CHAPTER 7
HOW TO FISH
‘Angling or float fishing I can only compare to a stick and a string, with a worm at one end and a fool at the other.’
BOB
A lot of people say it’s impossible to learn to fish from a book. They reckon you can only learn by getting out there and doing it. It’s a bit like darts. If you read a book on how to play darts at an elite level, it’d read:
1.Buy darts.
2.Find dartboard.
3.Always hit treble 20 then the bullseye.
This is the complete text from my 2012 book, Bobby ‘Motown’ Mortimer’s Complete Darts Course: Lessons From the Deart (Dart/Heart). Now, while those instructions are all technically correct, it’s not going to make you a fantastic dartsman (something that was established in subsequent court cases brought by angry readers). For a start, it mentions nothing about all the lager you have to drink to become truly good, or that you’ll need a smart nickname, like French Fries, Bobby Carpets or the Puzzler.
Similarly, fishing can be boiled down to this:
1.Buy a rod.
2.Catch the country’s biggest carp.
3.Buy a crown and pose for Angling Times with the crown on your head and that big trout in your arms.
When I was younger, fishing between the ages of 12 and 15, I’d waste hours listening to lots of rumours from other children about how you can definitely catch a fish.
One of them was tickling a trout. I’ve never discovered it if it works. People always claim it does, but I’ve never seen any evidence.
The next rumour was that if it’s dark and you shine a torch on the water, the fish will come up and then you grab them. Again, I can’t believe this would work, but as a kid, it seemed very convincing. Some older kid would tell you this, nodding his head sagely, telling you with confidence, ‘Oh, Bob, man, it’s guaranteed.’
The next one is that you find a pool and you pour bleach in it, the fish die and float up to the surface and then you pick them out and then eat them.
The next one – and you never get to do this, because you’re just a kid – is that you throw a stick of dynamite in. All the fish then float up to the surface. Funnily enough, this one is true because I’ve seen a thing on YouTube where they were blasting a bridge or something. You looked down at the river – BOOM! The blast goes off and slowly, all the fish come floating up. I don’t know if they’re dead or dazed, but it’s effective. But of course getting dynamite has become tricky since Maynard’s shut. You can’t get dynamite any more.
But there’s a bit more to the art of fishing than that.
The first thing I suggest you need if you want to become a fisherman is to be friends with Paul Whitehouse. That’s because when you’re starting out you need an actual fisherman to teach you the practical side. You’ll need to know from someone more experienced if you’re doing it correct enough that you stand a chance of catching a fish.
If I’m not sure what I’m doing, it erodes my confidence entirely. It’s impossible to stand quietly on a river for six hours when you’re full of doubt about whether you’re doing it right.
There’s no shame in finding the mechanics of angling a bit mystifying. I took my eldest son out fishing once, about 12 years ago, and it was a disaster. I thought I knew the basics – you know, how to put a float on, how to attach a couple of weights, and then slap on a reel. But it turned out I didn’t know how to tie the float, I couldn’t work out where the weights attached, and I didn’t know how to use those reels with the little arm on them. I just didn’t know how to do it.
When we’re not doing fishing for the show, Paul has been a superb teacher. I might be wracked with fear – ‘Am I doing the right thing? Is the hook right? Am I lying on the bottom?’ But having Paul come over, give it the once-over and say, ‘No, that’s the right set-up’ – just hearing those words, and I’m made up.
I’m so lucky to be going with Paul because I don’t think I’d like to be stuck in a river with a companion who isn’t so nice, calm and amusing. When he’s told me I’m doing everything theoretically correct, and I believe there’s fish in the water where the end of my line is, I know I’m not completely wasting my time and I’m away for hours. Paul often says to me, ‘You’ve got as good a chance as me.’
I would love to get good enough – and I’m still not – so that I could phone someone up and say, ‘Do you fancy coming fishing?’ and when they say, ‘I don’t fish,’ I can say, ‘Well, I can show you the basics.’ I’d love to.
As I’ve got older, I’m not in that game any more where you’d call up a mate, say Mark Lamarr: ‘Hey, Mark, are you going to this thing on Saturday? Are you doing that thing on Tuesday? Shall we go to the Groucho and get pissed?’ I’m not in that world any more. But if I had the skill, I could say, ‘Mark, you don’t fancy coming fishing, do you?’ It’d be a nice thing to do. I really wish I could. But I’m not there yet though.
I’d happily go fishing with most people, but the person I’d love to take most is Matt Berry. He’s great, Matt: a reflective, kind, interested character who’d deeply appreciate fishing. But I wouldn’t want it to be a disaster, like it was with my son. I wouldn’t want it to be, ‘I’m so sorry, I don’t know how to do it.’ Everyone coming back, whispering to each other, going, ‘Don’t ever go fishing with Bob Mortimer. It’s fucking awful.’
I’d suggest the novice starts with the fishing that brings me the most happiness. As I’ve already mentioned, it’s the Huckleberry Finn sort of fishing I love. For this, you just need a rod with a reel, a float with a hook, and a worm hooked on the end of it. The key skill you must possess is the ability to get your line in the water. There’s only one guarantee in fishing, and that’s if your hook’s not in the water, you won’t catch a fish.
You don’t need tons of equipment when you’re getting started. Even after two series of Mortimer & Whitehouse: Gone Fishing, I’ve not amassed that much kit.
My most important tool is my old blue rod. It’s a little plastic blue rod I bought at Argos for that occasion when I tried to see if my son would like fishing, so I got it about 12 years ago and it was only used once. I took it to the first episode we ever did of Gone Fishing, as a sort of joke: ‘Look at this rubbish rod I’ve got’ – but when I sat down by the bank and there was all this palaver of ‘You’ve got to choose this, choose that’, I thought, ‘No, this little blue rod is a perfectly good fishing rod.’ I suddenly felt very defensive towards it.
