....my childhood.
I was lucky enough to spend some of my formative years living in a house that overlooks what is still my favourite stretch of the River Ribble. Back then, from mid 1950's to early 60's, the fishing style that caught my friends and myself quite a lot of fish was to put on a pair of shorts plus an old pair of plimsolls then wade out to fish streamy, shallow runs. State of the art gear was 9 foot solid fibreglass rod, Intrepid reel loaded with 8lb line complete with grayling bobber float. Baits varied from maggots or worms to bread or flour n water paste. Anyway back to the present, I decided yesterday morning on a revisit to a couple of these swims to reenact the "glory" days.
Ok, so I do have chest waders now, the rod is a Tricast John Allerton 17ft float coupled with an Abu 501 closed face reel, wire stemmed Avon float and I stepped down to 4lb line. Bait was just a tub of maggots transfered to a bait apron. First run down the float kept catching the bottom (weed on the bait) so I shallowed up a couple of inches. Next cast the float travelled a couple of yards then disappeared, sugar still too deeep, hang on why is the bottom pulling back? About 4 minutes later an immaculate chub circa 2.5lbs in the landing net (didn't use those in the old days). As you might already suspect I was absolutely over the moon. When I packed up about 4 hours later the tally was 7 chub, 10 dace, 2 minnows and a pristine gudgeon. The first fish was easily the biggest but I think a couple more of the chub made the 1lb mark.
Footnotes
1) Actually in the good old days, 50's n 60's, any coarse fish from the Ribble weighing more than 2lbs could be considered a speciman. There were no barbel with loads of pellets etc going in. Don't get me wrong, I love catching barbel and big chub on the feeder.
2) I caught the first fish on a size 20 micro-barb hook because that was already on the rig so I promptly changed up to a 14 barbless. Result was that I bumped about 3 times as many dace as I caught.I always prefer a barbless hook, easier to extract from one's self, but there is no doubt that a micro-barb is better for wriggly fish like dace.
3) The John Allerton rod is a wonderful bit of gear but then again I am a Tricast devotee.
4) I always like to catch gudgeon. This goes back to the days when my son fished a lot with me. We often had an impromptu points match, he nearly always won. A roach would be 1 point etc but a gudgeon was 15 pts! For him life has got in the way of fishing over the past 15 years but his son, my grandson, is just about to start school so maybe in the not too distant future????
If anyone under the age of 40 is reading this I imagine they will be asking "What is the old git on about?" but I do hope the more mature amongst you can see where I'm coming from.
I was lucky enough to spend some of my formative years living in a house that overlooks what is still my favourite stretch of the River Ribble. Back then, from mid 1950's to early 60's, the fishing style that caught my friends and myself quite a lot of fish was to put on a pair of shorts plus an old pair of plimsolls then wade out to fish streamy, shallow runs. State of the art gear was 9 foot solid fibreglass rod, Intrepid reel loaded with 8lb line complete with grayling bobber float. Baits varied from maggots or worms to bread or flour n water paste. Anyway back to the present, I decided yesterday morning on a revisit to a couple of these swims to reenact the "glory" days.
Ok, so I do have chest waders now, the rod is a Tricast John Allerton 17ft float coupled with an Abu 501 closed face reel, wire stemmed Avon float and I stepped down to 4lb line. Bait was just a tub of maggots transfered to a bait apron. First run down the float kept catching the bottom (weed on the bait) so I shallowed up a couple of inches. Next cast the float travelled a couple of yards then disappeared, sugar still too deeep, hang on why is the bottom pulling back? About 4 minutes later an immaculate chub circa 2.5lbs in the landing net (didn't use those in the old days). As you might already suspect I was absolutely over the moon. When I packed up about 4 hours later the tally was 7 chub, 10 dace, 2 minnows and a pristine gudgeon. The first fish was easily the biggest but I think a couple more of the chub made the 1lb mark.
Footnotes
1) Actually in the good old days, 50's n 60's, any coarse fish from the Ribble weighing more than 2lbs could be considered a speciman. There were no barbel with loads of pellets etc going in. Don't get me wrong, I love catching barbel and big chub on the feeder.
2) I caught the first fish on a size 20 micro-barb hook because that was already on the rig so I promptly changed up to a 14 barbless. Result was that I bumped about 3 times as many dace as I caught.I always prefer a barbless hook, easier to extract from one's self, but there is no doubt that a micro-barb is better for wriggly fish like dace.
3) The John Allerton rod is a wonderful bit of gear but then again I am a Tricast devotee.
4) I always like to catch gudgeon. This goes back to the days when my son fished a lot with me. We often had an impromptu points match, he nearly always won. A roach would be 1 point etc but a gudgeon was 15 pts! For him life has got in the way of fishing over the past 15 years but his son, my grandson, is just about to start school so maybe in the not too distant future????
If anyone under the age of 40 is reading this I imagine they will be asking "What is the old git on about?" but I do hope the more mature amongst you can see where I'm coming from.
