Do you remember your first ever fishing trip ?

Philip · Jul 4, 2017

I was about 7 years old and although I had been “fishing” with those little bamboo nets from an earlier age this was my first “proper” trip with rod and line.

My big brother, an occasional angler took me to the little river Darent in Kent and kitted me up with a 6 foot fibre glass rod (that I still have today!). Although he had two rods we only had one reel so for me he taped a spool of line to the rod. I have a vague memory that the spool was pale blue in color & was almost certainly Bayer Perlon. We proceeded to catch minnows in the margins on tiny bits of worm under crow quill floats. My Brother of course had to do all the difficult stuff like bait up, sort out the endless tangles and unhook the fish and I had a great time. My over riding memory was seeing in the shadows of the far bank over hanging trees the occasional glimpse of a giant shape swimming past. These would have been Roach, Dace and Chub of just a few ounces but to me they were uncatchable monsters & I wondered what it would be like to hook one. The seed had been sown and little did I know it would lead to me becoming a lifelong angler.

Do you recall your first fishing trip ?

rich66 · Jul 4, 2017

GUC at Foxton Leicestershire . I was I guess 9 or 10, my big brother took me set me down and set my rod up for me. Cane rod with brass ferrules rolled in my hair to oil them a bit to make it easier to pull them apart. Sitting amongst the reeds watching a float, misty and damp but happy lol. Missed a few bites but got there in the end.
Still had the rod till last year gave it back to my brother as it was our step grandfathers. He'll appreciate it more as he knew him I never did. Funnily enough I was talking to him earlier today about a fishing trip together we've not been for donkeys years, perhaps we should go back to Foxton

john step · Jul 4, 2017

Not really a proper fishing trip, but the virus was sown and there has never been a cure.
I believe I was meant to fish, even badly!

I doubt I was 4 yrs and saw big boys using a home made net in a park in Ilford catch sticklebacks.

I even tried to make a rod with cane and string although I had no concept of what a hook was.

At 5 we moved to a road next to the Chase at Dagenham and there was no turning back, even with the rudimentary home made gear of bamboo cane.

We were allowed more freedom to street rake than kids today and the Chase was a magnet and playground and swimming pool.

fishplate42 · Jul 5, 2017

Great story Philip...

I remember my first fishing trip I was 58¾ yes really! The full story of that day can be found HERE but suffice to say, I caught some nice looking carp. Having expected to catch fish the size of my little finger, that was it, I realised what I was missing and I have not looked back since.

Rigging my first rod ever

Nearly three years on and I am just as excited about my fishing trips as I was on that day. Once the fishing bug takes hold, there does not seem to be any cure, luckily.

Ralph.

nottskev · Jul 5, 2017

I'd have been 10 or eleven when I tagged along for the start of the season with the lads I played football with and generally messed around with on the playing field around the corner.
I was impressed before we got near the canal, as they assembled by the field, equipped like (junior) pro's with wicker baskets, rods in cloth bags, keepnets and landing nets, looking, unusually for them, serious and purposeful.
We fished the "offside" of the canal, in gaps in the thick rushbeds. The morning- we were there before 6 - was perfectly still and we could hear fish splashing up and down the length.
Floatfishing at the rod end was the method. How far out that was, depended on your rod. For the lad with the Milbro Enterprise, a massive 14 or 15' out. The kid with the Mordex cane rod, about 12'. They'd set me up with a 7' cane rod with no reel, just a few feet of line tied to the tip, so about 7' out, for me.
I watched everything they did as they caught little roach after little roach, and soaked it up like a sponge. I knew I'd found a new hobby, even before my float went under thanks to a bootlace eel and sealed the matter.

Tee-Cee · Jul 5, 2017

Well, I like to think I remember the actual day when I walked with my father from home (the Hornsey side) into Finsbury Park proper, but more likely it is because my parents told me I was 7 years old (1950) when it happened. It is also probably fanciful that on that day it was packed with other anglers crammed in along one side of the lake (the only part where fishing was allowed) simply because it was always packed at weekends!
I can recall it seemed to take forever to walk what was probably a half mile at best, but once there I loved every minute.
Roach a good 6" long, the target I'm sure, cane the rod and bait bread or worms, with the rod held parallel over the water by threading it through the railings, for goodness sake! My father had a proper rod rest.....
Occasionally, when the cry went up, I raced along the footpath to see what someone else had caught and it was on one such occasion I saw my first carp - a rare catch in those days!
In the years that followed I fished the forbidden parts of the lake, with one of us keeping an eye out for the Park Keepers, and then onto the New River, also in the Park, my first river fishing.........

I would like to say 'Happy days' and perhaps looking through rose tinted specs they probably were occasionally, but this was just after WW2 with rationing still in force and very little money about. Fishing tackle, like most of our clothing came from hand-me-down's, home life wasn't great and I hated school. It got better, though......................

mikench · Jul 5, 2017

I was about 10 or 11 and it was a trip to the Leeds Liverpool canal in Castleton near Rochdale. I had a 9' bamboo rod( still have 2 of the 3 sections), an Intrepid Black Prince reel, a whicker tackle box/seat and an aluminium maggot tin full of maggots. I remember catching lots of small roach and perch!

I moved on to lake fishing for trout but lost interest at about 14 when i discovered girls!

S-Kippy · Jul 5, 2017

A very coloured and very cold Thames at Laleham with my mate Keith. I guess we must have been about 10 years old.His dad dropped us off early and collected us around 1pm. It was either January or February, freezing bloody cold and neither of us had a bite.

