Kids' Stuff

[nottskev]

In the last week or so, I’ve fished a tiny brook a couple of times and caught perch, chub and a pike. It’s a jungle, with barely room to raise a rod, but it’s a delight to find wild fish thriving in the unlikely setting.

As a boy, I used to stand on the bridge over a local brook, too polluted to support life, and wish it held fish. It occurs to me that that disappointment feeds my pleasure in finding this brook, fifty years later.

“The child is father of the man”, said William Wordsworth. Would anyone else say that part of their current fishing chimes with something experienced in their youth?

 

[terry m]

Much truth in Wordsworth's phrase. Certainly for me those formative years moulded much of my character, not just angling related.

Strangely enough I seem to remember all of the good bits and less of the tough parts which were undoubtedly present, perhaps that is nostalgia kicking in?

 

[flightliner]

Much truth in Wordsworth's phrase. Certainly for me those formative years moulded much of my character, not just angling related.

Strangely enough I seem to remember all of the good bits and less of the tough parts which were undoubtedly present, perhaps that is nostalgia kicking in?

No need to write a thing Kev, you've nailed it in one !!

 

[thecrow]

The brooks and streams that I fished as a kid were on an estate, they fed the private canals on the estate that were used for moving produce to the Coventry canal, they are now all silted up as are the canals and as far as I know no longer have fish in them.

It seems like only yesterday that we caught Perch and Tench from them, I am a little envious of your place you have found and hope it continues to produce for you because for a lot of us those times wont come again but they will stay as memories.

 

[Peter Jacobs]

Nice thread . . . .

There is one little backwater stream that feeds the Hampshire Avon just below Salisbury that the vast majority of anglers don't give a second look to and yet it has, at certain times, held some truly specimen fish, Roach and Chub in particular, with the occasional very large Perch as well.

There is a definite sort of gentleness about fishing some of these streams and backwaters, even if it mean some jungle tactics at times.

 

[Philip]

As a kid we used to fish a number of little ponds in the South East tucked away in urban areas. Some in parks, some just in areas not built on yet, old sand or clay pits that were never filled in. They were tiny little havens of wildlife in a sprawling town setting and we used to catch things like little Rudd and Perch from them. Most are now long gone.

However I have recently discovered one or two little waters where I am now of the same ilk…tiny tucked away ponds that have been there for goodness knows how long and still clinging on while the world changes round them.

It certainly brought back memories.

 

[The Runner]

“The child is father of the man”, said William Wordsworth. Would anyone else say that part of their current fishing chimes with something experienced in their youth?

Currently not so much but if hopes for semi retirement this year come off as planned I soon will do, and will be back to mostly sea fishing with a bit of small stream trouting thrown in, just as I started fifty years ago. Only a bit more remote this time around.

Fingers crossed...

 

[binka]

Would anyone else say that part of their current fishing chimes with something experienced in their youth?

Very much so Kev, you saw a part of mine the other day when we fished the dam.

As kids it held everything for us, gudgeon matches in the feeder river after school and really serious sessions at the weekends where we would try and bag a small roach

To go back any further and recreate it in my present day fishing I would have to take a net and a jam jar...

 

[no-one in particular]

As a kid I often sat in these places imagining monsters and I still do that today.

 

[nottskev]

Something else I read lately, a claim that we spend a lot of time in our lives trying to recapture a feeling from childhood. It struck me as true in some ways about fishing. I can certainly identify scenes where something clicked and made being by the water magnetic.

Probably, most of us have a bit of an early morning tench thing – it's not an angling cliché for nothing. My first trip to a tench lake involved a tip-off from one of my dad's workmates, a birthday bike, and cycling 5 miles in the dark. The directions that had sounded simple the evening before proved less straightforward and I wasted a bit of time behind the wrong farm. The lakes, three links in a chain, were set at the edge of a wood.

Stepping up the raised bank to see the water for the first time, I found three anglers already there. They were spread over a wide gap in tall reeds, perched silently and comfortably on large baskets, rods in rests; there was just enough light to see three white-tipped floats looking about to dip. They looked like they had grown there, and obviously knew, unlike me, exactly what they were doing. That, I thought, consciously or not, is what I want to be like. But not that day, I wouldn't – the three blokes gave me that unmistakable "get lost, kid" look, and I went off to the next lake in the chain, where I fished a leger with a butt-indicator and didn't trouble any tench. Or any other fish. But that didn't matter – the inspiration was the thing.

 

[thecrow]

the three blokes gave me that unmistakable "get lost, kid" look,

I had something similar when I was a kid, first day of a new season found me next to a grumpy old so and so that didn't even look at me when asked "had owt", I set up 20yards from him and proceeded to catch Roach after Roach with some (for me then) good uns, his face was a picture until he packed up and left