Blah-belling
OH WELL, I suppose I should make some reference to last week's Clattercote match. Despite Barney's non-appearance, we still had plenty of wind to contend with, and a few showers thrown in, just to make us feel at home. The details of the match have been (very well) related elsewhere, but suffice it to say that this year my intense preparations paid off, and I managed not to blank.
Careful mixing of groundbait the night before, two types no less, plenty of riddling to get rid of lumps, and the addition of flaked tuna and sunflower oil, guaranteed carp attractors, I was told, produced the sum total of one skimmer bream. After the match Mark Wintle did comment on the paucity of my catch in that bream usually swim in shoals, but despite my very accurate casting to the same spot every time, (clipped up line as well, no less) I managed to find the one bream that had been obviously served with some kind of piscine ASBO by his brethren and condemned to a solitary existence, forever roaming the barren, fishless wastes of Clattercote (the ones by my peg, that is).
And this despite me drawing a much fancied end peg, and with empty swims both sides of me; it almost felt like I had the place to myself. There again, given some of my antics through the match, it was probably for the best that I didn't have an audience. During the course of the day, my umbrella was up and down more times than the lingerie belonging to a lady of the night. This was due to its propensity to turn inside out at the slightest zephyr of wind unless I had both hands grasping the ribs. This doesn't leave you with any limbs left for casting, striking, etc, so for about 20% of the match I was unable to fish properly (not an excuse, merely commenting on the adverse conditions).
Halfway through the match and during one of those rare moments when I wasn't hanging on to my umbrella for fear of emulating Mary Poppins my eagle eye spotted that one of my casts with the method feeder fell a bit short of its target, about 95% short to be precise. A quick retrieve, (well, let's face it, it hadn't gone far) a check that there was no line caught round spool or handle, reload feeder, prepare to re-cast and just in time notice that the extreme tip of the rod has slid down and is now resting on top of the feeder.
Nothing for it but to spend valuable fishing time removing end tackle and replacing broken tip section, in the process shortening the line, and thereby critically altering my casting distance. So in effect, once I got round to fishing again, I was having to bait up a completely new swim and start all over again (once more, not an excuse, just an explanation…). Now this lead me to regret that I had not been able to purchase a new rod before the match, as I feared I wanted something a bit more beefy than the Avon's I was using. My enquiry at the tackle shop for something in the 1 ¾ - 2lb range was immediately met with a 'Going barbelling?' comment.
The owner seemed a little surprised when I said I that I wasn't, and I remembered that exact same look when I last went fishing on the Thames. I strolled up to the lock keeper to get the keys for the weir gates, and before I had said a word he was escorting me downstream to show me just where to catch barbel. When I told him that was not why I was there, there was that look of same look of bewilderment that I would be fishing for anything else. At the Clattercote après match get together (nice cosy pub, well found Nigel) the talk amongst the great and good seemed to indicate that interest, nay furore in all things barbel might just have peaked, and that that might not be a bad thing.
If that is the case I, for one, am relieved. Because I feel I can now 'come out' and publicly declare that I have never, ever caught a barbel in my life. Never been fishing for them, never accidentally caught one whilst fishing for something else, and what's more to the point, I never, ever felt the need to. Perhaps my view of barbel is tainted with old style visions of barbel fishing being hard work as you had to bung sixpence to some cloth capped chappie who would shovel a thousand or so lobworms into your swim prior to you fishing in order to guarantee a good day's fishing.
And as for the bygone technique that required stuffing a handful or worms, including the one with a hook into a huge ball of clay, well, that sounds like fishing by the 'method' to me, unless I'm very much mistaken. From those more genteel Victorian times, barbel anglers seem to have gone straight to carp tactics, and to my way of thinking it appears that this has been done out of ease to make the fish fit the tactics, rather than the other way round.
At Clattercote, it was interesting to note that there were 'carp' anglers present, bivvies, boilies, bite alarms and multi-rod set ups were in evidence, but if they just wanted to catch carp, match fishing techniques with feeders or wagglers would have brought results right through the day. But it is much harder work than lobbing out baits and sitting behind (silent) bite alarms all day, so perhaps it wasn't just 'carp' they were after, but a better stamp of fish, certainly not just ones that could be easily caught by those match fishing boys. To my mind that big fish or bust attitude seems to mirror the expectations of some barbel anglers today.
Listening to my angling peers in the pub talking with some enthusiasm and a great depth of knowledge about all manner of species was in marked contrast to the way that the angling press likes to portray 'our' thinking and aspirations. The weeklies would have you believe that the vast majority are only interested in all aspects of carp and carp fishing, and the bulk of monthlies seem to show page after page of (the same) anglers posing with endless snaps of either barbel or chub.
Oh well, with only a couple of weeks until the rivers open, I suppose we can look forward to a barrage of Blah, Blah, Blahbel hype all over again………
Wendy Perry 2
