as “Your White Shining Knight in Armour”, I instead stammered out the phrase ‘Your Whining Sh**e!’

She agreed with me by the way!

None of this has of course anything to do with Pike Fishing at all, but it does remind me of a phrase my Father used to use when, as a teenager, I showed some reluctance to helping with the washing up or starting on my homework. He would come up behind me and in his soft, but authoritative brogue, he would whisper in my ear: ‘Don’t just do something, sit there, you lazy wee beggar!’ and, naturally I would then get up to help with whatever chores required attention with as much enthusiasm as a dog going to the vets to have a minor undercarriage operation.

Anyway, I was thinking about the different ways that we all fish and how occasionally, we get back home and wonder if we could have done something different, fished in a another spot or used other tactics to catch our chosen quarry. Do we really work at our fishing? Do we really give ourselves a chance to catch? Or do we throw out our deadbaits and wait for something to happen? It’s easy, sometimes, to get comfortable and forget that inactivity on our part may result in a poor day’s fishing or even a blank.

I’m assuming that we have found areas that do usually contain fish, as location is another complete subject in itself, but one that we should not ignore. However, it may be that on a given day the fish have fooled us and are either elsewhere, or are keeping a low profile for whatever reason best known to themselves. In either case there are things that we can do to make the best of the days fishing. I’m also discussing deadbait fishing here, because there are many articles on lure fishing - which is a pretty active niche of our sport anyway - and live baiting, which has a life of its own as well and therefore not relevant to this piece; and so we’re back to location again.

What, then, can we do to improve our chances when using the static deadbait technique that seems relatively popular with many pike anglers?

Move

One action we can take is to relocate if the swim we are in is proving to be unproductive. This sounds obvious but there are a number of factors to take into consideration first. Have we entirely covered our initial swim with baits and are we sure that we have placed them on the noses of any Pike that may be too lethargic to move or are not really feeding? It’s too easy to leapfrog or change swims on a pit (assuming you are able to do so – more of that later!) without having fully fished the one you were in. Often there are several areas in the same swim that may require our attention before we consider moving on.

I used to be bad at this, my daughter calls me a dwarf doctor – a man of little patience, (you see what she did there…?) and often I would cast out a few baits, give them just 20 minutes or so and then move if no takes were forthcoming. Actually, I think this smacks of low confidence more than impatience, because if you know that the fish have been there in the past and should be there now, then perhaps a little extra time may be needed. It’s also possible that there are more areas in that one swim than can be covered by two or three rods, in which case all these areas should be fished fully before moving on. Pike are not always on the hunt, sometimes they are lying quietly, but a close encounter with a meal may induce them to take it. We should not always assume that the fish will move 5 yards or so to inspect a bait.

To take an example of one 40 acre gravel pit I fish, there is a certain area which has five or six fishable locations reachable from one bankside spot. There is a dropoff about 35 yards out from one swim, and beyond that, about a further 8 or nine yards there is a small gulley. The gulley is only about a foot deep and maybe 30 yards long, but sometimes this will produce a fish when the dropoff does not and vice versa. To the left is a culvert and often a fish will be located a few yards away from this, or sometimes, a little further away still, under the bankside willows.

To the right of this same swim is a marginal shelf which runs for 20 – 25 feet or so before dropping gently into deeper water and fish have been taken here in the past, too. So, in this one swim, which is only large enough for one person to fish at any time, there are, at the very least, five different areas, not counting both ends of the gulley or the far end of the marginal shelf. Some of these spots aren’t very far from each other, but it is surprising how reluctant pike are to move at times, even just a few feet. We will revisit this swim a little later. You can see though, I hope, how easy it can be to move before each area has been given a fair chance to produce.

Many of us avoid margin fishing and I think the main reason is because we assume that we have scared all the fish away with our arrival. I almost always place my first bait in the margins whilst setting up the other rods, but you do have to be quiet. I know, I know – it’s very obvious, but the times I see somebody turn up at a swim and drop their rucksack on the floor, stamp around for 10 minutes while setting up, before casting the first bait towards the horizon, are just too numerous to ignore. None of this stuff is new, but it does sometimes need to be repeated, most of us have forgotten more about Pike Fishing than we care to consider. I proved this to myself again recently when fishing with some of the PAC committee. My best fish of the day came from the first cast under an overhanging bush and resulted in a seventeen pounder ably netted and photographed by John Cahill, which earned him a hot sausage sandwich! Margins are always, but always, worth a try.

