Recommend An Angling Book.

[northern lad 2,292]

Would have loved to meet the man,comes across as a real gent,for me the biggest thing separating his writing from the vast majority of authors was he conveyed knowledge but in a humourus way,to many writing for their own egos nowadays,that or waffling about stiff links and lead core lines all good stuff no doubt ......but don't think theyd convey the true meaning of the sport.....fun,nature,watercraft,being at one with the outdoors .Sat watching Tench bubbles fizzing around a peacock quill ,sitting behind a pod with 3 rods on optonics,baits 100yds distant,waiting for the shrill scream of an alarm done both over the years,but I stick to the quill now,dont know wether its my age but results don't seem as important now

[NEWKID 26,211]

Would have loved to meet the man,comes across as a real gent,for me the biggest thing separating his writing from the vast majority of authors was he conveyed knowledge but in a humourus way,to many writing for their own egos nowadays,that or waffling about stiff links and lead core lines all good stuff no doubt ......but don't think theyd convey the true meaning of the sport.....fun,nature,watercraft,being at one with the outdoors .Sat watching Tench bubbles fizzing around a peacock quill ,sitting behind a pod with 3 rods on optonics,baits 100yds distant,waiting for the shrill scream of an alarm done both over the years,but I stick to the quill now,dont know wether its my age but results don't seem as important now

How true that is mate, fishing like everything else in life seems to be being lost to the technological world ( I'm not knocking development, but I love the traditional sense of fishing), we would be up before first light to get to the best spots for the bream on our canal, that point when the lights just starting to come and you can see the bubbles and fish turning was magical.. We'd fish Tiverton canal for the tench, again first light and they'd be blowing like hell, you have to right against the Lilly pads to get a bite then it's hold on to keep them out,

I was lucky to go to some big matches when I was a youngster and watch Bob Nudd or Dave Harrel fishing the Avon at Evesham, the watercraft was unreal, they would run a stick or waggler through perfectly, for me putting the stick float down a nice bit of river is my favourite, fishing for roach, dace and chub on our local tidal stretch is as god as it gets...

I took my 2 little uns and my niece to a local pond on Sunday, this is a puddle with some half decent carp and roach etc, I set them up a pole to hand and they caught a few I fished accross to the island and had a few carp and roach out, just simple fishing, there was 2 lads there 3 rods each, bite alarms, spread around this little pond, sat in the same swim waiting for the beeping... They'd had 1 fish from what I'd seen, it just seemed very over the top for a carp on a puddle...

[northern lad 2,292]

The worst thing is ,this is probably all they know.....its so easy now to become an instant carp angler,a full kit,rigs included,can be purchased in any tackle shop now...progress is great ,but a lot now if you asked them to shot a waggler/tie a spade end wouldn't know where to start,although they could show you how to cast 140yds and make a sausage dog out of PVA and boilies .....

[NEWKID 26,211]

Your probably right mate, my lad loves fishing (sea or freshwater) but ill teach him how I learnt, the only difference is he's starting on ponds and not the canal, I'll have him on the river though this year ( once it's open) and just fish with him fishing the stick, there's loads of dace and some decent chub to be had that will keep him happy..

I worked in our tackle shop for a while when I was 17, the boss ( Geoff Salisbury) fished all the big matches back then, he'd more often than not take me out of the shop for the day to " give him a hand", I'd make up stick float rigs on the way to Evesham in the car, then have a big brekkie before the match, I would sit and watch those top lads and it taught you loads... It was river match fishing at its best.. We'd go to the John Smiths festival every year, he designed rods for Normark ( I've still got a couple of prototype waggler rods) and fished for team Normark... I remember once at the end of match Geoff set up a small ledger rig using split shot and flicked right beside a barge accross the river, he caught a decent chub on the rig with about 10mins to go which won his section, Kevin Ashurst was in his section, it was so traditional but worked a treat...

Happy days mate....

[northern lad 2,292]

Now theres a blast from the past Kevin and Benny Ashurst met both a few times,and had trophies presented to me by both for winning junior matches they used to have a maggot farm a few miles from our house I can remember the senior members of a club I was in as a kid,talking about how many GALLONS of maggots they had ordered for a week in Ireland me and my pals could stretch half a pint out to last a week......in the summer holidays fishing every day.Kevin Ashurst and some of the other seniors would give us their left over bait after a match in winter they also kept us supplied with livebait "pull the keepnet out ,take what you want".We had a club meeting one evening at the local cons club,was about 11/12 yrs old at the time and the guest speaker (might have been Kevin/Benny)produced a carbon rod for us to look at/hold,think it was a Cobra(ABU or Normark)??was like holding a feather,and all the old blokes saying "Itll never catch on" Happy days indeed

[NEWKID 26,211]

Brilliant mate those are the memories that i have from thst era the seniors always were good to me

the match scene was different back then.. I remember the opens on our canal would have over 100 anglers along it, now they're lucky to get 20 and half the matches are on a small club owned puddle..