I loved it and couldn't wait to go again.

no-one in particular · Jul 5, 2017

With the old man on the Thames, he went for a pee and told me to watch the rod but don't touch it. The float started bobbing about and the bloke next door said "for christ sake pull it in", I said "I cant, promised dad I wouldn't touch the rod" so he came over and pulled it in, my first fish!
I wasn't truly hooked though until my old man bought me one of those toy rods from Woolworths, wooden handle, 6 ft long with a bit of fibre glass sticking out, hooked a massive bream in the Grand Union Canal and the rod went right angles, the old man landed it, must have been a 1lb, a Jeremy Wade monster in my young mind. I have a picture of every detail of that occasion in my mind still. Got my first proper rod about two birthdays later. Big red cork floats, tins of split shot you broke your fingers on, you could could never open, half pints of sweaty maggots and balls of useless flour paste and I loved it. Also being city bums, I loved the country-side, even the smell of it.

binka · Jul 5, 2017

Yes, fondly.

My dad took me one Saturday afternoon after I had pestered him for months after I found his gear in his allotment shed and Saturday afternoons were religious settee sessions given he worked all the hours God sent.

I can still see him now, sat on the sloping bank chugging away on his pipe whilst I sat on the small basket and eagerly watched what I can best remember as an orange tipped Harcork Avon type of float with the waft of Condor drifting by.

I think we did less than an hour with no sign of a fish but it was enough to get me hooked

Ray Roberts · Jul 5, 2017

My god this photo makes me feel bloody old. I guess I must have been about five years old, so about 1960.

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skov · Jul 5, 2017

My older brother took me out on my first fishing trip. I must have been about 8 at the time. I don't really remember much, but I believe it was on the Trent, a little downstream of a lock and weir. Possibly at Gunthorpe Bridge?
I've got a photo somewhere of me holding my first fish with a massive grin on my face.

robcourt82 · Jul 5, 2017

I'm not sure if it was my first fishing trip but the first one I remember was at a venue that's almost already been mentioned. I was young, somewhere between 5 and 10 and my dad took me to the bardags lake behind the Dagenham Chase.
I remember catching 14 crucians that were probably 2lb a piece or bigger on a waggler rod and my old man chucked out his Avon quiver rod with a bomb and massive lump of flake and he caught 2 or 3 decent tench around 4lb each.

barbelboi · Jul 5, 2017

I don’t remember life without fishing, my father was an angler whose parents house backed onto the Lea at Broxbourne and I accompanied him from the day I could walk.

Apart from bits I do remember catching my first tench though – from a gravel pit in Harefield, September 1952, age four....

thecrow · Jul 5, 2017

As if it was yesterday (cant remember yesterday though

) I was 8 years old and was taken to the Coventry cut by my dad who like everyone else in my family didn't fish.

Tackle consisted of a cane rod with some sort of round burn marks? on it a small metal centrepin that was a purple colour on the outside with a cream plastic inner, float was a porcupine quill shot was kept in a small metal tin with a sliding lid hooks to nylon maggots for bait kept in a metal bait box all my tackle was kept in a brown cloth bag until I got a basket for Christmas.

Didn't catch a thing in fact it was almost a full 12 months before I did but despite the not catching I was bitten by the angling bug and kept at it till I had my first fish a small Perch (how many anglers first fish was a perch? ) 60 years of angling and learning later I am still learning, long may that continue.

Hugh Bailey · Jul 5, 2017

Wey Nav. at Byfleet in about 1964. Pretty sure I caught a Gudgeon. Aside from the odd roach that was pretty much all we used to catch, until we moved on to the Wey. To be honest, I'm surprised we remained interested - we never caught anything decent until we were much older.

Peter Jacobs · Jul 5, 2017

I remember my first proper (rod and line) fishing trip as I was taken to the local common pond by my big brother, and would have been around 7 or maybe 8.

I had been given 5 feet solid fibre glad rod, with a wooden handle and a small centre pin type reel, and we fished with maggots from an aluminium bait tin, and a small-ish crow quill float.

We fished close to the boating pier and I caught my first proper fish, a stinted little roach that to me was the most beautiful fish on the planet.

While we were there an adult chap caught and landed (with much fuss) a Tench of maybe 2 or 3 pounds, and that, for me, was it . . . . I knew then I just had to catch fish like that.

The Runner · Jul 5, 2017

First I can remember would be off the quayside at Amble in Northumberland in September 1964 using a spinning rod that my uncle had just got me for my 9th birthday.
Caught a coalfish on a piece of herring strip and if I close my eyes I can still see it coming up through the water now.
As an aside it was the same uncle who introduced me a few years later to draught bitter, so overall I suppose he had a lot to answer for.
I say "first I can remember"... Clearing my parents house out about twenty years ago, among the boxes and boxes of old photos I found one of me aged 4 and my sister posing on the harbour wall at Eyemouth with handlines and a coalfish each. Try as I might I can bring up no memory of this whatsoever...

steve2 · Jul 5, 2017

My first trip was Raphael park in Romford, first river trip River Roding at Abridge. First fish a roach it seemed massive after catch stickle backs, it was about 5”’ long.

smudger172 · Jul 5, 2017

Like the Crow. i can remember it in every detail. 6 years old, walked 2 miles with my mum who was pushing a double pram with my twin 3year old brother and sister to the local canal. A bamboo rod made by my dad with 6ft of line tied to the end, a pike bung for a float and a hook. Bread was the bait and did not catch a thing..

10 yards along the bank was a man fishing and catching a few small silver fish. i can remember being fascinated by these fish and was constantly being told to leave the man alone and come back to my rod.

He then caught a small 10" pike and the sight of this most perfect fish has stayed with me for the last 50 odd years.

Do you remember your first ever fishing trip ?

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