Tracy&James | Thursday, 22 June 2017
When Paul first asked me to write these FPs I had an idea about telling the story of how I got into fishing in the first place, however I never got round to it until now. It’s a tale of spectacular failure, involving a two year period of not even getting a bite, let alone catching a fish, but ultimately one of true success. Success in finding a vocation that I love now as much as I’ve ever done.
In reality as soon as I gained some independence, i.e. was allowed out of the house on my own, I became an angler (although one who didn’t have any gear or any clue). Those were the days when kids used to walk themselves to junior school and play out in the evenings and at the weekend, so long as you were back in time for tea (dinner was served at lunchtime back then) all was good. My parents live in a seaside town in North Wales, so the coast is only a few hundred yards from their front door, and as soon as I got my first bike I used to pedal down to a place called Splash Point to watch people fishing there – I’d spend the whole tide spectating.
Splash Point, at that time, was extremely popular with sea anglers, however I subsequently figured out that this was due to it being in a pub car-park and not because the fishing was good. As such the anglers were more interested with having a pint and a chat with their friends than catching fish, and looking back, to say the standard of the fishing was poor was being generous. Rarely would anybody catch anything and when they did it was a six inch whiting or a weaver fish. The weaver fish were treated as if they were deadly, that said they are the most venomous animal in the UK with a stinging power exceeding that of a honey bee! (I can sense the Aussies reading this gasping in awe). Seeing grown men so scared of a small fish fascinated me all the more – these ferocious beasts needed to have multiple towels wrapped around them before they could be approached for hook removal (I suspect not many weaver fish survived these encounters).
My family are all keen on golf and perhaps there was an expectation that I to would take it up, however apart from swinging a driver at plastic golf balls in the back garden, this never really sparked my interest. Then my mum bought me the best present ever – a fishing outfit from Woolworths, a bubble pack containing a two piece glass rod, a reel, a spool of line, a float, some lead split shot and a pack of hooks. I was now a ‘proper’ angler, I just needed to go out and catch some fish. Unfortunately this proved to be tricky, especially as I had no one to help me. My early trips were to a ‘free’ stretch of the river Clwyd. By ‘free’ I mean that it was still actually the estuary and tidal – I’d have been better off fishing for flounders than flinging out maggots for some mystery species (at this point I didn’t know what I was fishing for). I also fished some other spots, still clueless and with the same level of success.
It wasn’t long before I upgraded my fishing tackle to a 12ft glass coarse rod and a better reel, in fact for every birthday and Christmas present I was requesting fishing tackle, this made no difference to my catch rate though – this remained fixed at exactly zero. More than a couple of years went past when it came to the attention of a next door neighbour that I was into fishing, unknown to myself and my parents so was he, and he was a member of a local club which had the fishing rights on a local lake. He promised to take me there, the sort of thing neighbours did back then as opposed to now when we don’t even talk to our current ones. So it was at Llyn Helyg where I broke my duck – six perch and two roach, to say I was delighted was an understatement. The next season I joined the angling club and I was up and running. I do wonder if anyone else has blanked for over two years though without giving up?
As an aside, I later took up beachcasting. I soon learnt that the best anglers only turned up at Splash Point in darkness, and they could all stick their baited rigs out beyond the end of the wooden groyne, into the gullies that were carved into the shallow beach by the tide – a cast of at least 120m. I quickly learnt the importance of good technique and by the age of 15 I was pendulum casting with the best of them. Perhaps this is where my love of distance casting first started, trying to get 5oz of lead past 200 yards.
Tracy and I are really looking forward to a trip to Wales this weekend. We’ll be fishing the Dee and then, on Saturday, we have a BFCC meeting in Oswestry. This looks like it’s going to be a great event with international fly fishers, CLA champion Spey casters and the other half of team Jersey planning on attending.
All the best, James.