Another factor to take into account when considering another swim is the feasibility of actually moving all our gear to a new location. I know that nowadays some Pikers travel light, especially when fishing rivers or drains, but when it comes to fishing pits there are still many anglers who settle in a swim for the entire session, and I really think that sometimes this is because it is just too much hassle to move. Hands up anybody reading this that has to use a trolley to get to the swim simply because all the gear is just too heavy to carry. It stands to reason then, that if it is too much effort to move then we may spend a wasted few hours in a swim which is either devoid of pike or has non-feeding pike within it.

Now and again – about once or twice a season - it’s a good idea to upend your rucksack onto the garage floor and have a good old rummage about. Don’t do it on the bank – it can be really depressing! Do you really need a pound and a half of lead weights? Or, eight different oil flavours and sixteen pike floats? The last time I looked in my rucksack I found three different books that I had finished reading but forgotten to take out. If you have too much gear, you will be reluctant to move, especially on the cold days when Fred J Taylor’s “I’ll be glad when I’ve had enough of this” philosophy is really relevant.

So, yes, do consider a move, but only once you are as certain as you can be that the swim you’re in is not going to be productive. Mind you, there are two sides to this coin. I have returned home to think, ‘should I have moved swim?’ almost as often as I have thought: ‘Should I have stayed where I was?’

Twitch

Sometimes a move is either not possible or unnecessary. It can be that there are no other swims available, and not just because the location you are fishing is crowded, but maybe because there are very few swims on the water you are fishing that ever contain pike. Mind you, “never say never” is a good motto to have as an angler. It also may not be necessary to move because you know that the fish are where you are, but they’re not feeding. In this latter instance, I guess that we are relying on past experience and guesswork. But if you are fishing in a known hotspot and not catching fish, then a move may prove pointless. I will give an example of this shortly, but first, what can we do to tempt a non-feeding pike into taking our bait?

One technique, widely publicised, but not so widely utilised, is the art of twitching a deadbait back to the bank, gradually over a half an hour or so. If the swim is clear of snags, this is a relatively simple task. I just pull about two or three feet of line in by hand and then reel it back onto the spool before re-setting the drop-off indicator. I pull the line by hand rather than just reeling it in because I can ‘feel’ what’s going on at the lead end more easily. This way I can feel any undulations on the bottom, but, more importantly, I can feel for snags, weed, gravel etc. It’s even simpler when using a float, of course, but distance is a little harder to achieve and distance is important, because you want to cover as many spots as possible on the way back. For this reason I use this technique most on the rod cast furthest away and obtain maximum movement across the lake.

If the swim is not so clear or relatively unknown, then I use a buoyant deadbait set anything from 12 inches to three feet from the bottom, and although it’s probably unnecessary, I use an uptrace too. In my mind I can picture the deadbait wavering enticingly near the bottom after each retrieval. As any good lure angler will tell you, it pays to think like a fish and I think that a gently wafting bait must look a little more tempting to an un-hungry pike than a static one.

I have caught many fish using this method, with more fish coming to the popped up version, but certainly both techniques catch and catch well. To reinforce this just ask yourself whether you have ever caught fish just as you pick up the rod to start winding in. Or whether fish have followed your bait in only to turn away at the last minute as soon as it spotted your bemused face at the bankside! The pike has seen movement and has acted upon it – it works! And it probably works more often than we know because we can’t always see the fish that follow the bait or are patiently nosing it when we start to reel in.

Wobble

Another great technique often overlooked is the art of deadbait wobbling. Not only can it entice non-feeding pike into action, it can warm up a cold and bored angler with a bit of activity.

Really, it’s just a more active version of the twitching technique and, in fact, the deadbait can be as active or static as you want it to be. This last point, for me, depends on many factors, but the two main ones are time of year/temperature and depth of water.

Generally - and it is only a generalisation - fish, including pike are less active in colder temperatures and I take this into account when wobbling. I will move the bait slower if the water is colder – generally. But, as I said earlier, never say never. I have had pike chase a bait that has been wound in at some speed whilst there has been a hard frost on the ground, and very low water temperatures.

Now to depth of water. Because I like to use as little weight as possible when wobbling, depth of water is important. The deeper the water, the longer it takes for the bait to reach the bottom and I don’t want to rush it either. The best part of wobbling is the take on the drop. Nothing makes the heart beat faster than a take whilst you are waiting for the bait to touch bottom. So when the water is deeper more time is spent making sure that the deadbait keeps in touch with the bottom and the bait, therefore out of necessity moves slower.