I’ve become a little bit obsessed with it, like it’s my first car or something. So it’s my fate to have this shitty little blue rod and I’ll stick with it. It’s not that I’m tight because I’ve got a nice fly rod – because I can’t fly fish with my blue rod. Paul occasionally likes to go fly fishing, so I tag along with him. Paul pointed me to a good starter rod, and the very first thing I did with it was practise in my garden, but my cats kept up a torrent of interference. They thought it was a fabulous game.
I think the fly-fishing thing is a little bit like riding a bike, because I’ve not cracked it yet. They all say it’s just practice, and I’m at the point where one in probably every 12 to 15 casts is of any worth. I think I might be in the area of suddenly I’ll give it a cast, and everyone will joyfully exclaim, ‘Oh yes, that’s it! Bob’s cracked it!’ I hope that day will come.
The other essential piece of fishing kit is a hat. I go to Palm Springs every year and they’ve got a hat shop there. It’s got a tourist vibe about it – the sort of place you can get holiday hats from, novelty cowboy hats, that sort of thing. But I was on one of my days out, so I went inside and it turned out to be a terrific hat shop. A terrific hat shop. We had the new series of Mortimer & Whitehouse: Gone Fishing coming up, so I picked up six new hats. One for every episode.
It’s partially when you’re getting older and your hair is diminishing – and I don’t mind it, I don’t buy hats to hide what nature has abandoned, and I’m not at the edge of some sort of breakdown – but sometimes when you watch yourself back on a show, and you’re being filmed from all different angles, the TV screen suddenly fills with the back of your own head and you think, ‘Oh my days …’ So, I’ll be honest, it was my own selfish motive to occasionally have a hat just so my balding head wasn’t quite so apparent. And as long as the series continues, an annual visit to the Palm Springs hat shop will be one of my traditions.
When I was younger, I was a lot more sensitive about my bald spot and for TV appearances I would apply hair-thickening spray to cover my embarrassment. I became highly skilled at this deceit. These skills served me well during the filming of an episode of Mortimer & Whitehouse: Gone Fishing. Paul had mentioned a few times during filming that his bald spot could potentially be dominating the shot at times, especially when the cameras were behind us, which they often are as we are generally facing the river. So on this particular trip I brought a can of cheat spray with me and gave him a bald spot transformation. He was very reluctant and sceptical, but when he saw the results he was in shock: ‘I look like Tony Blair when Tony Blair is viewed from behind Tony Blair.’ He was quite chuffed, I think. We went to the pub that night with Paul’s new hair intact and I sensed a real spring in his step. We also ordered a steak and kidney pie, which further elevated his mood. No one mistook him for Tony Blair though.
So you’ve got your rod and your hat. If you’ve chosen whereabouts you want to fish, then find out if there’s an angling club nearby. Gently approach a fellow angler down at the riverbank and see if he can give you some pointers. By and large, fishermen love to have a chat – usually because half the time the fishing’s not the greatest, so a brief moment of human interaction can be a bright spot in their day.
It might sound obvious, but if you find fishermen, there’s usually fish. They wouldn’t be there otherwise. If the fishermen are out, then you’ll also know the conditions are decent for catching, whether that’s the weather or the time of day. But approach the fisherfolk with a note of caution. I’ve met a lot of fishermen through the show and they’re often extremely competitive with each other. I’ve watched them – one will say, ‘So, I’m using a nylon for that,’ and the other one will say, ‘Oh, you use nylon for that? Right. Only I use braid.’ They undermine each other constantly. ‘Oh, you’re using that to fish, are you? No, I mean, whatever suits you … only I’ve heard it’s not that good.’ I sometimes think the one thing that’s nice about the show is to remind people, for goodness’ sake, that the only motivation for a fishing trip should be to have a pleasant day.
Bob: Paul’s cheat spray results before and after.
Anytime we do something a little bit specialist on the show – like carp fishing, or sea fishing, or our first trout fishing trip – we might get an expert along who knows that river and knows the sort of tricks that those fish are more likely to fall for. You never waste time talking to an expert.
Once you’ve settled quietly and are nestled in a wooded little thicket by the riverside, hiding from the fish’s excellent vision, then you try to think like the fish. Where would you go if you were a particular fish? Time teaches you that chub are often quite near trees, pike are near the reeds, that sort of thing. Think like the fish: what would you eat if you only ate things that fell into the river at this time of year? Study the terrain. If you were a tench, what would attract you, what would startle you, what do you truly desire? You are locked in a battle of wits and wills with your quarry. Start to get inside the fish’s head. Know him better than he knows himself. Become one with the fish. Seduce his wife. Dance for him at a family gathering. Whatever it takes.
Basically, you’re hoping to increase the odds that when some inquisitive or greedy fish makes a mistake, your hook will be there when it does.
It can be a bit sedentary, but the moment when you strike and there’s something on the line and you feel that life force running through the line and down the rod into your hands … well, you can’t put it into words. No matter how big or small it is, it just makes your heart skip a beat.
To begin your coarse fishing education, it gives me great pleasure to put you in the capable hands of my personal fishing instructor, Paul Whitehouse.
PAUL
Before we crack on here, I’d like to issue a disclaimer: there have been a million and 73 books written about how to catch fish and at least a million of them will go into greater detail than I could. But a certain diminutive Northerner with a head like the moon once tried to take his sons fishing and realised he was quite incapable of even setting up a rod, reel and float tackle. So, in the very remote chance that there is anyone as ‘challenged’ as him out there, this is an attempt to cover the basics of bait or coarse fishing.
I apologise in advance to all those experts for whom this will seem basic to say the least and any readers who are more interested in one of us dropping dead (I’ve placed my bet) than reading about waggler floats and shotting patterns. But Bob sometimes demonstrates an iron will and even I bend to it occasionally. In fact, I almost told him to ‘do one’ because there are endless ways to fish, in a bewildering array of waters, for a large number of species, that feed in different ways (some don’t feed at all in freshwater) from one day to the next – never mind in different conditions during the season. I mean it’s not brain surgery … no, it’s more complicated than that. And rocket science. But Bob’s a mate and a fairly nice bloke really, so here it goes … (Please see page 77 for Izaak Walton’s disclaimer and forgive me).
