Tennant Canal

First thing I had to do, before writing this blog, was go on Google Maps and remind myself exactly where the Canal went. It was fed from the River Neath at the aquaduct at Aberdulais, and ended up just short of Port Tennant in Swansea. The bottom end was reed fringed, fairly shallow and weedy and home to the odd shoal of Rudd and some Tench and Eels Further up the Rudd petered out so it was Tench, Perch and Eels. Or so we thought initially, because the upper reaches held more than the odd surprise or two.

I first encountered the Canal on one of those teenage lads night fishing expedition, i.e. basically an opportunity to drink beer and arse about, especially as I’d gone with two right nutters. Every night fishing trip I’ve ever done has been a disaster, and this was no exception. The reason was that I’d never associated weather conditions with how the fish might respond, so I’d end up shivering under a moonlit sky and waiting for a light frost just before dawn. And so it was that night on Tench Corner.

So a few years later when I had transport I started visiting the stretch up from the road bridge. Usually late April so I could grab a couple of hours after work. You had to think about where you parked because we now had a close season and the bailiffs were getting a bit busy. This is where I first tried out a Sigma Wand, and yes, I snapped the finest tip first time out (because you just had to!!!!) Tench corner access was trickier but then we realised that we could cross the canal just up from a Pump House and walk down. Plus we discovered that there were some big big Tench in the deeper water by the Pump House. But upstream was evem more of a revelation! Bream, Roach, and on one famous occasion when the canal was coloured and flowing, I caught 5 Chub on the stick float. Alan caught one and witnessed my fish. Neither of us had ever seen a Chub in the canal and we never saw or heard of any again. And the other find was that just about every road tunnel along the canal’s length was home to a large shoal of decent Roach. They weren’t easy to catch, but if you could get their heads down a decent bag was on the cards. I’m pretty sure that Nigel Evans had a netful.

Match wise I remember us using various lengths for local Mini Leagues. I think we started down the bottom but there were issues because 1 angler would drop on the Rudd, catch all match and paralyse the opposition, who were reduced to scratching for Eels. So we moved up to the Pump House access and either fished up and down towards Tench Corner or just up into a tree-lined section. This was very dark, mysterious and magical. The accepted method was to catch the slight flow by fishing a Billy Makin pole stick to hand at about 7m. It was lumpy, especially using the in vogue method of attaching elastic (don’t ask…..), but I had a lovely match catching Roach and Perch and then a bonus Tench and a Bream on pinkie and breadpunch. I had another win a bit further up the same length, all Roach and Perch, and a win up Neath Abbey. Plus a second in a sponsored event won by Alan G who caught the only Tench in the match and done me by 1oz. And the sponsorship money was mainly to te winner, which I actually think is fair enough.

Now I’m fairly sure that the WFCA held a Welsh National on the Canal, and that it was won by Brian Crowe. This might be total bollock, but I do like to think it isn’t, as he certainly deserved it for his contributions.

Brynmill Park Lake

A former reservoir set in the middle of a small park. The lake was shaped like a shallow ‘U’, and varied from about 3′ deep right up in the to of the ‘U’ to about 11′ max by the overflow on the apposite ‘Deep Bank’

My first visit there would have been, I reckon, Boxing Day 1972. Father Christmas had excelled himself and I was equipped with a brand new ABU Mk6, a Mitchell Match, an Efgeeco seat box, landing net and handle, keepnet and some assorted terminal tackle. This was a time when it was the norm to fish a match on Boxing Day, So Dad dropped me off and I purchase a pint of mixed coloureds (40p??). All very new and strange, queuing up to draw, and I found myself on peg 21. End peg on the Deep Bank to the left of the overflow. A good draw really, but aslo 11′ deep and a bit of a parrot cage. So I set up with a nice shiny Perch bobber about 3′ deep. One of the senior anglers spotted this and tried to be helpful by switching me to a 3BBB Ultra antennae at 11′ deep. He was right of course but you now have to imagine me, with no experience whatsoever, trying to cope with a deep fixed rig in a parrot cage. I probably spent most of the match up the tree, or tangled, or hooked up on the mesh cover of the overflow. Needless to say I blanked, and off the flyer!!

I then turned up on the next 5 weekends and never managed to rise a bite, but my rigs were getting better and I was learning how to floatfish. Then, glory be, on the 7th visit, my float sailed under and I caught a small Perch. I went on to catch 6 more Perch and Roach, and I was hooked!!!!! That was that for that season, next visit would have been opening day 1973, the glorious 16th June!

The good old days

As promised, I will take the opportunity during my recuperation to try to capture some of the magic of those early days of fishing. I’m not sure if my recovery will be gentle or whether there will come a point when I’ve clerly turned the corner. I’m just working on the basis that it will come, and if it takes months then so be it, we are in full lockdown anyway and will be for a few months yet.

