The call of the pike part 2, (with a chub thrown in).

There is something compelling about pike. Of all our freshwater fish their call, for me, is the most insistent. They are the black-eyed death-dealer of our fresh waters, the equaliser, the remorseless destroyer without whom natural balance would falter. Their narrative coloured by tales of dark, bottomless pools where monsters capable of devouring small dogs and even toddlers lurk. A fish adored and despised in equal measure, persecuted, like raptors, to perpetuate the manufactured hunting grounds of the privileged. Removed from some commercial waters to protect the interests of the owners and the sensibilities of the anglers. 

I suppose in some ways it’s understandable. They are a bit scary, and those teeth are sharp. They’re the only UK fish that can inflict real damage to a careless angler. I’ve known many a fellow fisherman who regard them as a nuisance and would no more fish for them as sell their favourite match rod. 

But the pursuit of pike is fishing at its most primal. It’s almost audacious, hunting a hunter. To outwit a pike of any size and trick it onto the bank is the defuser of myth, the proof that the monster is fallible, vulnerable. It’s a privilege too because they are creatures of great beauty and surprising fragility. Handling and unhooking them requires love, respect and, occasionally, a surgeon’s dexterity. And they have the added attraction of growing big, on a par with carp weight-wise but bulk based on natural food not man-made protein balls.

There’s not much to look forward to in winter apart from pike fishing, and pubs serving dark, malty ales. (Pubs, how I miss them.) 

Also, winters have less allure now as far as general weather. The crisp, cold, snowy and white frequently replaced with drab, damp, muddy and brown due to climate disorder. And the seemingly endless winter rain plays havoc with river piking. It’s only December but my local stretch of the Suffolk Stour has been up and down like a Bo-Jo’s Barnet. I did manage a fruitful session or two in mid-November, however. 

I’d become drawn to a prime stretch of the Stour near Sudbury Town centre known as The Priory. Adjacent to this is another more open section called Friars Meadow, nomenclature no doubt based on the Dominican communities that occupied the area in the 13th Century. 

I like a degree of isolation when I’m fishing and the Priory section offers that despite being in the middle of town. There’s ample riverside cover and a formidable belt of willows and vegetation between the railway walk footpath and the river itself which separates the angler from passers-by. 

The Stour was fining down nicely after autumn rain, which coincided serendipitously with a mild spell, so an ideal opportunity for a go at the Stour pike.

A opted for a mid-week session and off I went my my German Shepherd Indy who makes for a fine fishing companion as long as I keep him onside with Bonios. We found a likely-looking, spacious swim on the Priory, enough room to fish two float rigs tight to near bank features. The swim had the added appeal of being opposite a majestic sweep of water meadow and the moment I settled in my seat I spotted a nosy muntjac checking us out from the far bank, all ears and nervous curiosity. Indy stared back, ears up, hackles twitching. “Go on then, if you think you’re hard enough,” I chided. The dog might’ve if there wasn’t a river in the way. As it was he turned his attention to my rucksack, probing for Bonios.

Even a half-arsed angler like me was in with a fair shout of catching, such were the almost perfect conditions. I felt confident, and so it was that within twenty minutes of casting out, the right hand float bobbed and danced and disappeared and I was into an angry Stour pike. The fish fought hard and thundered around the swim in tight, powerful circles. It felt excellent to be connected to my first sizeable pike for years, and my first river pike for even more years. 

Indy’s quite funny when I’m playing a fish. Despite the commotion, usually involving me puffing, swearing and thumping around looking for the net, he just sits there nonchalantly, some may say indifferently, picking burdock seeds out of his coat or something. He may come and have a gander once a fish is on the mat, but only if he can be bothered. This is in stark contrast to my previous German Shepherd, Harry, who happened  to be Indy’s great uncle. I only ever took Harry fishing once, such was the extent of his copybook blotting. We were on the famous Met Pit in the Lee Valley, fishing for pike. Harry was his normal well behaved self until I cast out my dead bait, then he went totally insane. Before I could stop him he dived straight in and struck out towards my pike float, which was only a few metres out, grabbed it in his jaws before I could reel it in, and swam back to the bank, dragging float, trace and dead bait with him. He nearly became the biggest live bait in pike fishing history. But that wasn’t the end of it. To keep him contained I had to tie him to a tree, he was literally straining at the leash to dive in again.

He settled down eventually, mainly because I hadn’t cast for a while. Then I hooked a jack of about six pounds and he became a monster. The moment I laid the netted pike on the mat the lead securing Harry to the tree broke, unable to withstand his lunges. He was on the fish in a flash, jaws snapping, eyes bulging. Quick as I could I lifted the net plus the fish back in the water, trying to block his advance with my body. I shouted at him so loudly that my voice echoed around the pit, startling me as well as the dog. Having lost sight of his prey he calmed somewhat giving me time to unhook the fish and release it pronto; I was thankful it was lightly hooked.

I loved that dog. He was a beauty, a great companion with a flawless temperament, until you took him fishing!

Me and Indy managed to catch three pike during that first session, smallest nine pounds biggest twelve. We lost a bigger fish that could have been a mid-double. And we were treated to numerous fly pasts by a kingfisher, the bird with the sky on his back. All in all a satisfying and enjoyable day for man, (and as far as I know but it’s hard to tell), dog. 