FLOAT FISHING
Float fishing is, unsurprisingly, the art of fishing using a float. Bob and I love float fishing, because it evokes our childhood worlds when we first discovered fishing. It feels like the most traditional method of fishing that we still employ today.
The float is the indicator that shows you when a fish has taken your bait. It sits on the water surface until a fish takes your bait. That’s the moment a fisherman’s heart leaps into his mouth. It’s there!It’s there! It’s come!
Floats come in a bewildering variety of shapes and sizes but there are two or three types that will see you through most situations when starting out. When fishing still or slow-moving water you would usually go for a ‘waggler’ – this is shaped a bit like a pencil.
The waggler gives less resistance when a fish takes your bait, as it has a small surface area. This means a fish is less likely to be spooked when it gives the bait a little exploratory nibble, as it doesn’t encounter any resistance from your float. In addition to the waggler, for very sheltered spots and closed-in work you could opt for the more delicate quill float, but the principle is the same.
If we’re going to fish still or slow-moving water with a waggler, you fix the float by the bottom end only. Most floats have a ring on the bottom so you put the line through that split ring on the bottom end only, and lock it in place with two split-shot weights.
You can also use a little silicon tube just above the ring, so the line goes through the silicon tube, which then slips very tightly onto the bottom float. You don’t need to lock it in place with the split-shot – they’ll be added further down the line to get the bait down to where you need it. That’s usually, but not always, on or near the bottom. If you’re trotting, which is letting your line run with the flow of the river, you’d use a different type of float, certainly in faster-flowing water.
The profile of the float would still be basically a pencil shape but there is a wider body or bulge near the brightly coloured tip. This helps the trotting float ‘sit’ nicely in the water.
When trotting, you need to attach the float at the top and the bottom by using silicon tube or similar. This allows you to control the line on the surface and make adjustments so that the float and your bait can run freely through the swim. Please note that this is a very basic set-up and description of float fishing. There are many different rigs and techniques, but for the beginner these are the two different set-ups for still and running water.
Generally to start with, you will be using single-strand nylon line or monofilament. The breaking strain of the line you use depends on the species you’re fishing for or how many snags and obstacles there are in the water you’re fishing.
For smaller species like roach and dace you would use 2- or 3lb breaking strain line, maybe even finer for the hook length, increasing in strength for species such as tench and chub to around 5lb and obviously going up again for the big boys like barbel and carp and for the scary ones – pike – anything around 10- to 12lb breaking strain or higher.
Paul: A collection of floats.
A lot of anglers use braided lines these days too but these are often for specialist rigs and hair rigs, knotless knots and set-ups that would cause Bob to have a full mental breakdown, so we’ll omit them here.
Line comes with its diameter on the spool or packet – 0.38mm is the one I’ve got in front of me – and that’s important to fishermen, because they’re looking for a strong but extremely slender line, in the hope that the line won’t look obvious to any passing fish.
Then you have to attach your hook to the end of the line. There are millions of knots you can use to do this. A lot of people – Bob, for one – use the improved clinch knot.
I know a lot of fishermen swear by it, but I would never use it. There’s a knot called the Grinner, or water-knot, and it’s much better than that. It’s a brilliant, versatile knot with great strength for tying your hook or attaching two lengths of line together. A lot of people will proudly tell you this means you only have to learn one knot for attaching your hook. Except you don’t! You have to learn more: it’s the law.
The type of hook you want often depends on the type of fish you’re setting out to catch, but they’re all sold clearly marked and often in huge packets or plastic tubs (often including little weights and floats too) for next to nothing – although it’s quite easy to spend a fortune on next to nothing where fishing is concerned; I’ve done it many times.
Most anglers these days use barbless hooks. You can buy barbed hooks – they have a better chance of sticking into a fish’s mouth because they penetrate more deeply, meaning the angler will lose less fish once they get taken. But barbed hooks also do considerably more damage when they’re removed, especially by inexperienced fishermen. With anglers being fanatical about caring for their fish and wanting them to be returned to the water unharmed, it’s barbless hooks all the way.
Paul: The trusty clinch knot. But not as trusty as the grinner.
The most common hook is J-shaped, but a lot of people now swear by circle hooks – these are like J-shaped hooks, but the hook point is slightly offset. This is supposed to help hook fish effectively – as they swim away after taking the bait.
In float fishing, you use two main types of reel: a fixed spool and a centre pin. The centre pin is the old traditional reel, what a non-fisher expects a reel to look like. It’s a circle, there’s a spool and the line simply winds round it and onto the spool.
With the fixed spool the line is caught around the bail and then wound evenly around the spool. The advantage of the fixed spool is that you can cast much further with it. It also has what’s called a slipping clutch, which means if and when you hook a fish, you can adjust how much line the fish can take without the line snapping; by adjusting this clutch, it lets the spool run freely even if you’re still winding. This is essential if you’re Bob Mortimer and you’re winding furiously, despite being endlessly told not to, shouted at and occasionally kicked and punched, while a fish is heading in the opposite direction.
The centre pin gives you more direct control but you have to adjust the resistance that you’re going to give the fish with your hand.
So they’re the two reels. Either will do for either situation, but for real distance when you’re casting, you need a fixed spool. For sensitivity and line and float management in a river, a centre pin gives you more control.
In terms of rods, when you’re float fishing in a river or a lake, really anything from 11 to 13 feet is about the norm. In a way, the longer the rod, the more line control it allows – especially if you’re trotting; you can keep your line off bankside obstructions or around weeds and reeds. The length of rod is not so important in a lake as your bait is usually fixed in one position.
There are various test curves, or strengths, of rod. So if you were fishing for something like roach or dace or grayling – not a particularly big fish – you can use a fairly light rod. If you’re fishing for carp or barbel, chub or pike, then obviously you use a much stronger rod with a bigger test curve. The test curve is the amount of weight required to bend the tip at a right angle to the butt (Ooh, Matron – it’s the handle of the rod, effectively). But you do it by judgement as much as anything.
