My eyes must be getting bad you know, there I was wondering what this Swan had got stuck in its mouth? When round the corner comes another one with exactly the same affliction. Now in fairness to my aging self I must point out that these were spotted at a range of some 200yd or more but nevertheless I feel that with my background of interest in ornithology and experience of the great outdoors I really ought to recognize a Pelican when I come across one.
Now Pelicans are seldom seen in this country as far as I am aware but I have come to expect the unexpected more often these days for whatever reason, maybe global warming or whatever, it might be. Over the last year I have several times bumped into Little Egrets on the shallow muddy waters at one end of our syndicate lake and during trips to the Isle of Wight. At first I though that these must be escapees from some bird park or another but after consulting my brother Kevin, who keeps more up to date with our feathered friends, it does appear that sightings of the unusual kind are indeed increasing quite rapidly. Now before anyone starts getting up petitions and Founding the British Anti- Pelican League. Or asking for the issue to be raised in the House of Lords I must admit that after a few minutes of watching these fascinating birds I did remember that I was in fact fishing on a reservoir in Cyprus and that these two fish devouring visitors were probably a relatively common sight. I did notice a complete lack of Cormorants however, which does make me wonder a bit?
I was on a family trip, for a couple of weeks holiday, but as usual had managed to include a small telescopic rod amongst my hand luggage. It is always interesting to see what can be pulled out using relatively simple methods and light tackle. Cyprus has a number of small to moderate sized Dams and most of them can be fished after purchasing a License from the Fisheries department normally situated somewhere around the major harbor areas. Carp seem to be the most prolific species but Roach, Perch, Tench. Pike and Black Bass are also to be found on some of the waters along with Trout. The few sessions that I managed were short evening spells of no more that two hours but a few handfuls of sweetcorn seemed to bring the fish in fairly quickly. A couple of grains on a size 10 or 12 hook with a basic running paternoster set up seemed to work a treat and it was rare to wait for more than ten minutes for some sort of bite to occur. Unfortunately the fish were only up to about 3lb and I must say that with the exception of one dead Carp of about 8LB I saw no signs of any monsters and was starting to convince myself that not much bigger actually existed. When I asked the size of the Carp at the fishery office I was told that they went up to about 2 kilo or so. Why this should be so I cannot imagine as similar sized waters all over the continent produce huge fish under almost identical conditions. However as the holiday came to an end my 9 year old Daughter Nicole asked me to let her have a go and so on the last evening before our return we set of for a short session on the nearest Dam.
I soon managed to interest a couple of small mirrors of about 8oz and then it went quiet for a while as Nicole had her turn. In typical Mr. Crabtree style I criticised her for making too much noise and for not casting near enough to the patch of corn. Youngsters have a fairly short span of attention normally and not suprisingly I had to alert her to the first bite which turned out to be a similar sized fish to the last one and was eventually swung in an held up for the camera.
The next event however was the one that I had waited and hoped for all week, a slow steady rise of the bobbin with the inevitable late strike revealing an unyielding force that showed complete contempt for the tackle even baring in mind that Nicole is not the most experienced angler in the world. I can still see the look on her face as the Carp (?) moved out slowly at first and then quickening with the clutch making that horrifying scream and the rod tip barely kept above water level. I had previously screwed the pressure down to the maximum that the 8Lb nylon would take and I now went into Crabtree overdrive as I struggled to give advice as Nicole tried to come to terms with exactly what was happening. The inevitable result came at the point that she decided that she wanted to hand it over to Dad the line parted, probably cut on the rocks as the fish went into deeper water. Well that was that, it was getting dark and we were needing to get back and change to go out for our final meal of the trip and we decided to call it George at that stage. The fish was probably a Carp and could have been anything from 15-50 LB on that sort of gear it is impossible to tell. I did not see any one catch anything of more than a couple of pound and most of the locals were fishing with poles and taking all the fish away in a bucket. We had a really enjoyable stay in Cyprus doing all the things that you do on a family break. The weather was great, temps between 31 & 38% c for the whole two weeks with hardly a cloud to be seen except on the mountains. I would like to go again but think that a 4WD would be better than the Daewoo saloon (as good as it was) that we hired. Many of the tracks that I wanted to explore, particularly around the Dams, were a bit beyond its capabilities.