Footnote. It wasn’t all satisfactory. I collected two bags of litter from around my swim before I left, almost certainly discarded by anglers. There was a good deal more too but I only had two bags. Some say that littering has become a collective myopia, which is galling enough but for fishermen to litter, to discard dangerous, wildlife threatening, river polluting, unsightly waste while they fish is the antithesis of what angling represents and embodies for so many.

Pike No 1

Indy enjoying himself

 

Pike No 2

My wife happened to wander by in her kayak (fishing went dead after)😆😉

From deadbaits to breadflake

The river at Wixoe, Suffolk is a craggy old piece of the upper Stour running alongside a large pumping station. Sadly, its banks are liberally strewn with the detritus of humanity, aided and abetted by a succession of floods that have become the trademark of the wet winters during this age of climate change. 

It’s a stretch run by Sudbury and Long Melford AC and according to some of the club’s more established members it’s well past its heyday, where good bags of roach and dace as well as sizeable perch and pike in the winter are distant memories. But isn’t that the depressing mantra so familiar to anglers nowadays when discussing river fishing in the UK? There’s little doubt that river systems in general are at the mercy of agricultural run-off, excessive sewage discharge and poor management but, thankfully, it’s fairly obvious from reading the angling press that it’s not all bad, that there are rivers that still produce good fish, and that the natural cyclical high and lows of fish stocks and specimen fish still prevail.

Saying that, I’m not specially enamoured by this stretch of the Stour. The whole area has a deserted, frontier town feel. Local businesses seem to eventually fail. In the 15 years I’ve lived nearby, a pub and restaurant, a garden centre, a garden machinery retailer and a hairdressers have floated down the Swanee, or should I say Stour. Probably a convergence of negative ley-lines or something. Anyway, bad energy hotspots aside, and now we’re in lockdown no 3 where fishing is acceptable but must be ‘local,’ I find myself drawn by circumstance to this fishery. 

But it’s definitely got something. 

If you can somehow ignore the mud-flecked plastic bottles, beer cans and polystyrene chunks bobbing about and concentrate on the wintered reed beds, willow-lined bank, near-side slacks, and rafts of accumulated vegetation it all begins to look very fishy.

I decided to try my luck for the first time one cold, bright January afternoon when the river was practically devoid of colour and frankly, about as appealing as a cold shower. Predictably, my trotted single red maggot was flatly refused for two hours solid so, as the light faded, I opted to hoick the light ledger rod out and fish the features with breadflake. Again, nothing, save a few trembles on the tip. But as the magical last hour of daylight came and went, that erstwhile sterile river burst into life. Right under my feet in fact. I’m pretty sure it was a big chub, that great silver head that popped up. Whatever it was it  definitely tickled my enthusiasm. I was pleased as it had corroborated my gut feeling: that this uninspiring river held good fish.

Despite the promising sighting, however, I remained fishless but nonetheless cautiously optimistic. I second visit was a necessity.

Less than a week later I was back, and after some more heavy rain the river was fining down and looking far more angler-friendly than the previous visit. The banks were treacherous, however. Perpetually muddy and sloping, on this occasion the post flood mud was like a quagmire, oozing moisture and offering no grip whatsoever. This is an under-fished water, which is not a bad thing but can also lead to neglect. The banks are a Jack-Straw tangle of windblown willow limbs and deadwood. So getting to my tucked away swims in the near darkness was a trial. And I’d forgotten my head torch.

As quick as I could I knocked up some bread mash and fed two small balls to three swims some twenty yards apart. In my haste to get a bait out before dusk descended I hung the rig up on a willow twig and lost the link ledger in the process. Frustration was setting in now. I’m not the most adroit of anglers. I have my days but generally it’s not second nature to me, I have to concentrate. So it came as no surprise to me when a second cast was as bad as the first and hung up too. Thankfully the fishing gods were sympathetic and the rig dropped clear just where I wanted it. I’d hardly settled on my bucket stool when the tip arched round. It didn’t register at first, it happened so quickly but the penny dropped when the rod thumped, thumped, thumped and the drag groaned. Immediately, the fish made a sprint for the snags. Side-strain thwarted that lunge but two more shuddering runs followed before it broke surface. I knew it was a chub before I saw it, the fight gave that away. But it’s size made me swear, loudly. 

It was a pristine fish, utterly flawless, probably never seen a bank. Along with my torch I’d also forgotten my scales so I can only guess at its weight but it looked like a five pounder or thereabouts.

In my reverie I’d failed to notice that the dwindling light had dwindled entirely and I could barely see the ripple as I slipped that lovely chevin back.

The short, dark walk back to the the car was a tad fraught and I nearly went over but I didn’t really care. That tip of a river held good fish as well as the contents of a dustcart, and I couldn’t wait to get back there, but next time I’d be sporting a head torch, a set of scales and hopefully a rudimentary grasp of casting.

The call of the pike. Part 1

The Upper Stour, Suffolk by Bob Dellar

Jig fisher virgin. August 2020

And so the colder months are upon us and I’m keen to get amongst the spikes, teeth, stripes and manly jaw-lines of our native piscine predators.

Although I’ve had the odd dabble already, if the truth be known. And I’ve discovered a new way of catching them, well new to me anyway. Jig fishing. 