The old seniors looked after us juniors well, a couple took us up to the south west champs on the River Huntspill in Somerset ( don't know if you know it but its basically a very long straight drain) Phil Coles was our manager lol, he was mad but a good angler ( he took me to a few matches as a junior, he had a 2 seated escort van and I'd cram in the back amongst all the gear lol) he told us to fish an eel line, and this worked well for me I'd had a fairly good match and felt confident. Until I pulled my net up and only had half the fish I'd caught left, there was a hole in the end and I'd lost a load lol, cost me a section win ( maybe better) and cost Exeter a top 3 finish lol, it took a while to live that one down lol..

The last few matches I fished were on our tidal stretch of river, but I never seemed to draw well ( that's my excuse lol),

It's a personal thing I guess, but I can't get exited about hauling carp out of a couple of acre pond in a match ( or pleasure for that matter), when you were weighing in a bags of silvers or a decent haul of bream it felt better to me... I love fishing, but I shy away from the matches now, I'm happiest with a bait apron on, up to my thighs in the river, running a stick under some willows....

[northern lad 2,292]

nightmare,hole in the keepnet,bet you got some stick I haven't fished a match since I was 14,apart from one pike match on Patshull Park about 15? years ago.These commercial fisheries are great for beginners as there easy to catch a few fish,but they just don't float my boat,it feels like catching tame fish One of my pals talked me into going on such a place,he sat there with an 8m pole ,a length of line (no float or shot) a cube of spam as bait and lay the pole on the surface and waited for the carp to hang themselves each to their own I suppose,the stillwaters I grew up fishing used to be busy,now you can pretty much have the place to yourself so its not all bad....Do you remember Billy Laine?he used to have a feature in Coarse Fisherman magazine called "Learn to fish with Uncle Bill" you had to write in with any fishing questions,so I wrote in asking how I could avoid all the small pike in mylocal water as I wanted to catch the bigger ones anyway a few weeks later my mams picking me up from primary school and passes me a parcel addressed to me,my letter had been picked as question of the month and I won a Mitchell 206 and a nice letter of Billy Laine I had the page out of that months magazine stuck to my bedroom wall for years .....

[billybaltic 308]

This has took me back years, i have just gone through my first 10 years of fishing reading this thread (brilliant) just grabbing a rod, which was all set up with reel, float, hook, one bait tub, a few bits of tackle like shot, hooks in my pocket and a bottle of orange juice and i would be gone till tea, (then i was straight back) and i done alright, i knew everyone on the canal and every little space, why do i take so much stuff now.

[northern lad 2,292]

Them were the days Billy wouldn't swap em for anything,like you said bare essentials and nowt else nowadays its a float rod,feeder rod (just in case)carp/pike rod(just in case)choice of half a dozen baits ,holdall to carry the aforementioned set up and ready to go,tackle bag,net bag,chair,weigh sling/unhooking mat,youd think someone would manufacture a trolley to carry it all saw some Gardner monkey climbers for sale on e bay recently on reading the ad they were described as "old skool"

[events co-ordinator 353]

My old man reckons Roach the gentle giants by John Bailey BB the anglers bedside book and Tench by Fred J Taylor he used to take me in my pram down the Clyde at Dalmarnock when he was fishing. I used to sit beside him with a wee whip catching Dace while he took roach on the stick float.

[WILF 44,334]

First off, an odd one.....not really a book but a couple of chapters in a book.....an old annual type book which had a title like " jack charlton on fishing" or something like that........a chapter on waggler fishing by Ken Giles, a chapter on stick float fishing by tony Davies. A chapter on swing tipping by the great Dennis White......

 

My book would be " the carp strikes back" by Rod Hutchinson.......it made me see the value of working for your fishing not just sitting behind a static rod and waiting for something to happen......if its not happening then make it happen

 

A close second would be " big water carp" by Gibbo........that changed the way I fished and I actually relished big waters in favour of small once I understood that they are not intimidating and in lots of ways much easier.

 

All of the lessons in these book can be applied to hunting as well.......fishing and hunting is all about studying your ground and your quarry, building yourself some knowledge and applying it in a measured logical way and adjusting as you go

Edited May 8, 2013 by WILF

[NEWKID 26,211]

Some great old stories lads, it's nice most of us fishermen remember the old ways as our favourite, and I think most of us revert back to that eventually as well..

 

" learn to fish like Uncle Bill" brilliant lol,

the estate I grew up on backs right onto the tidal Exe and my dads house is as close as you can get ( I looked right onto it from my bedroom window). We'd fish for eels with worms or liver ( they seemed to love that) you could also dig little harbour rag in the river mud and we'd catch school bass on big evening tides ( they'd go straight on the camp fire).. If you'd had a bit of rain you'd catch trout on your float fished worms...