Then you need to plumb the depths. Not the moral depths that Bob and I have trawled in the vain hope of a gag over the years, but the depth of the swim you’re fishing. You do if you’re float fishing. If you’re ledgering, your bait is already going to be on the bed of the lake or river. But even with a float, you’re almost invariably fishing on or near the bottom, because that’s where most fish lie, so you want to make sure your bait gets as close as it can to the riverbed. Trout are different, because they’ll rise to a surface fly. Chub will do that and carp will also take a surface bait, even though they’re predominantly bottom feeders.
Predators like pike and perch will actively seek out their prey in mid-water, but the majority of the time, you’re pretty well fishing on or near the bottom.
Plumbing can be tricky. That’s why a good one is worth its weight in gold – but that’s enough lame plumbing humour. Plumbing the depth at which to set your float so your bait trundles enticingly along is tricky because riverbeds vary: One section of riverbed in your swim might be a nice uniform two metres deep but then suddenly shelve up and your float can get caught on the bottom.
You start by putting the plummet onto your hook – plummets are little lead weights with a cork base, so you can just push the hook in. The float has a capacity of weight that will sink it, so you effectively overweight the float. The plummet sinks the float. You cast out, the float sinks and disappears. So you move the float up the line – you cast, it still sinks. So you move the float up another foot and eventually, it emerges.
You want the float in a position where the lower part is submerged and the tip is visible. If you overdo it, then the float will just lie flat until the current takes it. It’s trial and error until you get that depth about right.
Bait your hook, hurl in some offerings of what you’re using as bait (this is called loosefeeding) and off you go. Keep loosefeeding little and often to draw fish into your swim and keep their attention.
LEDGERING
Ledgering is fishing on the bottom with a fixed weight.
It’s another, possibly even more productive, way of presenting your bait to the fish, than float fishing. You use a simple weight to anchor your bait or a swimfeeder, in which you can pack some of your particles of bait, or groundbait, to give a suggestion of what’s on your hook, or even exactly what’s on your hook.
For ledgering, you’d use a rod round about 10 to 11 feet and you can use that in rivers or lakes. If you’re carp fishing, it needs to be a strong rod, but you have all manner of bite indicators, so the sensitivity of the rod isn’t an issue. As soon as you can get a run, you’ll get a beep sounding from the electronic bite indicator when the circuit is broken or when the circuit is made – I don’t know which way round it is. I’m not an electrician, am I?, but either way, the alarm goes off.
In certain other situations, you would use what’s called a quiver tip, which can either be built in or attaches to the end of the rod, and this is a more sensitive indicator. That’s what you’ll be looking at to see whether a fish has taken the bait. You could also use a swing tip, which is perhaps a more sensitive method than a quiver tip, but better suited to still waters. It’s just an inert dangly bit that hangs at right angles and twitches up when a fish takes.
And then there’s freelining, which is self-explanatory. You might fish very carefully in the margins for a fish on the bottom and you’d use very little weight, if any at all, so the fish takes the bait and doesn’t feel any resistance.
You have to watch the line, but that’s tricky – you’ve got no weight to cast other than the bait, and if the wind’s blowing or anything like that, you’ll be blown all over the place. When fishing like this, stealth is important, so keep clodhoppers and lumpen idiots (like a certain bloke from Middlesbrough) well away from the fishery. In fact, don’t tell him you’re going fishing at all. Certainly don’t give him your contact details.
The high-end, hi-tech carp fishers go in completely the opposite direction. What they do is use a very heavy weight to anchor the bait. The bait is not far away – it’ll hopefully be in the middle of a load of loose feed that they’ve bombarded the lake or river with. Boilies, which are high-protein manufactured baits, and sweetcorn are popular baits for carp, and the carp angler will use all manner of flavourings and inducements to make them even more tempting. They even use fake sweetcorn, which allows them to cast miles, and the greedy old carp will happily take even that. Mind you, a lot of carp are extremely wary and suspicious of all anglers’ baits and many silent men spend days on end around mysterious ponds and lakes catching absolutely nothing.
Carp fishermen will almost always bait or ‘spod’ the area where they’re fishing. A spod is a plastic rocket-shaped tool full of bait that is cast to a particular area, so that when they cast the hook bait, it will be hiding amongst all this additional groundbait.
They often use a big fixed lead, and they usually attach the bait by means of what’s called a hair rig. With a hair rig, the hook isn’t in the bait: instead, it’s hanging on a tiny bit of very fine line next to it. The carp picks it up, swims off thinking, ‘Oh, this is all right,’ suddenly feels the weight, bolts and that engages the hook. It seems like hi-tech stuff but it’s quite universal in a lot of ledgering now, but if you’re using a small particle bait like a maggot, then you wouldn’t necessarily use a hair rig. If ever you find yourself in a pub and a funny little rotund Northern bloke engages you in conversation about fishing, bewilder him with terms like ‘helicopter rigs’, ‘zig rigs’ and ‘simple bolt-hair pop-ups’. A lot of carp rigs can be purchased ready-made now. You just need to attach your pre-tied hair-rig hook length to the swivel at your weight if you’re ledgering or to your mainline if you’re float fishing. It’ll save you learning the knotless knot!
Carp will also take surface baits. Floating crust was an old favourite way to catch them and it’s very exciting to watch a big carp slurp down your bait from the surface. These days particle baits like certain types of dog biscuit and pellets have superseded the old floating crust, but I have fond memories of fishing in this way.
SPINNING
The tackle you use for pike and perch is slightly different. As predators, you can also catch them on spinners, light lures or jigs, which are small, highly coloured little artificial fish that are often articulated so they move about alluringly.
There’s a bewildering array of spinners, lures and plugs. The amount of money you can spend is incredible. It’s a nice way of fishing – it’s roving, you’re walking, you’re casting into likely spots, trying to make this lure seem alive with careful jiggling of the line … it’s very exciting.