Now clearly I catch more fish now than I ever did in my formative years. That is partly down to venue choice, partly down to tackle availability and even partly down to bait. 40-50 Lbs is a half-decent practice session or a good match, twice that is a red letter day, double figures is standard. So why do I get misty-eyed about a time in my life when 20 Lbs was a once a season event and 10 Lbs was exceptional (NB practice not match. My match weights would have averaged out at well below 5 Lbs most of the time. Well I can only think that the far more random approaches employed in some way enhanced the natural mystery of angling. We weren’t targeting specific fish, we were trying to get bites. The venues were incredibly diverse and kept changing, nobody had heard of commercial Carp fishing, it was Roach, Perch, Skimmers, Tench, Crucians and the odd Bream.

My club water and primary focus was Brynmill Park Lake, but I think I’ll start with another venue even though it featured far less in my overall journey.

Singleton Boating Lake

A smallish shallow venue on the corner of Singleton Lane and Mumbles Road. Its primary purpose in life was as a Boating Lake, and there were a few instances over the years when the Council managed to open the exit sluices and dump the fish out on Swansea Foreshore. This would trigger some homespun fish rescue missions and subsequent illegal restockings.

I first visited the venue in 1973/4. I’d become rather disenchanted with travelling down to Mumbler pier and getting blown to bits. One fish (a mackerel) in about 10 trips didn’t help either. So I decided to have a look at Singleton. I’m not sure what my outcome was, 12Lbs line on a 8′ pier rod probably didn’t give perfect presentation. But what I do recall from that trip or one shortly after is that 2 Neath Juniors (Chris Hillier and Peter Evans) had travelled down with their mentor Brian Crowe. Brian was fishing a senior match at Brynmill so the juniors had to fish Singleton. And they were professionals. 13′ float rods made up on Lerc blanks, Mitchell reels, proper floats and, most importantly, maggots. They proceeded to empty the place of naive stunted Rudd. I was in awe. That generated a Christmas list that incuded an ABU Mk6, a Mitchell Match, Efgeeco seat box, nets bank sticks etc. plus some end tackle. (yes, I was a spoilt bastard). More on this later when I get to the Brymill chapters.

What happened in the ensuing years is a bit woolly (OK, this is all a bit woolly) I suspect the council managed to cock up on the sluice. I think we rescued the Tench and moved them elsewhere. And we must have restocked with Roach and Perch from somewhere and sort of forgotten about it. So the next development I remember is reports that the pond was throwing up decent weights, especially of Roach on the seed. This was in the back end of the Close Season, but who cared? Wales had only recently been covered by a Coarse Fishing Rod License, so double whammy. Extra costs to fish plus a Close Season which had only existed on club waters. I got myself down there and sure enough, light loose feeding would get them lined up and 20 Lbs was possible. The approach was simplicity itself. 5m glass roach pole fished to hand, an inverted bird quill with numerous black and white bands painted on the thin end, couple on No.8 down. This must have been something like 1980, because the next time I went I was quickly warned off by Nigel Evans who had just taken up coarse fishing. The bailiffs had caught a few anglers fishing illegally. Oops!! There were a few fairly high profile cases around this time, but for some reason, although I did chance my arm, I was never caught.

At some point soon after the Council must have done their favourite trick, because this time the salvaged Roach ended up in Brynmill, which gave that venue a real boost for a few seasons. The restocking policy this time seemed to be based on Skimmers, Tech and Carp (!!!!), and it soon settled down to be a decent albeit different venue again. It even became a match venue, hosting an evening match league series and a couple of Mini-League matches on the Sundays. The ‘method’ became pinkie over groundbait with a light waggler, and for some reason it really worked for me as won at least two of the evening matches and a Mini-League, and each time with fairly reasonable weights of Skimmers plus the odd Tench. Gary Etheridge would have loved it, it was right up his street. They’d opened a pub on the sight so halfway through the match my mate would come down with his young family and a pint of lager would appear next to my box. Can’t fault it!!

I won another match with a smallish Carp on the pole. You have to remember that we only had one top, and the elastic was grey. It was all grey. I think there were 3 strengths but the heaviest would have been a 5 or thereabouts. And you played fish by adding/unshipping one pole section at a time. So my Carp raised considerable comment, especially after it had run through 5 pegs to my right (really tight pegging though).

Essentially I think that’s about it. I’m pretty sure the Council, who now owned the water, considered the anglers to be a nuisance and just made life impossible. In the last evening series you weren’t allowed to fish running line for the first hour or so until the boats were in. I’m almost certain they just closed it to anglers eventually, although some die hards would still turn up to fish.

Happy New Year 2021!!

HOLY FUCK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I am, by my very circumstances and nature, just about totally socially distanced. Divorced, own house, not a social animal, likes fishing. And I’d spent 9 months being as careful as it seemed possible to be, food shopping only, click and collect for anything else. Masks, gels, distanced and hand washing. Mostly on-line prepayments for matches, socially distanced draws, very limited/zero post-match social interaction, happy enough to go home and wait for bank transfer of any winnings.

