The Alternative Angler

Never mind smelling the flowers, don’t forget to take time out to see the satirical side of fishing life and grab a laugh along the way as well. So here’s a regular column from Kevin Perkins to remind us that life is for laughing at, or taking the p*** out of, whenever we can.

Some time ago, my brother-in-law Bob, and I decided to focus our attentions on catching a pike over 25lbs in weight. We reasoned that with the application of superior intellect, cutting edge technology and up to the minute equipment we couldn’t fail – could we?

We based our attack on the Tring Reservoirs, home of so many different species of specimen sized fish that there had to be a monster pike in there – didn’t there? This was a well-planned attack, because we would use the AT/ACA pike qualifiers as testing grounds for some of the more ‘experimental’ rigs and baits we were hoping to use. Curiously we had more adventures and caught more pike than we ever did at Tring, culminating in a podium place at the finals!

To begin with at Tring, we had some minor success, only blanking perhaps every other session, which is high strike rate there. Obviously, with this much inaction it is important to convert runs to fish on the bank, and two dropped runs on Marsworth, early on (November) in the campaign were puzzling. The first was a pick up and drop, perhaps 3-4ft of line, then nothing developed. Bait reeled in – sardine, unmarked. We looked for grebes, tufted ducks, etc, but no sign.

Second was far more spectacular, a slow steady run for Bob. He picked up the rod, shut the bale-arm and swept the rod over his shoulder to set the hooks. As we all know, at this point you can normally feel the ‘thump’ from the fish as you make first contact, and even hazard a guess at the size from the resistance. Not this time. I watched as the rod went from vertical to horizontal, with Bob pulling so hard I feared he would start bleeding from the ears! Then nothing, the fish was off and back came the sardine, again hardly touched. We then played the game of ‘what the f*** was that’?

First suggestion, that an off-course Russian submarine may well have travelled up the Grand Union Canal, which runs adjacent, was unlikely, being as the inlet/outlet pipes are only two feet in diameter. Second suggestion, that scuba divers were p*ss*ng about, was also not likely, because we never saw any.

Third suggestion, that it could have been a catfish, rapidly gained favour and we settled for that. Or so we thought.

Two weeks later a strange-looking individual came to call at our bivvy. He had heard we had missed something big and could he have all the details? We duly obliged, mentioning our catfish theory, and all was going well until we said ‘sardine’. At this point our visitor became agitated, and reached into his coat (We wondered if perhaps we had upset the captain of a submarine!). He pulled out one of those never ending, folding wallets which contained picture after picture of headless people holding catfish. Apparently, he told us, secrecy was everything in their group, hence the cut-off heads! (I can’t begin to imagine their recruiting campaign). However, we were wasting his time, because catfish had never been known to take sea-baits, so he would not register our near miss. I was about to ask him if squid wasn’t: 1) One the top catfish baits, and 2) As far as I was aware, most squid come out of the sea, unless there is a freshwater variety I’ve never heard of. As I said, I was going to ask, but the sudden appearance of Bob’s gloved hand in my mouth prevented it.

Close encounters with ‘Characters’

This proved to be our first (but nowhere near last) encounter with, shall we say ‘characters’ that you meet when pike fishing. I remember reading Barrie Rickard’s surprise at coming across a chap on some remote backwater who was fishing for pike with a sausage. Come on Barrie, these are the sort of people who marry their cousins and eat their young! That chap would fish all day with a sausage, then take it home for his wife (cousin) to cook for his supper. Whilst I am sure that most ‘backwaters’ people are as sane and polite as I am (!), let me recount the following experiences:

I was once told I would be thrown in the drain because ‘we don’t want bailiffs round here’. I happened to be wearing my MKAA bailiff’s badge at the draw, and had been spotted. I tried to explain that I was only a club bailiff, but they weren’t having any of it. I took the badge off and the problem went away! I followed instructions to the draw, stopped at the pub to ask directions and was told by a gentleman outside stacking crates that he had ‘been here all my life but never heard of it.’ Then I travelled thirty yards up road and found the draw taking place.

