The 5th Trent Fish-in

The 5th Trent Fish-in

The river has been in a strange mood with anglers either bagging up or sitting on what was seemingly a fish-free stretch of water. I had already fished sessions twice that week and had logged up a total of around 35-40 fish, nothing big however, with 8lb and a few ounces being the best of my season so far.

I didn’t think a blank was on the cards, but until the rods ‘went over’ I wasn’t too enthusiastic about our chances of a bagging session.

Paul, Geoff and Victor had all had a few fish by the time Martin and me began fishing as they arrived either the day before or very early morning. I supposed our DVSG credentials made them worry that we would snare the best pegs and leave them scrabbling for scraps. A common theme of late as I was told recently that the DVSG ‘s presence was not wanted in a newly set-up tidal Trent group. Oh dear, the frailties of the human ego, like I was really going to make that much of a difference. Pathetic.

Well, my mini-rant is now over and back onto the Fishingmagic session. The fishing was very slow during the day which allowed me to observe….Observe closely!

A few years ago Ron Clay mentioned that his white Citroen Saxo was subject to a spy campaign where men in black were using high powered binoculars to observe his movements and then they logged his catches. Or, maybe that as a session angler who likes figs and all things natural, they observed him ‘logging’ and caught his ‘movements’. I don’t know, everything gets lost in the fog of time and the telling of the tale.

Anyway, the men in black have moved on from scrabbling round in the bushes and crawling through cow-pats all for the sake of a 12lb barbel. There must be some serious money in barbel is all I can say as they now have AWACS planes with fighter escorts. Unbelievable, but true!

All day there was a large AWACS plane circling me – seriously! This new Tidal Trent mob must be bloody paranoid – and loaded! Normal blokes are in a blumming struggle with the petrol costs to get a simple day’s fishing in yet these buggers circled me for hours upon hours…and I will tell you something for nothing, those AWACS, they don’t run on recycled chip grease!

Not that I advocate running a car on chip grease but if anyone was to do something like that they would be well advised to make friends with people in restaurants…lots of cheap Bio-diesel!

Anyway back to the fishing…..

It was still fishing slow. The AWACS was still circling me overhead and my new ‘Oval’ from Climax tackle was proving to be money well spent. Tony Flint’s exchange rate in Climax Tackle means you get a hell of a lot of bang for your buck!

Yep, it was the first time in about 18 months that I haven’t had to wear waterproofs inside my shelter during anything more than a light morning mist. Now that is £ 50 well spent!

The fishing did not develop and so the day went slowly unlike the case of Stella Artois I had purloined from the provisions store at home. It had been earmarked for a family BBQ, but come on, let’s get real. By the time a decent summer gets here I will be that old I will be taking fluids through an IV drip and be having the last rights read to me as I speculate on the angels of heaven having Brazilians or whether I would be better taking my chances with the caustic Goth girls of Hades and their questionable deviant preferences. It will be a close call.

I began my evening routine of preparing everything to hand, head torch, scales, baiting needles and superglue. You all know the routine. I took out my radio and began to ‘wind it up’. No that doesn’t mean I started calling it names and saying that its mother was a cheap Transistor from Hong-Kong and its father was a useless good for nothing Walkman. No, my radio is clockwork!

It’s bloody great! Excellent reception and every hour a little cuckoo pops out and… well…cuckoos!

Concentrate on the Fish-in Lee…take the medication.

As soon as night began to fall Geoff landed a fish followed by Paul and Victor landing one too. Martin lost a lump and all the while I sat motionless, waiting, listening to the radio. There really is only so much classic 80’s stuff you can listen to before even that cannot stop you feeling like a loser as everyone else is beginning to catch.

It was like being at the school disco all over again; sat on the edge of the dance floor watching all my mates getting hooked up with the sexy fat girls whilst I stood there like a Muppet getting my tongue on nothing fruitier than a strawberry lolly! (I was going to type sucking nothing fruitier than a strawberry lolly but that really did bring forth some seriously gay connotations. I think I have just managed to avoid those with the re-type).

Anyway, I have done the school disco failure before so I wasn’t having none of that again so I decided to bring the big guns out and go for my get out of jail bait…and talking of ‘jail bait’, this stuff smells exactly the same as my first girlfriend! Seriously, it does, it’s quite a unique fragrance that brings back some good memories for me. No, not fishy and rancid memories!! Fruity and spicy with a vanilla, cinnamon and cardamom edge!

That’s right, she got on my nerves and slept with my best mates so I chopped her up and made a Tagine out of her! North African cuisine really suited her!

Two Teme-Severn super glugged (barbel activator, TCB, lamprey glug and Irish whiskey) Lamprey boilies were split and loaded back to back on a hair to maximize leak off and lobbed back out into the depths.

And just like I found Miss Sabrina Wigglestaff a tasty dish at the dinner party I had with her, Miss Barbel Bendmyrod also found that combination of flavours to her liking. The difference is I didn’t need to worry about getting rid of the bones this time round! Teme Severn boilies, although crunchy textured which appeals to the barbel, contain no Fibulas or Tibias which although added body and taste to the original dish made its consumption somewhat problematic.

She was fun and flighty but the dance was fast and furious. Weighing in at about 7lb a nice fit schoolie fish. She was popped back to grow on and return to have a ‘slow dance’ a few years on at the school reunion!

No sooner had I got back into the comfort of my Oval and started singing away with Bananarama ( Robert DeNiro ) did my Delkim ‘sex on a big metal stick’ alarms decided that they wanted to accompany me and began to wail as well. The big monster blue LED’s will blind you forever if you look at them. L.E.D s added to the school disco theme. It was great!

Two fish in two minutes!

Again I had to settle for a quickie as what seemed to be a twin sister of the first fish appeared out of the blue to also book a ticket for the re-union…Sibling rivalry!

Then it happened, and it totally freaked me out this as well. I knocked my radio over as I got back in the Oval and lost reception!

I twiddled the knob a bit to get reception back and what did I hear?…Robert DeNiro ‘Talking Italian’?

No, this is what I heard….

“This is Eagle one nine eye in the sky…Eagle one nine eye in the sky to Record Hunter. Do you receive Record Hunter? Eagle one nine reporting, the Lucky buggers just fluked another one!…Another one over!….(static crackle)…. Record Hunter calling to Eagle one nine eye in the sky …Glad we didn’t let him join the group now…”

Just at that point the radio sprang back into normal reception mode and The Human League began to sing something about a waitress in a cocktail bar but I was well wound up and singing Frankie goes to Hollywood ‘Two tribes’ which as anyone who has ever tried to listen to one track whilst singing another will testify generally results in a below par performance. But I was too concerned with ‘Eagle one nine eye in the sky’ to worry about that!

So I stripped naked and mooned at the midnight sky. Get a load of that Eagle one nine eye in the sky. And ‘No’, that ain’t a 4lb eel I’m waiving at you either!

After that I retired for some sleep and I awoke refreshed.

It was fantastic to see everyone again and as I said we should do it again in September. Victor managed to slip into 1a and Paul and Geoff latched onto another few fish.

Martin and I retired home early to contemplate ways to raise enough funds for a Stinger surface to air missile system.