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.
26 Year ITCH 