You’d use a lightweight spinning rod of about nine or ten feet with a fixed-spool reel – it excels at light bait casting. You certainly wouldn’t use a centre pin with a light lure.
If you’re fishing for pike, which can be anything up to 40lbs, then you need a much heftier rod – say nine to ten feet if you’re spinning or lure fishing. The pike likes to ambush its prey, so it will wait in a place where it can dash out. Like the Usain Bolt of the fish world, it likes to use a sudden burst of speed over a short distance to catch its prey.
You’d use your lure or dead bait, and they like all sorts of dead bait, pike, especially sea fish, like herring smelt and mackerel, but one of the best baits for a really big girl (all big pike are female) is a small pike and a fairly hefty fixed-spool reel. When fishing for pike, you also need to use a trace on your line because otherwise a pike’s teeth will bite through nylon. But there’s loads of specialist gear for pike fishing. Anglers – well, most of them – love kit! And tackle companies are very happy to provide tons of it. Most of it is designed to catch anglers rather than fish, but it’s hard not to be seduced by some ‘new’ development that will guarantee you’ll catch the next record pike … come on! Many books have been written about pike and pike fishing, not least because they are the ‘Jaws’ of the freshwater world. Top predator. Dead-eyed. Scary. Fantastic.
There’s another technique called drop-shotting that has become very popular in recent years, especially for perch. You use a weight at the end of your line and the lure is suspended at a right angle above the weight. You cast, the weight takes it down to the bottom, and the lure sits at an enticing right angle some distance above it.
CASTING
No one can learn to cast without getting out and casting until you start to get the hang of it. It’s not possible otherwise. But in the interests of what you’d expect in a book about fishing, there are two main casts depending on where you’re fishing: the overhead cast and the side cast.
THE OVERHEAD CAST
To cast, point the rod at your target and then lift it slowly backwards in one smooth motion so that it’s slightly behind you. Imagine the rod is the hour hand on a clock face and stop around one or two o’clock. Then bring the rod forward, stopping briefly at about 11 o’clock, releasing the line from your index finger and slowly following through with the rod so that it ends up at nine o’clock and you’re ready to fish. If you’re fishing a still water, click the bail arm over to stop the line running off the spool once you’ve cast and fish away. If you’re fishing a running river and trotting your float downstream, leave the bail arm open and control the line with your finger to allow the float to trot with the current and your bait to swim down naturally. The same basic principle in casting with a fixed spool applies whether you’re float fishing, ledgering or lure fishing.
With a centre pin, the beginner draws off as much line as possible and flicks the float out. Unless you have mastered the Wallis cast, an extremely difficult technical cast that requires much practice and months of overruns and tangles of bird’s nest proportions, you’re better off fishing with a fixed spool to begin with.
Casting doesn’t require brute force or getting the weight of your body behind it. You’re only ever using your arm as a pivot. Imagine you’re a robot: you want a smooth, controlled and swift motion.
THE SIDE CAST
Not everyone is going to be fishing on a large river where you can make long, arcing overhead casts so most beginners will probably find the side cast the easiest to start with.
It’s exactly the same principle as the overhead cast, but the rod starts, as you might imagine, from the side and you use a similar action that you’d use if you were skipping a stone across water. Again, the rod should do most of the work.
Paul: Be quiet, Bob, you’re scaring off the fish!
The side cast is great if you want to get under overhanging trees – you just skim it in – and because you’re coming in at a lower angle, the bait or lure makes less of a splash when it hits the water. It’s also effective on windy days, which can play havoc with an overhead cast. But like all casting, it takes practice before you’ll be accurate enough to get the lure to land exactly where you want.
Nothing will help you as much as getting bankside tuition with casting, though these days there are many brilliant online tutorials that can really assist the beginner and experienced fisher alike.
So now all you need is to get out and try it. What’s that? You just caught a perch? On your very first go? You jammy sod. Well done!
SOME OTHER CONSIDERATIONS WHEN GOING FISHING
BAIT
Like religious people, different fish like different morsels to eat, and some species of fish won’t eat things that other fish absolutely love. Unless you’re fly or lure fishing there’s no avoiding it; at some point you’ll have to get messy with bait.
As you can imagine there are many baits: some inert, some wriggly, some smelly and some you prefer to your sandwiches. The big five, though, are bread, worms, sweetcorn, luncheon meat and, more recently, boilies. And pellets. OK, so there are six main baits. Actually, there are seven because at number one in the poptastic bait charts, great mates, is the humble, larval stage of the bluebottle and other flies, the Mighty Maggot. That bloke out of Goldie Lookin Chain knew what he was doing when he called himself Maggot.
The maggot rules supreme and that includes the caster, which is the chrysalis stage of the maggot before it emerges as a fly. The caster is a great bait in its own right and has led to the downfall of many a specimen roach, chub and carp. Mix it with hemp and you have a heady cocktail that has lured many a barbel too. But the maggot or gentle has a special place in the angler’s heart and a not very special place in anyone else’s heart. The hardcore fisher thinks nothing of eating their packed lunch having been plunging their hands into a bucketful of our wriggly friends all morning. And surprisingly, there is very little incidence of E. coli, MRSA or C.difficile after such behaviour. Almost every fish that swims in freshwater will take a maggot in any kind of fishery, still or moving, and that’s why it reigns supreme, but there are a couple of pretenders to the throne that have muscled their way onto the scene in the last few decades, namely the boilie and various types of pellet, halibut being possibly the most popular.
The boilie – a manufactured high-protein, flavoured ball – has become ubiquitous due to the explosion in popularity of carp fishing. One of the excellent properties of a boilie is that it can’t be nibbled away at by smaller fish, so you know that any bite when it comes is likely to be your target fish, mainly carp. Although barbel fishers and tench and bream anglers were not slow to catch on.