Having returned from our trip to Cyprus we were soon off again to visit my pal cliff and his family on the Isle of Wight and once again we were blessed with good weather for our five-day stay. I never have to take much in the way of gear with me as Cliff has so much that I am spoiled for choice. Although there are some Carp waters on the Island and they have now produced fish to over 30LB I have yet to do much in pursuit of them as time is restricted on these domestic holidays and I normally restrict myself to a beach session or two with Cliff This is almost the only Sea fishing that I do these days. During this stay Cliff had finally Managed to get the boat that he has been doing up over the last couple of years into the water and as it is the time for the Mackerel I braved a short voyage out to one of the sea forts in order to stock my freezer with Pike bait for the coming winter. I am not the best sailor in the world I suspect and was a bit apprehensive as to how I would fare.In spite of a reasonable swell and what I consider to be huge waves I managed to survive the session and even pull out a few of the forts stripy inhabitants. Must try that again?
Have done very little serious fishing over the last month but did manage to get a few carping trips under my belt during June/July period which produced a number of fish up to 25LB before it all went back to situation normal e.g. fish on show but not having it. Carp really are the most infuriating creatures at times, even when you think that you have cracked it and got them on the run, they go back into hunger strike or preoccupation mode and everything goes grisly. I suppose that it is just one of midsummer’s mysteries and part of the attractiveness of fishing, the unpredictability? It makes you want to go back again and again until you hit it right; at least it seems to have that effect on me. And give the little buggers a good caning, silly or what?
Another interesting bit of fishing that I did do before going away was on the new Tunbridge Wells Club lake Colebrooke Park. Readers of this column will have heard me confess to being a committee member of the club and actually the Fisheries Officer as well and for this reason have more than a passing interest in this new water. It is a small tree lined pool of about one and a quarter acres just outside TW and prior to our
signing the lease we had not had much opportunity to check the place out for fish stocks ect. And were in fact led to believe that very little if any thing was there. This lead to some frantic discussions on the subject of new stock and I must say that as I believe that starting a fishery almost from scratch does have certain advantages I was actually looking forward to the challenge. A couple of exploratory trips to the lake however quickly proved that our earlier information about the place had been incorrect and it tuned out to be absolutely alive with Rudd & Carp. Floatfishing sweetcorn my father and I managed at least 100 fish within a few hours with the Carp being up to about 3LB and a mixture of Commons and Mirrors. The following week I repeated the experiment but this time using a second rod with a larger legered bait. Results were almost identical with the Rudd being mainly small although I did get one of about 12oz. It is always exciting to fish an unexplored venue or even one that is new to yourself and this was no exception with every bite threatening to produce a larger specimen or a different species. Due to the existing stocks of fish we now have to change our ideas about how to proceed with the introduction of other fish and this is also an interesting project that I will report on in a future article. The RTWS club membership was due to be closed by now and a waiting list under way but due to the problems with Foot and Mouth, which meant that some of our waters were still closed at the start of the river coarse season ,we found that our membership figures were behind last years and so still have room for a few new members. Anyone interested in becoming a member should contact the secretary Mr. Derek Davis on 01892-723336 or get in touch with yours truly for any info about club waters.
During my two trips to the Colebrooke Lake I did not see any large carp moving although on both occasions I only spent a few hours there and I have since had little contact with any anglers that have fished it as I have been away for a few weeks. It does occur to me however that the next time I go up there I should take Nicole with me?
Bob
If you have any stories or information for Bob contact him on 01322-866015 email bmt@eurospec.freeserve.co.uk