On some waters I fish and more particularly the rivers, you can put a lot more movement into the bait, raising it to the surface and letting it sink back to the bottom. With deeper water you have to pick a half to work in, either the top half or the bottom half, or even choose which third to work in if the water is very deep.

There have been many articles on deadbait wobbling rigs so I won’t cover them here except to say that I prefer to use just the weight of the fish itself where possible. I like it to look as lifelike as possible (even though it’s a deadbait!). If weight is needed then I keep it as small as I can. Wobbling can be a deadly method on its day and ignored at peril.

Jerk

Occasionally, I carry a light lure rod and a box of whatever happens to be sparkly to me at the moment. (Ooh look, pretties, my dear! said Fagin.) Lures to me are like spangles of wonderment; I am drawn by their shape, colour and feel, far more than I am attracted by their perceived technical ability. I don’t even care if they catch fish sometimes as long as they look nice! Except sliders – I love sliders, I love the way they mooove.

Because of that major flaw in my pike fishing attention span, I either don’t carry any lures at all, or I’m trying out some new ones, and therefore carry them and them alone, whether they’re suitable for the venue or not. But I do catch on them and chucking a lure around can warm up cold feet and hands. I’ve almost always got a spoon, somewhere!

Please don’t wander away from your rods though; I’m certainly not advocating roaming around the pit you are on leaving unattended rods on the far side of the lake or hopping off down the river bank too far away to reach your rods quickly in the event of a take on the baits. Also, don’t be tempted to use an extra rod that you don’t have a licence for, because the fines are large and the ignominy even larger. That said, using sparklies in your swim can sometimes induce a fish to move and that fish might just pick up your deadbait if it can’t be bothered to chase your lure.

I remember a mild October day in the Lake District many years ago. The morning had been long and unspectacular, but the afternoon had resulted in four runs in an hour or so, before quietening down again, with not a touch for two hours. I had decided to pack up at around 4 ish, and at half past three I reluctantly pulled out the lure rod and chucked a Kuusamo around in a desultory fashion to waste a little bit of time and to discourage myself from packing up early. I was jolted into wakefulness by a huge take on the spoon, a hefty weight, and then nothing. I threw the spoon another dozen or so times but couldn’t entice the fish to take it again. I was putting the rod back in the quiver and turning around to start packing away the other gear when the bite alarm dropped off the left hand rod fishing a popped up sardine, and the line peeled off the spool. It was a low double, but to this day I’m convinced that it was the same fish. I have no way of knowing of course, but it is a coincidence that has just happened a few times too often to convince me that cause and effect aren’t occurring. I firmly believe that sometimes running a lure through the swim can encourage a fish out of lethargy in the same way a sleeping cat can be enticed awake with a toy mouse on a string. It’s not always possible to carry a lure rod as well as all the other paraphernalia – I know that, and I certainly don’t want to encourage the trolley angler any further – but where it is possible, try and take a couple of lures and a rod. It’s another method, another activity that just might turn a blank into a catch.

I don’t know whether we all analyse our fishing, I know that some of us do, but I do know that if we all went home after every trip having caught at least one fish, we’d all be happier and better anglers. It’s the catching fish that gives us most of our experience. It’s certainly the catching fish that gives us our confidence, so the more fish we catch…well, you know.

Next time you’re cold and tired and temped to sit under your brolly, pull up your collar and pull down your hat, just give some thought about whether doing something active might help land a fish – maybe even a big fish - and whether that’s worth the effort. Let’s get it right this time – Don’t just sit there – do something.

Articles....One Hundred and Five

I thought I would pop up a couple of articles written for magazines in the recent past. This is the first one - a light hearted piece published in Pike And Preditors Magazine. It's all changed now, of course.

One Hundred and Five

I have photographs of most of them. Every one of them between 13.02 and 13.14. I changed my weighing scales three times in three years because I thought that maybe they had jammed, and then I thought maybe they were unlucky. Then I changed everything from my rods to my underpants because I thought they were unlucky too. I’ve had more lucky hats than tackle, golf and sundry other manufacturers could produce including formula one, Nike, Adidas and Guinness. I’ve refused to wear hats on days when naked heads almost caused frostbitten ears because I thought that might be lucky too.