My very first outing was an opportunistic one, when I sneaked the jig rod in amongst the chainsaws and climbing ropes before I left home in the hope of nicking a quick session on a lovely stretch of the Upper Stour near Liston, Sudbury after a morning’s work. The weather was red hot, bright and sunny with a brisk wind so not that perfect! Nonetheless I was keen to take my new six foot rod out for its maiden voyage and to pop my jig fishing cherry at the same time! I’ve fished with spinners and plugs on and off for years but the jelly-like jig lures with all their assorted names, colours and strangeness are new to me. When I arrived the river was crystal clear and what was really pleasing to see was the sheer number of fish from fry to the more mature flitting around in the shallows. And where there’s prey there’s predators, so the sight of all those silvers boosted my confidence. Features abound in the Stour at Liston with lilies, cabbages, reed beds and overhanging as well as submerged branches. All great to cover the backs of a spiky-toothed pike or a bristling perch but a bit of a snag-magnet for a cack-handed jig-fisher virgin.

Incredibly, my first cast with a perch fry micro-lure had a follow from a little jack which might well have had a pop had I not panicked and plucked the lure from right under its nose sending it skywards into a hawthorn. I don’t know who was more surprised, me or the pike. It hung in the water stock still for a second or two and if it had blinked and shaken its head in disbelief I wouldn’t have been surprised.

After disentangling my lure and trace from a particularly vicious hawthorn branch I continued my trek down the bank on the hunt for more predator holding hotspots. The wind had whipped up sending tiny manes of white water across the river’s surface obscuring potential snags and hazards, so every cast became a lost-tackle lottery. At one point, the eddying wind and water subsided briefly offering a brief glimpse into the depths like a porthole on the Nautilus. It was then that my spiky little lure came into view no than than four metres from the near bank. Just as my wrist tensed on the rod handle to induce a last enticing flick, a jack pike shot out from his liquid lair with astonishing speed and grabbed it. I still am astounded, when I think back, at the sheer pace and savagery of that lunge. What ensued was a brief but powerful tussle with a summer pike of no more than two pounds. He gave it his all that little pike and I’ve had less enjoyable tussles with Esox many times his size who have thrown in the towel early and limped to the net like a hooked bin-bag. A second, slightly bigger fish of about three pounds followed from a swim overhung by one of the oldest and gnarliest white willows I’ve ever seen, it’s squat, fissured trunk rubbed smooth and shiny in places where generations of cattle have scratched an itch or sheltered from sun or rain. It must have been pollarded countless times over the years as well as thrashed and decollated by countless storms but as is the way with willows, new growth soon emerges to replace the lost and damaged. There must have been an absolute maze of fibrous red-tinged roots wafting in the flow where the tree’s huge buttresses enter the water, a perfect ambush point for my hungry little pike.

The little pike from below the willow

Next swim was a tight one and I had to kneel to cast. The jig was snapped up as soon as it hit the water and I fell back in surprise and flailed about in the nettles before I regained my composure. I was attached to a lively perch of about half a pound which, as it thrashed about in the margins, was escorted sympathetically by three or four of its shoal mates to the waiting net. Anthropomorphism is a dubious trait I know but as I released him back into the flow I like to think that his mates took him to one side, checked he was ok, and gently rebuked him for being so impulsive. 

So, for a first session on the jig as it were, things went quite well and overall was an enjoyable experience. Remarkably, I didn’t leave any lures, lost and forlorn, snagged up in the underwater jungle, but I did crush my fibre glass landing net pole when the perch pounced and I fell back on my arse.

Jungle jigging. September 2020

I’d recently joined Sudbury and Long Melford Angling Club, impressed by the range of river fishing on offer, mainly on the Suffolk Stour. But amongst the river delights were an intriguing trio of well established gravel pits: Glemsford 1, 2 and 3. The pits are collectively a nature reserve and an SSSI, primarily down to its outstanding population of dragonflies. I love dragonflies. If I spot one I’ll stand and observe it, because every time they enthral. Absolute masters of the air, and aerial predators par excellence they can turn on a sixpence to grab an unsuspecting fly, midge or mosquito mid-flight. Without them they’d be a lot more mossie bites to scratch, a lot more hydrocortisone anointing. And their names are perfect aptronyms: darters, hawkers, chasers. On the Norfolk Broads, I once witnessed a southern hawker doing battle with an angry hornet, a bout that the hawker lost but the ensuing dog-fight was a spectacle as both insects wrestled mid-air, end over end, free falling then ascending, a contortion of brightly coloured abdomens goring at each other until the hawker was thrust away defeated, its perfect wings trashed and crumpled as it ditched in the river Ant and gently floated away, a fitting Viking burial, back to the water from whence it came.

And so for my first trip to Glemsford I opted to fish No 3, a fantastic, prehistoric looking water, wild and swamp-like, a Louisiana bayou without the heat and alligators . A maze of spits, islands and craggy-old willows with dislocated, fractured limbs hanging precariously in the trees or strewn around, as if an angry giant has crashed through. 

The weather was mild and overcast, absolutely ideal so out came the jig rod again for a couple of hours of jungle fishing. This is about as near to wild angling as it gets in Suffolk. Every swim I cast into screamed fish, such was the abundance of predatory lairs and ambush points. And such was the case as I netted three perfect little Jack pike and a couple of bristling perch up to half a pound within the first hour. I’ve been told that the pike are restricted to youngsters at the moment as a couple of unfortunate summer oxygen starvation events put paid to the older fish. But the perch are an unknown entity. There could be some big girls down there, hopefully I’ll find out.

