Unfamiliar

 9^th April 2021

After three months I have my first fishing trip out of my ‘local area’, it’s been the Gipping valley since January and the weather these past few days has seemed more like winter.  But at least the buds and blossom remind me that it really is spring.  Today it’s as mild as it has been for a week and there’s a nice wind from the west.  I didn’t make a dawn start figuring I might as well let the temperature climb, perhaps this would encourage the newly stocked Tench and Carp to become active.  My journey coincided with morning rush hour but really on this road it doesn’t make much difference what time you go out.  As I got closer I found the track full of pot holes but rock hard and easily passable.  I loaded the punt quickly and set off looking for fish.

With a substantial new stocking, things should be very different this year and I fully expected to see fish moving about even though this has seldom been the case in the past.  I made my way right down to the embankment and half way back without seeing anything so settled down beside a snaggy bush and fished for a while.  A snowman rig was under armed alongside the bush and I fished corn on a float, both spots were baited with a couple of handfuls of pellets a few boilies and grains of corn.  My cynical plan is to use pellets to replicate the food these stockies are used to and add a few tasty morsels they won’t be able to resist.  With no signs of fish I was chucking and chancing but sat back to watch and wait, it was nice to be sitting in the spring sunshine, listening to the birds sing.

After ninety minutes I was restless so tidied up and went searching again, this time I went the other way rowing all the way to the top and drifting/paddling through the islands and back to where I started.  For most of these shallow areas I could see the bottom but detected no fish of note apart from a few fry and a Pike, today it was hard to believe the water had any new residents at all.  With nothing at all to go on I plotted up in the deepest area hoping the fish might think its winter, here I fished two boilies, sat back watching the water and chilled out some more.

An hour passed without a sign.  I’m impatient these days, I keep wanting to move if nothing is happening.  Maybe I should force myself to bank fish and sit in one spot?  I thought these stockies would be easy but surely they will be if I can find them.  So maybe I should stick to the boat but resolve to stay put?  Unless I see fish then it will be easier to move…  Decisions.

16^th April 2021

Apparently madness is defined as the act of doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results, which is exactly how I’ve gone about spring fishing in recent years.  With this bubbling in my mind I drove to the Valley once more trying to catch Tench or Carp whilst fishing from a punt.  Had I actually hurried out of bed this morning I’d have had to scrape the screen but with the sun well up it wiped away.  After a typically chaotic ‘A’ road and an unfriendly farm track I arrived on a cool morning to find bright, clear skies and a fresh North Westerly wind.  I rowed slowly to the top of the wind, looking for fish in the clear water then drifted back and mooched about for a while.  All I saw was fry which shouldn’t have been a surprise.

On a spur I decided to fish at the spot I finished at last week which had a couple of things going for it.  Firstly I’d put a few handfuls of bait here and also it was between two overhanging trees so sheltered from the wind.  I baited each tree with a couple of handfuls of pellets and a few boilies then put a yellow pop up on one and a snowman rig on the other.  Two rods felt like plenty so I didn’t bother with the float rod.  It was 0930 by the time I settled down and reached for the flask and although still cool I was comfortable and enjoying the sun in my face.

I’d been there about forty five minutes before one of the friendly members appeared on the bank behind me and told me he’d seen carp moving about in recent days and also one had been caught at the weekend.  This gave me a bit of hope but it wasn’t good to hear of a couple of casualties.  Not long after he’d wandered off one of the dreaded furry creatures appeared and it was a big ugly bastard too but not enough to put the Swans off bouts of sadomasochism.  Thankfully the unwanted mammal soon vanished and I told myself if the fish are moving there’s a chance they’ll find my bait and for once I was content to just sit it out and see what happened.  Nowhere else looked any more inviting and no fish were giving me any clues, I was enjoying doing bugger all.

Around 1120 I could have sworn my right hand rod tip bounced a bit, I’d have definitely struck if it had been a quiver tip.  Maybe a minute passed, maybe less but the tip bent round and line started to peel steadily off the baitrunner, I actually had a take and still remembered that I needed to lift the rod and engage the reel.  Everything went as it should and I found myself attached to what was almost certainly a carp, plodding around against my vintage Tricast.  I’d forgotten that Carp don’t get easily tired of swimming round in ever decreasing circles and as it came closer I could see it obviously was a carp and not an enormous green thing.  It looked a dull brown and cream kind of colour with pale blotches, surely not a poxy koi?  Maybe I was a bit too careful but it seemed to take ages to get the stubborn creature close but it went in the net eventually and after many attempts I’d finally managed to catch a carp from a boat, albeit with vastly improved odds this season.  I rested the fish in the net while I sorted the boat out and by the time I lifted it aboard the hook had fallen out.  It was a nice lightly scaled Mirror, actually brighter coloured than it had looked in the water but the pale marks I’d noticed obviously came from a close encounter with an Otter.  I weighed this rare capture and took a quick snap then let it swim away after a second traumatic experience in recent weeks.

With the rod back out and the boat back to normal I sat and celebrated with a brew.  As far as I can remember this is the first Carp I've caught whilst fishing from a boat and after a bit of musing I made it the tenth freshwater species caught whilst afloat.  But that still doesn't include a bloody Tench...  So success!?  I think my relaxed approach worked this morning, instead of charging about looking for sings I sat and waited for fish to find my bait.  But will it work every time?  A lot will depend on how the fish adapt to both the types of mammal that are hunting them.  The morning turned into afternoon, I felt hopeful of another fish, surely it was alone?  In hindsight maybe I need to put a bit more bait down…  I had to be somewhere later on and could only stretch my time so far.  The wind swung more to the east and I for the first time all day I needed to put my coat on, enough was enough.  My spring fishing has started and I've actually caught something that isn't a Pike!  I will have another go but I don’t quite know when, I hope these Carp are fast learners but not in a fishing sense.