Still only thirteen pounds!

I’ve had thirteen pounders from 37 different waters. I’ve caught them as far North as Aviemore and as far south as Sandwich in Kent. To the East I’ve caught thirteen pounders in Norway, Cambridge, Norfolk and Suffolk. To the West thirteen pound pike have graced my net in Kerry and Cork, Wales and Cornwall, Devon and Dorset. I’ve caught them from deep loughs and lochs, shallow rivers and ponds where the water I swear came no higher than my ankles. I’ve caught them in 6 inches of water and I’ve caught them with 35 feet of crystal clear water above their heads. Drains, dykes, fast rivers, slow rivers and streams have produced thirteen pound fish, as have pits, ponds, estate lakes and reservoirs.

Is it me?

I mean how can one person, never catch anything above thirteen pounds, no matter where he fishes? You can’t tell me some of the Cumbrian Lakes only have thirteen pounders in them. Or the well known Scottish Lochs or indeed the Secret Irish Waters I have fished.

I know they all hold bigger fish and I know other anglers catch them.

But not me.

May I perhaps give you an example?

My wife and I were on a working holiday last year, in Scotland, and I was allowed a day to go fishing near where she was teaching. I did some research, found a local day ticket water and planned my day. The tickets were bought, the deadbaits safely frozen in our host’s freezer and everything was ready to go. Then I caught a cold and it got worse and worse until it turned into ‘proper’ man flu.

I got up the following morning anyway, deciding to fish for the morning only. I crawled out of bed, staggered out to the Jeep and eventually sorted myself out to fish the north east bank of the Loch where I had seen masses of fry the day before. The water was shallow, maybe sloping down to 7 feet or so and I popped out the first rod onto the alarm with float legered mackerel on the slope, keeping an eye on the float in the gloom whilst I set up the second rod. I didn’t get chance to even get it out of the quiver when I heard the alarm bleep, saw the float dip once, then again, before disappearing below the surface of the flat calm loch. I struck straight away as I always do and after an awful lot of tailwalking and head shaking, the pike was in the net. With the hooks across the front part of the mouth she was easy to deal with and after wetting the safety sling I hoisted her on the scales.

13.06, and what a great start to the morning. The Fox safety sling is a great piece of kit as it really does protect the fish. So much so, that there was far more slime emanating from my poor, red, dripping nose than ever came off the fish. Anyway, to cut a great story relatively short, I had 12 fish in the morning, to deadbaits on the bottom, popped up and drifted and one on a Kuusamo Professor, just for a bit of a change.

The first one was the biggest!

Now I’m not complaining at all, because I had a great morning’s sport and for a while I even forgot about my aching bones, dripping nose and barking cough. Most of the fish were in the 5 to 7 pound category with a scraper double and the 13 pounder topping the 12. A good morning in anybody’s books.

My first pike bigger than 13 pounds...

A week later my wife Franc and I had travelled down to Cumbria where we were staying with friends and I decided to give one of the bigger lakes a go.

I put out the deadbaits and waited. I waited from 7am until 12.15 when a float legered mackerel was taken by, what I can only assume was a big fish. I can only assume, because I’ve never actually bloody caught one!

I still haven’t! After a 2 or three minute scrap, the fish was on the surface. If I had to guess, and I guess I do have to, I would say that the fish was between 18 and 22 pounds, but the hook pulled! The fish lay on the surface looking at me for a few seconds and then it slowly sank back onto the drop off exuding a mass of bubbles and sardine oil as it did so. It was an hour and a half before I retrieved that particular rod. Climbing a Scott’s pine when you’re 48 years old and (ever so slightly) overweight is not easy, actually!

I lost the next one too, but I estimated that at 7 pounds. I suppose that if you strike relatively quickly you do stand the chance of dropping a few, but I’d rather that than risk deep hooking a fish. However, I landed the next two fish which both came to paternostered joey mackerel and they weighed 9.08 and, yes you’ve guessed it - 13.09! All the runs came between 12.15 and 15.15 on a nice mild, sunny October day and that thirteen pound fish was my 22nd at 13.09. I keep very comprehensive records, mainly because I’m sad, but also because I do like to know what produces the fish.

For example, I can tell you that 33% of my catches have fallen to livebaits, 44% to deads and the rest to lures. I can tell you that my most successful deadbaits are smelt and mackerel (whole joeys) whilst my least successful are sardines! Don’t know why! Sardines are cheap and easy to obtain, but they’re just not as good at producing fish as smelt according to my diaries. I can also tell you that about 60% of my fish have come in the morning and 39% between dawn and 10 0’clock.