Conversely, next door is a commercial fishery that’s the polar opposite of Pit 3. Comprising of a ‘traditional pond’, a ‘pleasure/match’ pond and a larger, ‘specimen’ lake, the two ponds are barren puddles with the odd drift of sick looking lilies, no bankside vegetation, very few features and certainly no fishing appeal. A rusting JCB that may well have dug them out skulks nearby, giving off an air of after-thought and that’ll do to the fishery as a whole. The specimen lake is behind a gated fence so is difficult to see. It does look slightly more appealing with some reed beds and a couple of islands, but comparing this fishery to Pit 3 would be like comparing Stephen Fry to Joey Essex.

Pit 3 perch

The bayou that is Glemsford Pit No 3

Apologies to the pike. Winter, 1977.

As a schoolboy of twelve or thirteen, I fished fairly often with Steve, my brother in law (see my very first blog ‘A Useful Brother in Law.’) I remember fishing a stretch of what was probably the river Roding in Essex; a small, narrow river festooned with vegetation and overhanging willows, a chub fishers paradise. 

One Sunday afternoon during the winter, while Steve and I immersed ourselves in this chubby heaven, probing the depths with ledgered luncheon meat, I got bored with the lack of action and slapped on a rusty old Mepps spinner that had been knocking around in my tackle bag for ages, regularly puncturing my fingers if I delved too deep. I just tied it straight to the nylon mainline, no trace, and no thought to the consequences.

I think I had perch in mind as Steve had said that fishing near features like bridges and weirs, especially during the winter, was a useful tactic for big stripeys, so I blame him entirely for the years of guilt and trauma I suffered as a result of my foolhardiness! Just upstream from our swim was a small weir coupled with a small footbridge; perfect perch territory according to angling oracle Steve, so off I trotted in the naive hope of snaring a giant stripey. I’m not sure if it was first cast or not but everything seemed to happen very quickly. As I reeled the spinner back towards the bank I had a great, lunging take that very nearly ripped the rod from my hand and sent a great shudder of shock and fear right through me. This was no perch, for if it were it would have shattered the British record, and I would have been a famous schoolboy fisherman. What had grabbed my rusty old Mepps was an enormous pike. I’d been a fisherman for about three years up to that point and my biggest fish to date had been a five pound common carp. Now I thought that fish put up a fair old fight but it was truly nothing compared to the pike. I had little concept of playing a fish of any size, and the drag on my Intrepid ‘Boyo’ reel was cranked up far too tight, so that poor old fish jagged, tugged and tail-walked right under my rod tip. I held on for dear life; from a distance I probably looked like a manic conductor suffering a fit during the final movement. But as soon as it started it stopped. I have a searing image, still vivid to this day, of that great pike’s head disappearing below the foam it had whipped up, my rusty old Mepps spinner, with its flash of red-wool, dangling from its face like some cheap, back-street piercing. I’ve caught pike to 25lb since then, so I have some idea of pike proportions. I’m guessing that pike could have easily been a mid-double and I hope it shed that spinner very quickly and lived a long and happy life, or maybe grew to love its facial adornment and wore it as a token of its prowess in battle. Puerile musings aside, I still feel guilty about that pike. And now, as a convert to the art of jig fishing, drop-shotting, ned-slinging, creature chucking and so forth, I always use a trace, despite the general consensus amongst the lure-fisher fraternity that it’s ok to use fluorocarbon hook lengths, because if you do hook a pike and it bites you off it’ll soon shed the hooks. I think to a great extent this is wishful thinking, so I’m a trace man, in memory of the Mepps spinner pike.

My Mepps was rustier than this

Clarissa, a catfish and the Frankenpike

In August 2004 I caught a 44lb carp, the same weight as Richard Walker’s record breaking common back in 1952. He named his fish Ravioli but thankfully someone else decided Clarissa was more flattering. My Clarissa was a common too, but I’m not a carp fisherman, I was after catfish.

Waveney Valley Lakes in Norfolk, a nature reserve and fishery endorsed by the late, great (albeit climate change naysayer) David Bellamy, is a beautiful place to be let alone fish. I booked a week on Marsh Lake, with a view to catch a catfish, beguiled by their uncomely strangeness and brute fighting strength, not to mention their size. Those big slimy tadpoles go to 65lb at Waveney Valley. I couldn’t even begin to imagine the sort of fight a fish of those proportions would give so I hoped I’d start off small and work my way up.

There was only me and one other fishing Marsh Lake, an unusual looking, elderly gentleman with more than a whiff of Catweazle about him. He had coarse grey hair to his shoulders, wore galoshes and an old waxed cagoule and wouldn’t have looked out of place on Ahab’s Pequod.  He had the perplexing habit of exclaiming “who me?”whenever I asked him a question when more often than not it was just me and him talking. I had to suppress the urge to shout “WHO ELSE FOR CHRISSAKE!” a lot during our chats. Despite his archaic appearance, his tackle was top draw, the very latest in carp fishing innovation, and his set up looked like a feature spread for Carp World. He was very proud of it and took great pleasure in cocking a sneer at my mishmash of assorted rods, reels and  threadbare brolly camp.