We pulled peg numbers out on a Fen drain. Bob got number 42 – end peg. Muffled laughter, with the reason soon becoming apparent. The pegman had decided that last week’s spacings were too close, so he had pegged the swims 30 yards apart. It only took Bob 50 minutes to walk it, never heard the whistles, never caught a fish, didn’t see another angler as pegs 38-41 didn’t get drawn, and surprisingly, ours was the last car in the car park at the end, and it was very dark!

We fished at a match were we had to meet in a car park, then follow the organiser’s car down to the venue. The final part of the drive involved crossing a stream via a bridge made of two pairs of railway sleepers, with a two foot gap between them. Two cars in front of us in the convoy was a Reliant Robin…….. It took six of us to get it off the bridge.

Game, set and match to the wife

Talking to a harassed angler at a draw, we couldn’t fail to notice he had bought four children under nine with him (not bait – surely!). He explained he was divorced, and had booked the match without working out the alternate weeks’ custody business. He broached the subject with the ex-wife the night before the match. Those of you who enjoy pantomime can imagine the conversation:

“Can you look after the kids tomorrow?”

“Why?”

“I’m going fishing.”

(Altogether now) “Oh no you’re not!”

“But I’ve bought a ticket!”

“Oh – you’ve got money to waste on fishing?”

“No – well yes.”

“So you would rather go fishing than spend time with the kids?”

(Anyone versed in the battle of the (s)exes will know that he has lost at this point – the question is so loaded you can hear it ticking. The end is in sight, but he still tries to play, with the inevitable result).

“I’ll take the kids fishing.”

(Altogether now) “Oh no you won’t!”

(Altogether now) “Oh yes I will!”

“Go on then.”

Game, set and match!

So that’s how he ended up with the kids.

To their credit, they were well behaved and between they managed to hook and land two pike, which, to his credit, daddy did not weigh in!

Another match we went to involved children, indeed it seemed that whole families where there at the draw. The reason was not a jolly day out, oh no, this was a roving match. Once the draw was made, the dads pointed out to sons and daughters which swims they wanted on the lake, and the kids went off like something out of ‘Wacky Races’. Dad then had plenty of time to amble round to the swim which had been claimed by his offspring. A discreet enquiry at the weigh-in as to this peculiar practice resulted in the two of us being rounded on and told in no uncertain terms that ‘We always do it that way’! Like Dr Foster, we never went there again.

Chippies and slopes

Despite, or perhaps because of, the above we managed to both qualify for an AT/ACA pike final. This was held on the Welland, with the HQ at Spalding. At the time Bob had a pick-up truck, which could be converted into a camper van, and in this we set off the day before planning an overnight stay near to the match HQ. We got there in time to raid the local tackle shops, and even topped up our bait supplies from the fishmongers.

We found a perfect parking place in the main car park, close to amenities (toilets – we had one in the camper, but agreed not to use it after a wild night out in Spalding. Yes, yes, we know now, thank you!).

At around 6.30 we changed into our glad-rags and hit the town. Finding somewhere to eat was the first problem, an attempt to enter an empty restaurant attached to a hotel was politely rebuffed – no reservations. That left us with fish and chips.

Spalding has the highest ratio of chip shops to residents in the known world. There have to be local potato and wet fish barons (not going to use the Codfather pun) and at times it must get like Glasgow was during the ice cream wars of the Eighties. Having eaten we then tried the local hostelries. The first was very quiet, so two drinks and we left. The second seemed promising, as a group of teenagers were playing pool in a corner. We hatched a cunning plan, let them beat us at pool, and they might tell us where the action was. Bob strolled over to the table and put down his 50p. The teenagers didn’t even finish their game, they just walked out!

We remained the only two people in the bar for the rest of the evening, and so the landlord took pity and we enjoyed a lock-in until 11.00pm! Next morning was the match, and we were up bright and early, but the camper wasn’t – flat battery. We tried pushing it up and down the car park but it would not start. Bob ran round to the local garage and managed to get a mechanic out to us. With the camper attached, we couldn’t get jump leads onto the battery terminals, so the mechanic had to go back and get the tow-truck. A quick snatch and the engine fired up, and as the mechanic was undoing the towrope he advised us to park on a slope next time.This in the area where spirit level manufacturers send their bubbles to get them calibrated!