I can also tell you that I have caught 319 double figure pike of which 105 are thirteen pound fish. Of the actual thirteen pounders, for a while the most successful bait was eel section, but I have also caught 5 pound pike on whole herrings of 10’’ plus and whole mackerel, usually fished in a desperate attempt to locate big fish only. I have lost a couple of what I ‘guestimated’ to be larger fish, but not many, maybe three or four, but I suppose it’s difficult to tell how big a fish really is until you actually weigh it. I don’t lose many fish, you understand, last season I think only four or five actually dropped off, and so far this year only one, but that was a three pound jack on a six inch spoon, so I wasn’t overly surprised. But I do like to strike as immediately as I can, I use size 6 and 4 trebles and usually fish with floats, because, for me, immediate indication is imperative. I also put the rods on alarms, even if they have floats on, my mind wanders just as often as the next person and if I’m watching the wildlife or even brewing tea, I want to make sure that no indication of a bite is missed.

A lot of my fish that have been caught on lives or deads have been caught on floats. (61%) I just love see that moment when the float cocks, or lays flat and then slides off into the deeps. Yet apart from the aesthetic appeal, I also think that a better form of bite indication has yet to be invented. A float can tell you so much more than a drop off: the direction of the take, the savagery and speed of the run, and, although I seldom wait that long, it can also tell you whether the fish has turned the bait. Of course some pike still munch their food on the spot, kind of like those people who open a packet of crisps in the supermarket and wander around the store eating them, before finally paying for the empty packet at the checkout. I just believe that with a belt and braces approach, the risk of deep hooking is minimised. I’m amazed at the amount of times my Delk bleeps well before there’s any movement on the float. Justification in my eyes for using both when you can.

I have taken a couple of friends fishing who have managed bigger fish than thirteen pounds. That can necessitate a trip to the Doctors surgery in search of a prescription for sleeping tablets, let me tell you, but I’m pretty laid back about it all now. Not! On one trip, a friend and I were wandering along the banks of a drain on a bright February afternoon. My daughter was along with us for the fresh air and the walk, being about 6 or 7 then, and she was as good as gold, having been fishing with me on several occasions in the past, often with other friends. Anyway to reduce another great story due to the constraints of what, you the reader may consider to be the bounds of boredom, we had three fish between us. I caught a jack of around 6 pounds on a Professor, (one of my all time favourite lures – oooh, that flash!!) together with a lovely 13.03 on an Abu Hi-Low. Up until this stage Ray had caught nothing. My daughter was very impressed with the double, peering into its mouth as I showed her all the teeth, with an awed expression. I was just gently returning her to the drain (the fish not my daughter, you understand) when we heard a yell from around the corner of the drain. We both trotted across the field to see Ray just netting a lovely fish of what proved to be 15.12, which in itself was bad enough, but as I was taking the photograph Laura-Anne piped up with a comment I have often screamed as I sit bolt upright from my sleep at three in the morning, sweat matting my hair to my forehead and tears running down my face:

‘’Gosh, Uncle Ray, yours is much bigger than my Daddy’s, everybody’s is bigger than Daddy’s!’’

It’s not that I feel pressured to catch big fish, it really isn’t, honest; it just seems unfair that one person should be unable to exceed the figure thirteen by even one ounce. That’s just one more small Gudgeon or two more minnows, even an inadvertent pebble would do it. I even tried to think of a way that I could get the fish to swallow my bait but not the hooks in order to beat the 13 pound barrier; experimenting with hair rigs for a while. However, I wouldn’t put the fish in any danger if I could help it and find that leaving a run for any amount of time at all is anathema to me.

This year on February the fifteenth at 8 o’clock in the morning, on the same drain that I discussed above, I hooked and landed a lovely fish of 16.04, caught on float legered joey mackerel. As I looked lovingly down at her, the clouds parted and a brilliant beam of sunshine poured down upon the glistening golden flanks of the fish. I heard my first skylark and then another and another. Suddenly all the birds were singing, surrounding me with their song. Sheep walked across the field to gaze adoringly on the golden green flanked beauty. Somewhere nearby a choir started to sing!

By the way, guess what my biggest carp weighed?

Yep thirteen pounds, fifteen ounces!