When I hooked my Clarissa her initial run were so powerful that before I could slow her she tore off parallel with the near bank straight through all of Catweazle’s three lines. The bite alarm’s catawaulling and light show alone could have filled an Ibiza dance floor. I felt very guilty at the time, more for the fish than for him but miraculously when I netted her the only terminal tackle visible was mine. He didn’t seen perturbed, however, and was gracious and congratulatory. “That’s the biggest carp in the lake,” he said, quietly. I wasn’t surprised, she was massive, the biggest freshwater fish I’d ever seen. Although saying that I had once caught a pike of similar rare proportions, but the two events couldn’t have been more different. 

Being in the presence of Clarissa was a joy, made more special by a fine, late summer morning with sunlight playing on her doubloon-like scales, whereas my pike was caught from a huge pit in the Lee Valley on a frigid, overcast December day and was a mottled, deformed leviathan so battle scarred she looked like she’d been swimming around since the Cretaceous. And to make her appearance all the more frightening, her entire left eye and part of her head was engulfed in an ugly tumorous growth of a ghastly mottled grey/red that looked like her brain was seeping through her eye socket. That December day was a fitting backdrop as it felt almost apocalyptic. I encountered no one else during that session, saw no one, spoke to no one. It was if the world had ended, and all that survived was me and the monster.

It all started with the rat. With a faint rustle, he popped out from the reeds only to immediately spin round and dive back in when he saw me. Next thing there was a plop as he’d apparently opted to travel by water rather than land. As he swam from left to right in the margins creating a little bow wave, a huge dark torpedo shape emerged from nowhere, tracking his progress. It hung motionless below the rat, which appeared oblivious to the threat. I braced myself for the strike, but it never came and the torpedo slid back into the shadows. 

It was an eerie sight, that pike. With trembling fingers I gently reeled in my popped up mackerel tail to within three metres of the bank, and waited. 

Five minutes later I was staring at a stygian creature on my unhooking mat, laying there in all her deformed glory. She had barely struggled during the fight and came to the net like a wet blanket. 

I tried to weigh her with freezing, shaking hands but my scales only went up to 25lb and, with a crash and a rattle, they bottomed-out.  At a guess I’d say she was well over 28lb but she could have been a thirty. When I returned her she loitered menacingly in the margins for a moment before slowly vanishing. I had no desire to fish on, because of the dreadful prospect of hooking her again. That was the one and only time I fished the pit with the Frankenpike.

I did manage to catch a catfish at Waveney Valley, and as they usually do it came at night. I didn’t hear or register the bite alarm initially as I was sat up in my brolly camp, struggling to breathe, suffering a hay fever induced asthma attack. They’d been coming on and off for about three days, depriving me of sleep, energy and enthusiasm. As I played the fish, in the dead of night with rattling lungs and crumpled under-crackers, the shocking, lunging power of catfish became all too apparent. Sapped of strength and vital motor skills, I tottered around the swim totally befuddled, head-torch on flash, trying to take control of a fight that was all too one-sided. I could feel the line grate ominously on the lip of a gravelly drop-off about eight metres out and gritted my teeth in anticipation of a break-off. I was still struggling to gain line when, to my tremendous relief, the cat seemed to turn-tail and head straight at me. After thrashing about in the margins for a few seconds, a commotion that drew the attention of Catweazle, the fish was on the bank. “Look at you covered in slime, they stink too don’t they?” This was his commentary on my slithery attempts at weighing my very first catfish, which was a muscular 25lb. In the end I was glad that all I was wearing from the waist down was underpants. For one it makes the photos more of a talking point, and for two it’s easier to wash catfish gunk from bare legs rather than fishing strides.

Out of all these angling escapades I think the capture of my Clarissa was the most special. From the minute the bite alarm announced her presence on that beautiful late summer morning to the bitter sweet moment I watched her great, golden shoulders slide back into the pellucid depths of Marsh Lake, I knew I’d been in the company of one of nature’s rarities, a real gem. 

Catweazle and the Catfish 

Me and Clarissa

The Smell Of Weirs

The River Below The Weir by Bob Dellar

                                                

Recently, I had the pleasure of wetting a line on a majestic section of the Upper Thames near Wallingford, Oxfordshire, famous for its barbel and large shoals of nomadic bream. I fished downstream from an impressive weir pool, massive and turbulent, its waters giving rise to that gorgeous scent of soaked greenery and freshwater mist that triggered a Proustian madeleine of fishing and swimming in Dobbs Weir on the River Lea in Hertfordshire when I was a kid.

My mum used to drive us, my sister and me, for an occasional day out during the school holidays, where she sat in the sun reading crime novels as we swam and fished the river.

I panicked her once by swimming too close to the weir’s apron, well out of my depth in the deep, choppy water. I tried to swim to a calmer spot but was making no progress. All I could hear and see was the weir’s thunderous melee and foaming white water; I had no idea my mum was jumping up and down on the bank waving her arms and shouting at me to swim clear. I remember a wave of rising panic as my strength waned, but suddenly like flotsam from a flood, I popped clear of the main flow into a back eddy which delivered me near enough to a fishing platform to grab hold.