When I started in the shop the shop manager asked about the fishing down there ( only a few lads fished it really), he was a very good carp angler, well any specimen fishing really, would try things which no one else had done ( this is 20 years ago)... He was really interested in the few huge carp that lived in the tidal stretch and wanted to learn more about the river... I suggested a day out plumbing the depth, with a difference, I had a little punt and a 4hp engine.. The plan was to start at the back of my house and slowly work our way up river to the weir at the end of the tidal section... All the while zig zagging accross the river whilst using some sections of an old pole to poke to the bottom.. We spent all day doing it, we worked out what was gravel, mud etc and marked the deep holes along the banks or just randomly in the middle if the river ( knowing all these hidden features would hold fish)... The best find for me was a long run of deeper water ( about 6ft at low water) along the far bank to your normal access the run was about 50 yards or so and either end went up to 2ft or so... This was over hung by bushes, and trees.. It screamed fish..

This would be my hole for the next few months, I had to wade right accross the river and then stand on an old tree stump, which was right on the edge of he run, you could only fish it for about 4 hours accross low water.. It was brilliant I'd run a stick threw it straight off my feet, I had chub to around 6lb bream over 8lb ( on the stick), mullet, sea trout, dace, roach, grayling.. I let my boss know in the shop about it and what I was catching down the tidal, he spoke to a bloke called Paul Hamilton who was a photographer for the Anglers Mail... A week or so later Paul came in the shop and asked if I would do a shoot for the Anglers Mail on the tidal. I don't know if any one rembers but they had a feature called the challenge ( i think)which was a double page spread, where they would have pics with times against the pics and you would record what you fished ( your set up, bait then at 9:09am the first fish lol) all the time trying to reach a challenge set by them, my challenge was 10lb of fish in 4 hours ( it was usually lots of dace with a few lumps thrown in if you were lucky) So we set up a meet on the Wednesday I had off work...and it pissed down Monday and Tuesday ( just my luck) I couldn't get out to the stump and it was impossible, after an hour of pissing about with a few dace to show we gave up... I said if you come next week when the rivers fining down I'll bag up ( cocky twat lol)... Next Wednesday and the river was perfect, I had an apron full of maggots ( I had riddled the shop maggots the day before and kept the fat gozzers that wouldn't pass through the riddles to use as hookers)... Stood on the stump in waders, first run through and the float buries, expecting to connect with a dace but the rod arches over and a chub of at least 4lb slides into the net, bonus... Couple more runs then another of the same sort of size... Then I lost a lump of a bream that turned on the line snapping the hook length.. I had 3 more chub, all big lumps.. But not 1 dace.... I was made up i'd put around 20lb of chub on the bank In front of the Anglers Mail.. The shop laminated the pages from the mag when it came out and put it in the shop, I was 17 at the time so that's nearly 20 years ago and I can still remember that day like yesterday...

My old mate H,who plumbed the river with me,died a few years back of cancer he was only 46, fcking disease... Good lad he was...

 

Sorry to hijack the thread with old yarns, but if we all join in it might save buying a book lol

Edited May 8, 2013 by NEWKID

[Tiercel 6,986]

First off, an odd one.....not really a book but a couple of chapters in a book.....an old annual type book which had a title like " jack charlton on fishing" or something like that........a chapter on waggler fishing by Ken Giles, a chapter on stick float fishing by tony Davies. A chapter on swing tipping by the great Dennis White......

 

My book would be " the carp strikes back" by Rod Hutchinson.......it made me see the value of working for your fishing not just sitting behind a static rod and waiting for something to happen......if its not happening then make it happen

 

A close second would be " big water carp" by Gibbo........that changed the way I fished and I actually relished big waters in favour of small once I understood that they are not intimidating and in lots of ways much easier.

 

All of the lessons in these book can be applied to hunting as well.......fishing and hunting is all about studying your ground and your quarry, building yourself some knowledge and applying it in a measured logical way and adjusting as you go

Too true, to be an effective hunter, no matter what your quarry, you have to know it first.

 

TC

[Tiercel 6,986]

Sorry to hijack the thread with old yarns, but if we all join in it might save buying a book lol

It's not Hi-jacking the thread at all, it's called thread development your post shows that to gain an advantage you need to put the work in. That is just as valid as any passage in a book.

 

TC

Edited May 8, 2013 by tiercel

[WILF 44,334]

Excellent post Newkid, the first time I fished was on a holiday in Devon when I was about 6 or 7......my dad wasn't really a fisherman although he had a brilliant knowledge of how to feed yourself off the land and what mushrooms and plants you could eat and such like......had a trip to Lyme Regis this one day and I saw this little rod & reel set in a shop and wanted it......stopped at the river otter on the way back and used our sandwiches as bait......caught f**k all but was absolutely hooked from that moment

Went to another river up there a couple of days later and remember seeing the mullet run up the river.......I will never forget any of it as long as I live