Sometimes, though, the boilie can be overused, and the carp become wary of the continual bombardment and use of such baits (some carp fishing is like a military exercise); in which case a quiet approach, with a natural bait, such as a worm or a bunch of maggots, can pay dividends. I remember going to fish a carp lake with legendary angler and writer Chris Yates one day and we used a kind of freelined maggot approach. It didn’t do us any good, but it was refreshing to see. As Chris put it, quite a lot of carp fishers declared war on the carp a few years back, so it was nice to fish in a simpler, less invasive way. I suppose the trick with all angling is to be versatile. Later that day I caught a carp on sweetcorn: final score Whitehouse 1, Yates 0. Mind you, Chris also took me for a day looking for crucian carp on a beautiful hidden lake somewhere that time forgot and he absolutely battered me. No contest.
Never forget the worm as bait. It has been an excellent and consistent bait for most fish for centuries. Many anglers have spent the night before their fishing trip in their garden, wearing a dressing gown, armed with a torch and pulling up lobworms (the Americans call them ‘night crawlers’, which makes them sound much more exciting). The best way to bring up big lobworms is to hope for a downpour or create one yourself by watering a lawn. Trying to catch lobworms at night is often more fun than the fishing trip the next day. I remember once being immersed in a giant compost heap on a remote farm in Wales, having become dangerously obsessed and careless in my relentless pursuit of brandlings (a type of worm) for a sea-trout session. How I laughed when I realised I was stuck in a vast pile of cowshit as the crust gave way. Oh, the joys and folly of youth!
Most tackle shops stock artificial substitutes – like soft plastic jelly worms in a million different sparkling colours – and synthetic baits, all of which come coated in mysterious scents that seem to attract fish (while these are an industry secret, many anglers believe they’re extracts of fish roe). The synthetic baits often come in little plastic tubs with branding that make them look and sound like big canisters of vape juice – some of the most popular brands are Quantum Radical, Mainline, Heavy Metal and Dynamite Crave.
If your quarry is a predator like the perch or pike the other very popular option is a lure. These are cleverly designed artificial baits which display certain movements, shapes or colours that imitate the prey of the fish. They come in all shapes and sizes, and most fishermen carry a selection that work in all zones of the river, from the surface to the very bottom. Crankbaits, spoons and plugs look like little fish; retrieve them in various different ways to give the impression of a sick or injured fish which will attract your prey. Some of them can be extremely effective.
So choose the appropriate bait, fish it with panache and confidence. Some days you persevere with your first choice and build up your swim with groundbait or loose feed, other days you will ring the changes. Only experience will tell you.
LANDING NET
Once you catch a fish, you need to have a net ready for when you land it. All fish should be landed carefully. Make sure that you have a clear, snag-free area to submerge your net and to guide your quarry towards. Beware the fish’s last dash when it sees you and the net, and draw the fish over the net and lift smoothly. Hurrah. Result. Touch. Gertcha!
Technically, this is the only time you’ll be an actual fisherman – fishermen use nets, while anglers use rods. You can use the words interchangeably, so tell this to an angler in a pub and you’ll either have a great bit of trivia to start a friendship, or he’ll disagree with you and the insults could lead to a fight. There’s no middle ground.
A KNIFE
The confident angler needs a knife to cut bait, cut lines and, if necessary, to wield in rural locations if people give you a look that irks you. Just stand up and brandish the knife at them from the opposite riverbank and they’ll scurry off immediately. No, actually, don’t do that. Don’t carry a knife around with you at all – you’re not in West Side Story. Just take some needle-nosed pliers and some nail clippers; they’ll work just as well.
BEFORE YOU LEAVE THE HOUSE
Before you ever step foot at a river with your tackle, you need to have a fishing licence. If you’re fishing with a rod for freshwater fish, salmon, trout, sea trout or eels, you have to have one. They come in lots of different durations (from one day to 12-month versions) and cost between £3.75 and £27. If you’re under 16, they’re free. If you get caught without one and prosecuted, the maximum fine is £2,500. Anglers hate illegal fishers. They won’t hesitate to dob you in.
Check the calendar. The coarse fishing season is closed between 15 March and 15 June. This is the time when the coarse fish spawn. It applies to all UK rivers and streams, but not every lake or reservoir – check before you go. By the time the season starts again, the fish have had their last spawning season and they’ve been recovering, building up for the next one in the spring, so they’re full of randy, frisky energy.
Check the weather. It’s true, you can catch fish all year round in all weathers, but when the weather goes too far one way or the other, it makes it harder. Too hot, too cold, too wet, too dry – all these things make the fish shrink away deeper into their underwater realm and are less likely to maintain their normal pattern of feeding. So get the weather right and you’ll be more likely to make a catch.
Then check the time. Most freshwater fish are crepuscular feeders, which means they’re most active at dawn and at dusk. Again, you can catch a fish at any time of day, but sunrise and sunset are the times when your odds of them being out and on the prowl for food are highest.
Put your hat on as you walk out of your front door. It marks the moment you transform from an ordinary, dreary, dull working man into a dashing, noble, carefree fisherman. Puff your chest out, take big strides and shout a cheery hello at the sun. You may also click your heels at this point, should you so wish.
Tell someone where you’ve gone. If you’re getting on a bit, they’ll be worried that you’ve wandered off all confused in your dressing gown and slippers and the police will be out searching fields and woodland with the cadaver dogs before you know it.
DOWN AT THE RIVER
First off, you need to know where to go, where there’s fish and access. The easiest way to do this is to look online or find a local tackle shop, pop in, and ask where the owner would recommend you start. Maybe sweeten him up by buying a pint of maggots first. Whatever you do, don’t book a week on the Tay at this stage. It’d be like buying a pair of Middlesbrough FC slippers and then waiting for the call-up against Barcelona.
Once you get to the place you’ve been told about, you need to find a suitable place to fish from. Approach the bank quietly and calmly and wear clothes that blend into the bank – mossy greens, greys, dark browns. Basically, you want to look like a woodland elf (pointy ears are optional). Find a shady place where there’s a bit of foliage that you can blend in with. Fish have great eyesight and good hearing, and they’re easily spooked. No one’s quite sure how fish’s vision or hearing works, but they do seem to be living in a state of permanent anxiousness so anything you can do not to frighten them works in your favour. Fish definitely seem more sensitive to bankside vibrations, heavy footfalls, and northerners mucking about rather than the sweet voice of a London-Welsh angling/comic colossus. Remember to check the ground before you sit down for discarded contraceptives, empty cans of Tyskie Polish beer and dog dirt.