It was a weird day altogether, because not only did I nearly drown, I saw my very first pike. And it wasn’t skulking in the river amongst marginal weed waiting for an unfortunate roach to swim by but lying like a defeated dragon in a landing net held aloft by a little girl with brown curly hair and pink and white polka dot wellingtons.

Then there was the chub. On another visit, as we lounged around on the grass by the weir pool, a gang of young boys trooped by, garrulous and jostling. At their head was a blond lad of about twelve or thirteen carrying the biggest chub I’d ever seen. It was very much alive, and it made a couple of attempts to squirm free of his grip, its scales glistening like quick silver in the sunlight. The boy could hardly contain it and while his friends chattered excitedly around him, he strode on, grim faced and resolute. Years later in March 2003, that weir pool produced a British record chub of 8lb 13oz and the sight of it in the angling press reawakened the childhood memory of the boy and his prized chevin.

Kings Weir on the river Lea is a fishery where anglers have flocked for decades hunting specimen fish of all species but especially barbel. A lustier, older brother to Dobbs Weir, its watery mist hangs in the air above the sill like a baby Niagara, bedewing any angler who fishes nearby.

It’s a fine spectacle but when I used to fish it, some fifteen years ago now, it was a source of constant frustration as I blanked time after time. That is until I discovered an enclosed stretch at the tail end of the weir run by the London Angler’s Association.

With padlocked access and entirely fenced off, it was a rarely fished, wild paradise inhabited by kingfishers, water voles and my raison d’être the magnificent, gold-backed barbel. Once I’d locked that gate behind me, I was on my own amongst a beautiful tangle of frondescence with barely discernible swims and knee-high nettles that my legs and arms remembered for days after. The unkempt banks made for real jungle fishing, and swims were more like lairs. More often than not I’d fish into the night to exploit that magical witching hour when day becomes dusk becomes dark and fish shrug off their coyness and jostle to make your acquaintance. It paid off too. I met two of the rivers old warriors over the course of those sessions: a 12lb barbel and a 6lb 8oz chub. I also met two bailiffs who thought I was poaching. It was a particularly dark night, the only source of light my Star-Lite bite indicator on which I was concentrating very intently. Next thing, the night literally exploded into eye-stabbing torch light and shouty voices. If there had been a roof I would have hit it. Instead, I resorted to arming myself with a rod rest which I jabbed at the intruders like a rapier babbling, “fuck-off! fuck off! fuck off! repeatedly like I’d invented Tourette’s. I could have seriously injured one of those bailiffs. Thankfully their obvious amusement at my manic blathering eased the tension. I thought they were muggers after my gear, and they thought I was a team of poachers stealing fish and trashing the fishery. Why they just didn’t ask to see my permit without creeping up on me I’ll never know. I’ll think they just wanted a quick laugh and they certainly got one.

At the end of summer 2020, with the world on a trajectory to God knows where, I fished another weir pool, this one on the Suffolk Stour. It’s a fantastic spot, nestling deep in the countryside amidst water meadows and roaming cattle. There’s only a couple of swims on the pool, such is its size and profuse bank-side vegetation, and I decided to fish the one nearest to the weir itself, enticed by the pacey main current and swirling back eddies.

But, despite the very fishy nature of the pool and mild, overcast weather, nothing happened, hardly a twitch for an entire afternoon. There was a brief gudgeon interlude, where I managed a couple of fish in quick succession, and then a microscopic dace, but that was it. This lack of action galled me. I had tried everything, different baits, different methods; short casts, long casts: nothing. Then, just I was thinking about packing up, there was an oily swirl some two metres from the bank. “Carp,” I thought. I scanned the depths for the fish and saw a shape that bore no resemblance to the rounded, olive-brown shoulders of a river carp, more the sinewy sleekness of a river predator. It was an otter. It porpoised briefly and was gone, out towards the deeper water. I was transfixed, and grinning ear to ear. To witness such an iconic creature made my day, but it also accounted for my lack of fish.

I’ve reacquainted myself with Dobbs Weir in recent years, and it was by chance. I happened to be pricing tree work somewhere near Waltham Abbey, Essex when I noticed that landmarks and street names were beginning to look familiar. On a whim, I turned left off the main drag heading home and found myself driving down a road flanked by enormous glass houses, dazzling in the afternoon sun, all part of the local market garden industry that the Lee Valley is famous for.

Then I saw a sign that read Dobbs Weir Road and I was off down it in a flash, remembering with a judder of déjà vu the same journey twenty five years before in the back of my mum’s mini she named Dandy Red, although it was more orange than red. I parked in the very same car park we had always parked in and there was the same cafe where we bought ice cream and the same pub, The Fish and Eels, by the road bridge. It was a winter’s day and I was completely alone, the only car in the car park. I headed for the footbridge over the weir itself and sucked in the damp air and the weir scent that I knew so well and there was our spot, by a picnic table adjacent to an old gnarled willow. The tree had been pollarded and was much reduced but it was still an imposing sight. The whole scene was deserted and dreary and it was a task to overlay my memories of warm summer days teeming with picnickers and embullient children. I decided on the spot that I had to fish it again, and I headed back for an evening session no more that a week later. A bailiff had told me tales of massive perch loitering in the slack water by the weir pilings so I fished a ledgered  lobworm down amongst the sunken lilies, hard against the algae cloaked concrete. As the light waned and the air chilled my quiver tip arched round and I struck into a fish that juddered, dived and shook its way to the net, a beautiful, bellicose perch of 2lb 14oz, that, as I unhooked it, arched its spiny dorsel and spat back the worm that had tricked it. Not one of the monsters, but at long last a worthy fish from a river that reminds me, with a bitter-sweet edge, of being young.