So how pissed off was I in the week running up to Christmas when I started presenting with symptoms of the Common Cold. Sore throat, bit run down, bit sneezy, some phlegm but nothing to get excited about. And, NB, not a single recognised symptom of covid. not even a hint!! It wasn’t even a particularly bad Cold, I’ve certainly had a lot worse. But, worryingly, it didn’t want to go away and I was definitely deteriorating after Christmas, entering a phase where I didn’t actually sleep for about 4 days. My mind was just racing, weird hallucinations were keeping me awake. And I hadn’t actually eaten since Christmas Day.

I got to NYE like this, but I was so desperate now that I ended up phoning NHS direct in the middle of the night. I was promised a response which took a full 3 hours, and by ten it was about 7 am so the response was to contact my GP’s surgery. This time they responded an hour later, but the upshot of the conversation was a prescription for a few sleeping tablets. To be fair to the on-line GP, I was still describing Cold symptoms so I might well have met the ‘so what’ categorisation.

I deliberately ignored the proper sleeping tablets in favour of Nytol, which proved fairly ineffective. But by the afternoon of NYD I was in a proper state, but drove up to my -ex’s anyway to see Fflur. My -ex was genuinely shocked at my state, I was freezing and ended up sat on her settee in a fairly warm house but with a heated blanket, two blankets and two hot water bottles and I was still shivering. So I felt compelled to try NHS Direct again, and after quite a lot of push back eventually got then to agree that I should attend A&E. In hindsight, possibly the most important argument I’ve won in my life.

Fortunately my -ex was available to drop me off, so mid’afternoon I was wheeled into The brand new Grange Hospital at Cwmbran. Immediate assessment was that my blood oxygen levels were way too low, so I was sat there with some supplementary oxygen. Quick walk through my symptoms (Cold innit??) and then a standard lateral flow test for covid. I was shunted off into a holding area and next thing there was a major panic to move me because I’d come up positive!!!!! I genuinely never saw that one coming. Quick blast of Dexamethosate (NB huge respect to whoever sussed that out) and I ended up in a rather nice room in A ward at the Grange.

Next morning , I had the most sobering conversation of my life so far with an obviously distressed consultant. I was ‘quite ill’ (no shit!). My lungs were showing damage from emphysema anyway plus more recent scarring caused the RA and/or the Methotrexate that I had been taking to deal with it. They would deal with it via steroids plus oxygen support from the wall as far as it was possible. If I went into ICU they would not intubate me (‘wouldn’t expect to get you back’) and if I went into cardiac arrest I was down as DNR. HOLY FUCK!!!!!!!!!! What a sobering conversation!! In the worst case I would be allowed a compassionate visit to allow family to say their goodbyes. I was seriously working through how/who I would involve in selling on my assets to push money back into the estate for Fflur. How would I sort out a Will etc. i.e. that place you never really expect to get to.

Next move was a transfer within the Grange, ward B Zero. Not significant as such but at least it wasn’t ICU (50% chance of escape!) and I was still being sustained by oxygen off the wall. A few days later I was informed that I was moving back to the Royal Gwent, which was OK because it was sold to me as a recovery ward. Sure enough, transfer ambulance turned up at about 2am and by day 6 or 7 I was ensconced in a 6 bed ward alongside some poor individuals who had been there up to 5 weeks. And slowly they weaned me off 15L of oxygen down to 2L which meant that I could be discharged with oxygen generation at home. To be honest I was just happy with the direction of travel because I’m in a full lockdown anyway I was hardly missing any excitement. The oxygen took about 48 hours to get sorted so I eventually got an ambuance ride home early afternoon on Wednesday 13th, i.e. a full 13 days since admission. And I count myself lucky, because although I’m sat here with some oxygen support, I’m out of Hospital and should recover.

So, a few observations. OK, so 1/3rd of people who contract the virus may never realise, my own daughter was almost asymptomatic. But they can pass it on! And of those who are ill, yes in some cases it is no worse than the ‘flu’, which is in itself a nasty virus. But where covid-19 does take hold it is an absolute bastard, not being able to breathe is as close as you will get to drowning out of water. And it has a nasty habit of attacking other organs. It has been quite noticeable over the past few weeks just how many of my FB Friends have actually suffered with this. In most cases it seems that they will recover in the longer term, even if its slow. But a few are in a much worse place. I was never party to any of the conspiracy theories anyway, but to be certain now if I should encounter any covid deniers along the way I will not hold back in any way. This is real. It is totally unlike anything I’ve ever experienced. People are dying when they don’t need to. I caught covid-19 in a slightly crowded Supermarket ffs. Maybe it wasn’t as socially distanced or controlled as it needed to be, but people were masked and there was gel available etc. A Supermarket. Who would ever have thought that the simple everyday task of food shopping could threaten your life. If any of you cannot possibly conceive of not travelling out a few miles to fish, then I do understand, but please be as safe as possible. But staying at home would be safer. There is a way out of this, but it might take self-constraint and some sacrifice which is nothing in comparison to what some families are having to endure.

Stay Home! Protect the NHS! Save Lives!