Please observe angling etiquette and consider the other fisherpeople. If you are fishing around others, remember to keep your distance. First off, it’s bad form to sit near people who are already there, because you’re essentially squatting on the place they’ve found and splitting the chances of them getting a catch. Don’t cast close to where they are – your lines might get tangled and in my experience, fishermen who are unknown to you can get quite angry and frustrated when you interfere with their day out.
PREPARING YOUR FISHING SPOT
To pick your spot, you need to think like the fish. If you were in a river, you wouldn’t hang around in the middle where the full force of the current is rushing at you, because you’d have to swim really hard just to stay still. You’d be in one of the spots of still water by the bank, under overhanging tree roots, in a little eddy or relaxing in a small oxbow lake. Imagine you were hanging about Oxford Street at rush hour during the height of summer. You wouldn’t be standing in the middle of the busy road: you’d be in the cool shade of the big Sports Direct or the shop opposite the big Primark that sells the Kim Jong-un masks. Where would you go when it’s cold, or really hot, or not really either, but you’re a fish and you can’t leave the river so you’ve got to go somewhere? They have to be lurking somewhere. Think like the fish.
To encourage the fish to take your bait, you might consider baiting a spot. This means starting off by chucking a load of your bait into the river to get the fish used to it, and hopefully feeding on it merrily before you slip your hooked bait into the waters. They won’t suspect a thing. Some fishermen will bait a swim for days beforehand.
LET’S FISH!
It’s important before you start angling that you’re aware of the policy of catch and release. This means after you’ve caught a fish, you release it back into the water as quickly as you can, and it’s a policy that the vast majority of anglers follow. Catch and release means the fisherman has his fun, but the fish is allowed to get on with its day and fish stocks aren’t depleted. It also gives you the thrill of seeing the fish that’s brought you so much pleasure go happily swimming away afterwards, and you can sit back and congratulate yourself on your benevolence and kindness. Avoid handling the fish too much: wet your hands, get the hook cleanly out of its mouth using your pliers (or another hook-removing tool if you have one), don’t squeeze it, don’t keep it out of the water too long and when you put it back, hold it in the river facing upstream for a bit to let it get its breath back. Marvel as it suddenly swims off with a flick of the tail, to tell its fish mates that it managed to outsmart you and get away because it’s so clever.
ONCE YOUR BAIT IS IN
Sit back and wait quietly. Listen to the birds. Watch some beetles in the dirt. Think about the dinner you’re going to have later. This is the best moment of fishing when you’ve done all you can and now it’s up to the fish. But concentrate and fish with confidence. Believe! Yes, believe.
Keep your eyes on the float – and be alert to the way it’s acting. Just because it jerks, it doesn’t mean you’ve got a fish. Sometimes the current will make it suddenly bob up and down, or a fish will give your bait an inquisitive fleeting nudge, so don’t be too hasty to strike. Keep your eyes on it. How’s that float behaving? If it goes right under and stays under, bingo. If it starts moving against the water current, hello. If you’re not sure – strike anyway. Similarly, with a quiver tip, if the tip pulls round smartly, strike, but if there is a series of knocks, wait. Should the knocks continue, it might be worth striking; you never know, you might hook the bottom or the fish of a lifetime.
If you’ve been sat watching your rod for a quarter of an hour and there’s been no action whatsoever, try casting somewhere else. Or re-bait and cast to the same place, and allow the glorious process of fishing to begin again.
Taking a chair along with you is a real bonus. Paul and I fished for perch from a chair, and it made such a difference. Maybe it’s an age thing, but you’re not just there to fish – you’re there to enjoy the day, and people can easily forget that. And you’re there for six or seven hours, not two, so why not have a bit of comfort? Even a train seat isn’t that great after three hours, so imagine how much worse sitting on the ground is. It just makes the day work, being comfortable – although it’s a special treat. Sometimes you have to merge into the foliage when you’re fishing, so you can’t just have chairs set up all over the place.
CATCHING THAT FISH
Once your float dips purposefully under or slides away, or if you’re ledgering, your rod tip pulls round, you have a bite. A fish has taken the bait. Result? Well, not yet. If you’re fishing for smaller, more nimble fish like roach, or dace, bites can be quick, a sharp dip of your float and you need to respond sharpish or the bait can be ejected. Crucian carp ‘takes’ often register as small movements on the float. Bigger fish such as chub, tench, carp and especially the barbell leave you in no doubt that they’ve taken your bait (sometimes your rod lurches round dramatically with the latter). The angler then needs to set the hook, or ‘strike’ as it is usually called. But it is not a jerk in the opposite direction or a vigorous movement, it’s usually a firm but gentle lifting of the rod into the fish. There are exceptions to this: pike on a dead bait need to be struck relatively firmly; sea-fish at depth need a firm raise of the rod, but with certain carp rigs, like a bolt-hair, you don’t strike at all. And if a ghillie sees you strike when a salmon takes your fly, he’s likely to turn the air blue at your pitiful response (and demand independence for Scotland!). Do nothing when a salmon takes your fly – leave it, I said, leave it! Now gently lift the rod … what? He’s gone? You should have lifted earlier. The ghillie is now cursing you in Gaelic and laughing inside.
But let’s go back to ledgering for chub, for example. A key part of the strike is timing. The moment you feel the line pull, it’s a battle not to strike immediately. But sometimes, the first knock you’ve had is tentative, with the fish not fully convinced, and before the bite has developed fully, you’ll whip the bait right out of its mouth, you fool!* This is part and parcel of fishing – as they say, you’ve not caught a fish until it’s on the bank. But leave it too late, and the fish can reject it altogether or take the bait deeply. If the latter occurs, there are simple tools to use to disengage a barbless hook without causing any damage to the fish. To be honest, nobody can say exactly when you should strike; it’s a question of practice and experience, and varies from method to method and your quarry. Sorry to be of no help at all here, but that’s life sometimes, kidda – you got to figure things out for yourself.