As you may have guessed I’m drawn to weir-pools, from boy to man they’ve always held a fascination. It’s their differentness, and the fact they add mystery and potential to a river that for the majority of its course flows evenly and true and then there’s a weir, like a twist in a novel you didn’t expect. Big, small, shallow, deep, snaggy, weedy; a scoured river bed of gravel or a soft silt; a fast food outlet for fish of all species; an oxygen rich life-line; a snag-laden predator-paradise, and a magnet for wildlife in all its myriad variety, including me.

Dobbs Weir, with the picnic area in the background

Kings Weir. There’s some big barbel down there.

A useful brother in law...

When I was thirteen in 1977 and living with my parents and younger sister in Chingford, north east London, a brother in law called Steve with a Triumph Herald and a spare rod introduced me to angling. And for that I forgave him his tendency to grind his teeth whilst driving, blank me throughout the entire journey and smoke Players that filled the car with carcinogens. Passive smoking was my next favourite hobby after fishing.

   Being thirteen and without transport, not even a push-bike, I didn`t have a particularly large fishing catchment area. Highams Park Lake was a fifteen minute walk away, the River Lee at Cooks Ferry an hour by bus and feet but that was about it.

   Having Steve on side was without doubt a major advantage when it came to discovering far-flung fishing-well far-flung to me anyway. Copped Hall lake in Epping (my first carp, a common, fit and five pounds;) Hollow Pond, Leytonstone (my first tench, a shining olive-green and coincidently, five pounds, a specimen in 1977), and the captivating Norfolk Broads, (my first bag of bream and my first fishing super store, Lathams at Potter Heigham, like a million Christmases rolled into one.)  And during a session at Hatfield Lakes in Essex, Steve briefly crawled out of his shell, exposing a dash of true colour. A bullying bailiff, who refused to believe I was under 16 and therefore a junior, demanded we pay the full adult day-ticket rate. This riled Steve considerable. I remember the exchange had the two men referring to each other as “chief” frequently; the word punctuated almost every sentence in guttural explosions of derision.

     The tete a tete eventually culminated in the bailiff storming off and threatening us with the police, totally convinced I was at least 25 (I was big for my age, and the beard didn`t help.) Later on that day he almost caved his skull in whilst pulling a hung-up tree over with a tractor. We saw it all and we laughed, leading to a good many more “chiefs” being thrown around like grenades. I think if the bailiff hadn`t been bleeding from a head wound, he soon would have been.

   I`m convinced Steve let off a enormous head of suppressed anger and vexation that day. He was actually whistling to himself on the way home and tapping out a jaunty rhythm on the steering wheel, behaviour I`d never witnessed before.

   But our piscatorial adventures couldn’t last, under the circumstances. Steve was always fine to me but he was, essentially, a fairly disturbed individual. Despised by my mother and younger sister, barely tolerated by my dad, he was indifferent to his two young boys and his wife, my elder sister, who limped along permanently stressed and barely able to make ends meet due to the inadequate house keeping he afforded her.

   The final straw came when it became evident that he spent more money on tackle than he did his family, and thereafter, it just didn`t seem right to accept his fishing invitations, which eventually fizzled out altogether.

   A pal called Nigel suggested I join his fishing club, Intrepid Angling Society, to compensate for the recent decline in fishing opportunities, so in the autumn of 1977 I did just that.

   Before I knew it I was a fully paid-up junior member of I.A.S and attending my first club meeting. They were held at a factory’s social club off Lea Bridge Road, Leyton in a massive brick building that looked like an asylum, and it appeared to me that one or two of the inmates had infiltrated the ranks of I.A.S.

   Around a rectangular table in a tiny room filled to the rafters with eye stinging fag smoke, I was welcomed into the fold by a character who would have made a fine Worzel long before Jon Pertwee.

   Albert Challice dripped straw-coloured hair from every visible orifice, his ears especially were a haystack. His invisible lips permanently sucked on a No6, and his copious beard and tache were the colour of a public bar`s ceiling. He wore what could only be described as Jethro Tull`s cast-offs, (not the father of modern farming, but Ian Anderson, the front man of said band): a tight fitting tweed waistcoat; a rather flouncy but extremely grubby white shirt, and worn to a shine brown Corduroy strides. And whenever he moved, it sounded like a bead curtain in a boutique. Bangles and necklaces of wooden beads, glass beads and various exotic totems adorned his wrists and neck. This was the only outfit I ever saw him wearing. Even when he was fishing his clothes were the same, all but for the inclusion of a decrepit waxed jacket if it was cold or raining. He looked ancient to me, at least eighty, so you can imagine my surprise when I was introduced to his dad, Pop Challice, a man who looked so old he could have drowned worms with Izaak Walton.

     It wasn’t long before my very first outing with I.A.S dawned, although in truth dawn would have been preferable, because the agreed pick-up time was 2.30am. It was to prove an unforgettable experience.