We got to the match HQ just about in time, made the draw and set off. My peg was nearest, so Bob dropped me off, and went looking for a slope. As for the match, in my section we didn’t see one pike. The only excitement was when an AT photographer came up and asked about taking pictures. I dived into my tackle box looking for comb and mirror, and when I looked up he was gone! (Three weeks later my picture did appear, or rather a splendid shot of my back, as the photographer hadn’t said can I take a picture, he just told us he had taken a picture – try convincing anyone that that rear view in the picture is you!).

At the end Bob came and picked me up and said that he might have come second in his section, but there were fish everywhere, and confusion reigned. When we got to the HQ after looking for a slope to park on, they had already started on the prizes, and in the end it turned out Bob had finished third overall. We picked up armfuls of prizes, and thought we were the mutts’ nuts. Had a few drinks on the way home, but only stopped at pubs that were on top of a hill!

Speedy Bob Church and a plug known as Tsunami

Other venues tried included Grafham. On the due day we were graced with the presence of Bob Church, but not for long! We all climbed into our allocated boats ready for the off, but Mr. Church had mistakenly been given the one that they would normally use for towing water-skiers, as he was almost at the far bank before we had got past the end of the jetty.

We had a couple of trips to Knipton Reservoir (once home to a 39 pounder) but only caught one pike which weighed 12ozs. Remarkably, I took this on one of Bob’s home made triple jointed 9” plugs known as ‘Tsunami’, because the wash it created would cause bankside erosion. You had to keep these floating plugs moving, as yachts would tie up to them if they remained stationary too long. I don’t think that 12oz pike tried to eat the plug, I think the ‘Tsunami’ stunned him as it was going past.

Back at Tring and Quint loses Jaws

Back at Tring, we were still not able make sense of any kind of ‘pattern’. If a hotspot started, it evaporated just as quickly. We had tried night fishing through December, January and February, and the only runs occurred no later than two hours after dark.

We never experienced any early morning action, it always seemed to be around 9-10 am (sun at its highest point in winter?). In a total of three seasons our best fish was just twenty-three pounds, but there were none bigger caught by anyone else during that time. We did try a huge assortment of baits and rigs at Tring and the other venues, but didn’t really find a ‘magic’ combination.

As a diversion we would sometimes introduce friends to pike fishing. One such was a young lad who worked with me called Graham Jones. After several blanks, he did hook a fish, which set off at right angles to the bank. Unfortunately his line got caught in a bankside bush. At first it should have been a simple matter to get free, however, he was thrashing the rod top around from one end, and the pike was doing the same at the other. Between them they managed to turn the bush into a willow basket. The pike had enough of this and threw the hooks and young Graham was crestfallen. His constant reminders to everyone about the one that got away earned him the nickname of ‘Quint’ (after Robert Shaw in ‘Jaws’) as the size of the unseen fish grew with every telling of his epic battle. I had a T-shirt printed up for him with the word ‘Quint’ on the front. This wasn’t easy as the lady printer was convinced that ‘Quint’ wasn’t a nice word. She asked me to write it down and went off looking for a dictionary and also canvassed opinions of passers-by as to its suitability. She finally relented and printed it up, after cutting her label out of the collar so the shirt couldn’t be traced back!

Quint did have one endearing party trick. We have all heard of people who pee in wardrobes when they are drunk. Quint would go into the toilet when drunk, sit down, take off his shoes and throw up in them! This was regular enough to warrant taking spare shoes if he knew he was going out for a session! If we went to the pub after fishing, we made damn sure he wasn’t wearing his waders.

Over the course of this intensive research we did meet many pike anglers whose opinions were both interesting and informative (as well as the aforementioned ‘characters’!). We would both like to think that we learned something from excursions and, to a lesser extent, were able to share with others what we were trying to do.

Read ‘THE ALTERNATIVE ANGLER’ every Friday!