Quagmire Pool
One of the nice things about the rota system on the Redmire winter syndicate is that you can swap rotas about or even sell your time to someone else. I am no longer a member, but one of the members who couldn’t get down there phoned me and asked if I would like his rota week, another member on that rota also couldn’t go, so I managed to get three nights for myself and a friend for about fifty quid. We could have stayed longer if we had wanted but work commitments prevented us staying later than the Wednesday.
I arrived at the lake with Nigel Jackson (who’s wife, God bless her, has deciphered my writing and has typed all this out) late on a Sunday evening in November. As we stood in the car park a fish jumped in the shallows and then another jumped in the willows swim, there was no one else there so we decided to set up in the middle section of the lake and spread out a bit. As I carried my holdall and rucksack down the bank, a good fish jumped in front of the stumps, so I set up there and Nigel went into pitchfords. While we were setting up a smell of rotting meat started to fill the air. It seemed to be coming from my holdall, I thought perhaps I had spilled one of my bait experiments on it, but the smell went away as quickly as it had started and I forgot about it.
We woke up the next morning, to find all the fish in the lake feeding along the dam, another angler had arrived at first light and was setting up on top of them. Despite the fish feeding all over his bait for three days and constantly having line bites he didn’t get any takes at all, he did however throw in enough bait to make sure that the fish never left the area in front of him. The only fish Nigel and I saw were along the dam and we began to get quite despondent so we passed the time by making cups of tea and telling each other mucky stories. I got through five gallons of water and the truly historic moment occurred when Nigel went back to his bivvy on the Tuesday afternoon and made a supreme sacrifice, he made me a cup of tea! This is the only case on record of Nigel ever having made a cup of tea for anybody while fishing.
Later that evening, while I was sitting in my bivvy eating as much of Nigels food as I could, the smell of rotting meat returned, but this time it was coming from my moon boots. It wasn’t in them nor was it on them, it was just around them and then it was gone again. Nigel thought that as the smell came from my boots it was self-explanatory but it wasn’t a foot smell, it smelt like something had died in my boots and was rotting away.
The next morning the fish were still turning the water red by the dam and there was no sign of any other fish anywhere else so Nigel and I decided that we would pack up after lunch. There aren’t a lot of fish in Redmire nowadays, the people that look after it have taken a lot of the smaller fish out. This was brought about because some people were constantly saying or writing that for Redmire to return to its former self the stock would have to be reduced. Now it’s been done, the same people are constantly complaining that they can’t catch anything. Yet if the people that look after the lake really care about it’s historic value why haven’t they repaired and re-floated the punt that has been lying on the bottom of the lake by the new boat house for at least two years? Nigel and I eventually got away from the lake in the late afternoon and stopped at a B.C.S.G. meeting on the way home for a drink and a bite to eat. As we walked into the pub Chris Hasweil saw the mud on our trousers and said "Just got back from Quagmire have you?" He’s obviously been there in the winter too.
The rotting meat smell never reappeared in either my holdall or my boots until just last week when I planned to do a couple of nights at a local water. I got my tackle sorted out and left my holdall and rucksack by the front door so that I could get an early start the next morning without disturbing the rest of the household. I was laying in the bath that evening when my wife came into the bathroom and told me to get out of the bath and move my holdall back into the garage because it smelled of rotting meat. I got out of the bath and went downstairs with her but the smell had completely gone so I left it where it was and went to bed.
At about three the next morning the whole house was woken up by what we thought was a smoke alarm but it turned out to be one of the Delkims in my rucksack. So, if anyone has avoided fishing Redmire because they are put off by stories of the Redmire ghost they need not worry anymore. It now lives in my tackle bags, which is perhaps why the fishing I have done since that trip to Redmire has been spoiled by the most ridiculous run of bad luck I have ever seen inflicted on anybody. I don’t wish to say anything other than I have lost at least three personal best fish in the last twelve months due to impossible things happening at the most inconvenient times, to say more is too painful.