Once you’ve hooked a fish, you have to land it, obviously. With smaller fish you do this by simply lifting your rod and reeling in. If, like Bob, you try to employ exactly the same tactics with bigger fish, then you’ll more than likely end up with nothing. Mind you, he also screams, shouts and jumps up and down like a maniac, which is entertaining but not helpful when you’re playing a double-figure barbel that could easily batter us in a tear up in a pub car park. Let the fish run initially, but maintain tension and keep the rod tip up to absorb any sudden bursts of speed, head-shakes or changes in direction. However, if a fish is intent on heading for a nearby snag, you have to stop it: turn the rod through 90 degrees so the pull on the fish is coming from the side. This will cause the fish to veer away from dangerous weeds or tree roots. Unsurprisingly, this is called ‘side strain’ and is a good tactic to use in those circumstances. Occasionally you might want to stop a powerful fish from getting stuck in weeds. In which case you have a choice: let the line go slack, which sometimes causes the fish to emerge after a while, or go in! Obviously don’t put yourself in danger though. Fish are great at transferring hooks from themselves into tree roots.
The key thing is to keep constant pressure on the line. This means the fish is battling against an unyielding, constant force, and it will start to get tired. As the fish becomes knackered, you will be able to slowly draw it in. This can take a while, but as it’s going on, it helps if you try and direct the fish into more open water.
When the fish is beginning to tire, she or he will start to show on the surface and wallow (there’s a word). Your landing net is at the ready, isn’t it, Bob? In a convenient place with no obvious snags and with the net portion already under the water? Now you need to be careful since the fish will make a dash to escape when he sees you, the net or an excitable portly figure jumping around on the bank. Slowly draw the fish over the submerged net and lift. Voilà!
WHAT TO DO WHEN YOU’RE STANDING AROUND WITH A LIVE FISH
Once you’ve brought the net containing a fish to the edge of the river, you’re going to want to see what you’ve got and then you’re going to prepare that fish to return home.
Fish love water more than they love hot, dry air. That’s a well-known fact, so it’s important to put them back in the water as swiftly as you can. Every second counts (if a fish caught you, you’d want to be put back in as quickly as possible). The longer a fish is out of the water, the less chance it has of surviving, so it’s important to return them as quickly as you can back into their murky underworld kingdom in which no man can dwell. Most anglers are pathological about treating fish carefully and returning them as quickly as possible. Many anglers use unhooking mats, which are fish-friendly surfaces designed to keep the fish safe during the process. Carp fishers are especially aware of their quarry’s well-being and look after them obsessively, even though carp and tench can survive out of the water a lot longer than other species. I’m fanatical about returning fish almost immediately; sometimes during our series the cameraman rarely has time to get a shot of the fish before I’ve sent it on its way. It rarely has time to get a selfie with me. Salmon fishers on the River Dee in Scotland (and probably many other rivers) are now encouraged to net salmon and keep them in the net while they unhook them so they never leave the river. Then you hold the fish with its head upstream in the current as it regains its breath before… pow! The salmon kicks away with an incredibly powerful flick of its tail and roars back on its mission to well, you know … How can I put this? Procreate.
Dry human hands can cause all sorts of problems to fish, from abrasions to rubbing off their protective slime coating, leaving them open to infection. So before you touch them, always dunk your hands in the river or lake and make sure they’re wet.
Once the fish is out, what you’re going to do is remove the hook from the fish’s mouth. This is the very first thing you need to do, and you want to do it as quickly as possible. Barbless hooks come out very easily – you can do it most of the time with your hand, just by backing it out the way it went in – but be careful when you’re handling the fish, as one unexpected flick or wriggle and you’ll be wearing that hook through the fleshy part of your hand. If you’re nervous of doing it by hand, you can use needle-nosed pliers to slip it out.
Paul: What a clonker! A cracking barbel that I caught with John Bailey (left) after the cameras had packed up. It’s my fish, John …
All being well, you’re now getting into angling seriously, so it will be time to pose for your prospective photograph for the cover of Angling Times or the Angler’s Mail; or Trout, or Salmon. Slip one hand over the tail, the other under the pectoral fin. Don’t squeeze the belly, that’s no good for the fish. Keep it near the water. Smile. Professional tip: the fish looks bigger if you extend your arms and hold it out to the side with the river behind you, not directly in front of your body. A human being is much bigger than a fish, so your catch will look tiny and pathetic when placed in front of your rippling muscular belly. Or do as I do and get the fish back before anyone can ask for a picture or a closer look.
Time to return that fish back home. It will be absolutely bushed from the massive fight it had when you caught it. Holding the fish as above, lower it into the water and hold it, facing upstream, until it zips off with a flick of its lovely, slime-covered tail. Never just chuck it back into the river. Rule of thumb: don’t do anything to a fish that you wouldn’t like to see someone doing to your mum.
And that’s pretty much it.
Yes, it sounds like a lot, but it will seem less daunting each and every time you go out and have a bit of success. It might be the third time you go that you don’t need to look at the diagram of the knot. Within a fortnight, pulling out hooks might be second nature. Within weeks, you might not even think about the stages you need to perform an overhead cast.
Bob: Here’s what you do when you’re standing around with a live fish.
Fishing is a beautiful pastime, and like all great pastimes, it won’t arrive fully formed the first time you go. After your first trip, you might return tired, confused, bored, listless, damp and fishless. You do have to work a bit to chip away at the sheer strangeness of a day’s fishing, but once you do, each and every trip will bring you more joy than the one before. The delight that unfolds with practice and experience is a delight that will never leave you and will only get deeper the longer you do it.
Bob: We’d been going on these fishing trips and had an inkling they might be worth filming.
__________
* I’m looking at you, Bob.