  The night before, my mum hadn`t allowed me to store maggots in a bait box in the fridge to keep them cool and inactive, so I had stupidly left them in my creel in the front passage along with my rods and nets. When I dragged myself out of bed, bleary-eyed and groggy, I discovered hundreds of sweating maggots doggedly scaling walls and traversing skirting boards. They had escaped from an unsecured bait box. Green bottle flies were happily emerging from the house`s numerous nooks and crannies for weeks afterwards, alighting on us, our furniture, our breakfasts, lunches, dinners: it drove my family barmy.

   That was just the start. Due to the maggot exodus I nearly missed the club`s behemoth of a coach and had to run in the dead of night, sweating and clattering with prodding, jutting fishing tackle: I just made it. It shuddered to a squealing stop in a monstrous belch of nauseating fumes that, along with my recent exertion, had me gagging. I was deftly parted from my fishing gear and hauled aboard like a shipwrecked sailor. Suddenly, I had entered another world and was assailed by a fug of tobacco smoke and a maelstrom of undulating voices, like an expectant football crowd. A middle-aged man with mutton chops that bordered on the lycanthropic was sat near the front sucking on a Meerschaum pipe. This was George Fitzpatrick, the Feeder Man, because that was the only method he ever used, a maggot feeder the size of a jam jar. Generally, the float boys would out fish him, but occasionally the vast quantities of maggots he had liberally fed to the river would attract attention. I remember witnessing a George caught net of Thames chub the likes of which I’d never seen before or since. I can’t remember the weight or number of fish but it needed two men to haul the net from the river. When it broke the surface, the water exploded into a seething, foaming mass of silvery flanks. 

    My pal Nigel waved at me to join him and the blue swirling haze parted briefly as I made my way towards his trademark tartan cap. 

   ‘That was close, you nearly missed us. I told `em to hold on a bit for you. Bleedin` long way to walk, Purley.’

   For that was our destination, the middle reaches of the River Thames at Purley in Berkshire.

    Somewhere near Chiswick the beast of a coach required sustenance, and I was mighty relieved to get out and purify my lungs as well as stretch the legs at an all night petrol station.  As me and Nigel stalked the confectionary section, I witnessed a display of practiced pre-CCT thievery that fascinated and appalled me simultaneously.

   While keeping their eyes on the ageing pencil-browed blond on the desk, two brothers, Alan and Keith systematically fleeced the shop, artfully concealing cans of oil, spark plugs, crisps, sweets and thrash mags within the gamekeepers pockets of their fading Barbours; I looked on in disbelief.

   ‘Don't stare you prat, you`ll draw attention,’ whispered Nigel. ‘Just stuff that Mars in your coat and move towards the door.’

   Back on the coach, Alan and Keith jovially distributed the spoils of their labours and somehow I ended up with a copy of Hustler in my lap.

   ‘Feast your eyes on that’ smirked Keith, a bit of a step up from your usual Kays catalogue underwear section ain`t it?’

   It certainly was. The dusky brunette on the front cover was enough for me. But it was nothing compared to the jungle of eye popping gynaecological gymnastics on the inside. The models sported hair everywhere: great tussocks of it. It was after all the Seventies, when a Brazilian was merely a citizen of a South American country. I was disgusted. But given the hair-trigger nature of an adolescent’s loins, I shot my bolt straight into my new khaki fishing trousers. 

   The river at Purley was beautiful, utterly beguiling. My perception of the Thames up to that point had been of a colossally wide, tea coloured urban watercourse flanked by world famous landmarks. But the Thames I fished that day was draped in a veil of eddying autumnal mist, soon to be replaced by flakes of gold leaf sunlight as the day warmed. It spoke a lilting, liquid language I would come to know well and to this day whenever I have the good fortune to fish it I’m reminded of that first encounter.

     My swim was next to a gnarled willow amongst a drift of nodding Bulrush. It took me a while to set up my fishing tackle as I was so enthralled by the teeming life around me.

   As it turned out I caught very little. Only three tiny perch, striped like a sergeant, graced my keep net. It would take many years to acquire the watercraft and piscatorial know how to do this river justice. But as I watched a pulsing, electric blue damselfly balance artfully on my rod tip, catching fish was merely the icing on the cake.

   It`s May 1978 and my very first Intrepid Angling Society’s Annual Dinner and Dance. I looked hip and swish in my Travolteresque white shirt, cream jacket and black strides, although future examinations of the photos my mum took would prove otherwise.

   By some fluke I`d managed to secure a prize: The Junior Roach Shield for Best Specimen Roach. On a bitterly cold day in January, when every inch of me was an icicle, I caught a roach of 1lb 12oz that shone like an ingot of freshly minted silver with eyes and fins a deep blood red. It was the best fish I`d ever seen and it was mine, and to this day still remains my personal best.

Brother in law Steve with obligatory Player in gob, and me. Norfolk Broads, 1977.

Intrepid Angling Society Presentation Dinner, 1979. I’d won the Junior September All-In on the River Cam

Hollow Pond, Leytonstone 1977. Tench, 5lb. (According to Steve I nicked this fish from HIS swim!)

Copped Hall, Epping, Essex, 1978. My first crucian.

Copped Hall, Epping, Essex, 1978. A nice little common I’d tempted with sweet corn using the Lift Method.