After my last successful visit to the beach things just wouldn’t fall into place, when I had the time off the conditions were all wrong. Strong onshore winds do nothing for the fishing, make the chances of a Ray almost nil and make life bloody uncomfortable while you’re struggling on the beach. All of the above is accepted fishing logic which I have reinforced through learning the hard way but this spring I didn’t bother. I considered fishing an estuary but I’m struggling to get my hands on ragworm at the moment and it’s pointless trying for Bass without. So for the first time this spring I did a bit of coarse fishing and visited a venue I’d not yet fished, this is because I didn’t think it was my cup of tea and I was right. The water itself, a small pit, is actually quite nice; steep sided therefore sheltered and nicely tree lined. The trouble is it’s located close to some industrial units and the noise was constant, I think I’d have relaxed more braving the easterly wind on the beach… I float fished sweetcorn over a bed of hemp which is a simple and effective and had a few rapid bites that I was way to slow for, apparently there are crucians in here? I did hit one bite and the float rod bent nicely as something with spirit pulled away on the end, I was happy to scoop a little Tench up in the net. I can’t remember the last one I caught, it’s been at least ten years and not for want of trying! If you’d offered me a single Tench when I set off, I’d have taken it so no complaints but I doubt I’ll be back.
Eventually things appeared to fall in my favour, after a few
bright, breezy, clear days I had a mild cloudy evening with a light onshore
breeze. With high tide due around 0100 I
arrived at the shallow beach around 1900 and was greeted by a mostly sandy
expanse that has changed subtly since my first visits this year. Crucially the sea was flat with small waves
and I set up eagerly thinking the chances of a Ray were good. I started off set up half way down the gentle
slope but showers were forecast and I’d brought the shelter which I erected
above the tideline. The first heavy shower
came earlier than expected and saw me scurrying to rehome myself in comfort.
My first bite came after an hour, a good thump on a whole squid which resulted in a slight fishy presence on the line that was actually my first Bass of the year. After that I had a couple of hours without a decent bite for which I was almost grateful as the weather was pretty unpleasant. The only thing of note in this period was a strange, bedraggled figure appearing through the gloom which was actually Giles having his first trip to the Beach for some time. Three hours before high tide, an almost full moon had risen, the rain had mostly cleared away and the tips started to rattle regularly. The action was never as hectic as on previous evenings but regular enough, however it was Whiting and Dogs all the way, the Rays didn’t show. Apparently they move up the estuaries to spawn at this time of year and having consulted the diary I later realised I’ve never caught a Ray from this beach in May.
We fished till after midnight by which time we’d both caught enough decent sized Whiting to make a decent feed back home. The drive home was a pleasant one with loads of animals on the move along the lanes. There were dozens of rabbits, a barn owl ghosted across the road, a badger gave me a glare before slipping into a hedge and I had the stop the car to allow groups of deer to cross on three occasions.
On the face of it I thought this should be an interesting
read, which it was for the most part. I
hadn’t heard of the authors but Sosin is an angling writer and tackle
consultant while Clark has a degree in fishery management. Both are American, as are most of the species
discussed although in fish behaviour there are bound to be obvious parallels
with European species. The book was
first published in 1973 and this version for the British market came out in
1976 and was edited by Fred J. Taylor.
Other than being a legend of British angling from times mostly before I
was a regular angler I know little else about FJT. He was amongst one of the first UK anglers to
be successful with deadbaits for Pike but other than that I don’t know what he
contributed to British angling nor what he caught. There’s some future reading…
I expected FJT’s introduction to literally introduce the
authors to the British angling public but he doesn’t even mention them. Instead he is selling us the idea that what
has been documented in the USA has relevance here and why. FJT succeeds in this but the very first
chapter from Sosin and Clark bothered me.
In the very first paragraph they state; “…the fish must avoid getting
caught. Nature takes care of this by
genetic adaption: the smartest fish survive to spawn and thus give birth to
smarter fish, the vulnerable are caught and the weak strains eliminated.” This carries on in the second paragraph; “The
overall effect is to build up a strain of fish that is resistant to capture…”
I’ll accept that angling can condition fish to behave in a different.
‘unnatural’ way but as I understand it evolution works a whole lot slower than
that. I don’t believe fish feeding
unnaturally is the same thing as evolution.
“New techniques must be devised to replace those used by anglers in
the past…” Ah there’s the
catch. We’ve established one of the
authors was a tackle consultant, enough said, I have my guard up.
Thankfully there was no attempt to sell me anything and I
enjoyed the book on the whole although I’m not sure I learnt much I didn’t already
know. This may be because what is
written here has been repeated by other authors and as a long time angler, I’ve
absorbed this knowledge from other sources.
I can’t recall too many exciting new discoveries regarding fish
behaviour in this time. There are
theories concerning fish behaviour being linked to atmospheric pressure, Barrie
Rickards being an notable exponent.
Another relatively new theory links fish behaviour to moon phases and Dr
Rickards was coming round to that one too.
Other than those I can’t think of anything. The descriptions of how fish use their
primary senses to detect food or threat was interesting enough and mostly sound.
However there were several occasions where I strongly
disagreed with what I was reading. In
the section on fish’s use of smell; “Results from a series of experiments on
the sense of smell show that the least hours for odour perception should go to
the northern pike…” I can’t argue
with the results of this experiment but I know that Pike can detect my deadbaits,
often in murky water and smell plays a big part in this. They go on to say that because of their
reliance on sight, at night a Pike is “…generally helpless and must spend
the hours of darkness resting and biding its time…” This is simply not true, I know Pike can find
my baits after dark and they don’t have torches. It doesn’t get darker than 0300 in February,
just one of very many examples I can recall.
To be fair Fred J. intervenes with some thoughts of his own at the end
of the chapter which diplomatically correct Sosin and Clark. He goes and spoils
things later, in a discussion of various species preferred temperature ranges,
FJT adds a bit stating that in the UK Pike do better at lower temperatures than
in the US. He goes on to say British anglers
don’t generally fish for Pike in summer saying anglers “…leaves them
strictly alone while he pursues more worthwhile species…” Worthwhile?
Fuck off Fred! Apart from those gripes it was a decent read overall.
“Rainbow’s end” by Phil Smith
Phil Smith was one of those seemingly ever present faces in
the angling press when I was a youngster in the eighties. For many years he was one of the country’s
top all round “specimen hunters” who caught fish of most species to impressive
sizes. This book was published in 1987
and is very much of its time in terms of species, sizes, methods and baits but
a good fishy story is timeless and there are a few of those in here. In this book, in general the longer the
chapter the better it reads, the shorter stories just read like afterthoughts
put in to pad things out, with a bit more effort they could have been much
improved. There are plenty of spelling
and grammatical errors along the way as is often the case when an angler
writes. On the whole it’s a decent read
but could have been a lot better with a second draft.
