"hard" fishing

[Sportsman]

I was having an hour on the lake last night. I just fancied a relaxing time watching the float but I couldn't because the damned thing kept going under and then I had to retrieve the horrible slimy fish and do it all again.

This led me to thinking about whether or not I would like the fishing to be harder and then, what constitutes hard fishing.

 

The fishing on the lake is undeniably easy and simple float tactics will produce a never ending stream of Rudd and occasional carp.

To make it a bit more of a challenge I have taken to fly fishing for them and that is much much harder or more difficult. They are incredibly easy to spook with inept casting and when they do take they are so fast I probably connect with about one take in five. Dry fly fishing is bad enough but at least you can see the takes, fishing wet fly or nymphs the takes are so subtle that I think it is probably the most difficult fly fishing that I have done. very satisfying when you get it right though.

 

So what else constitutes hard fishing?

 

Low Stocking Densities: does this make catching the fish more difficult or just less likely. Do you have to use special tactics or strategies to get a bite or do you just fish as normal but wait longer?

 

Inaccessible locations: Hacking your way through undergrowth or walking up a mountain for 4 hours to get to the fishing certainly makes for more of a physical challenge but does it make the fishing harder. Some of the easiest fish to catch that I have ever experienced were wild Brownies in a remote Loch. Poor little things were starving.

 

Educated fish: some of my hardest fishing was in well stocked but heavily fished water where the fish had probably been caught before and had seen it all.

 

So what do you think. Should fishing be hard, is it more satisfying and what do you do to make it harder?

[Dales]

Low Stocking Densities: does this make catching the fish more difficult or just less likely.

 

Just less likely.

 

Do you have to use special tactics or strategies to get a bite or do you just fish as normal but wait longer?

 

 

Just fish normal but wait a little longer for a bite.

[Anderoo]

I was having an hour on the lake last night. I just fancied a relaxing time watching the float but I couldn't because the damned thing kept going under and then I had to retrieve the horrible slimy fish and do it all again.

This led me to thinking about whether or not I would like the fishing to be harder and then, what constitutes hard fishing.

 

The fishing on the lake is undeniably easy and simple float tactics will produce a never ending stream of Rudd and occasional carp.

To make it a bit more of a challenge I have taken to fly fishing for them and that is much much harder or more difficult. They are incredibly easy to spook with inept casting and when they do take they are so fast I probably connect with about one take in five. Dry fly fishing is bad enough but at least you can see the takes, fishing wet fly or nymphs the takes are so subtle that I think it is probably the most difficult fly fishing that I have done. very satisfying when you get it right though.

 

So what else constitutes hard fishing?

 

Low Stocking Densities: does this make catching the fish more difficult or just less likely. Do you have to use special tactics or strategies to get a bite or do you just fish as normal but wait longer?

 

Inaccessible locations: Hacking your way through undergrowth or walking up a mountain for 4 hours to get to the fishing certainly makes for more of a physical challenge but does it make the fishing harder. Some of the easiest fish to catch that I have ever experienced were wild Brownies in a remote Loch. Poor little things were starving.

 

Educated fish: some of my hardest fishing was in well stocked but heavily fished water where the fish had probably been caught before and had seen it all.

 

So what do you think. Should fishing be hard, is it more satisfying and what do you do to make it harder?

 

Quite a tricky question, this. Good topic though.

 

'Very satisfying when you get it right' pretty much sums it up for me. I like fishing that starts off hard and gets easier as you learn how to do it and get better at it. I also like fishing that is easy and fun, e.g. trotting a nice little river with maggots and light gear. It depends what mood I'm in.

 

On the whole, I like to feel like I've 'earned' the fish I catch, especially if they are big. So I guess for me, 'hard' equates into the amount of effort I need to put in to actually catch what I'm after. But the nicest fishing for me is getting to the point where I've put in the effort, sussed somewhere and then have a real golden spell in terms of catching, when it suddenly feels easy! It doesn't happen very often, but it's great when it does.

 

The inaccessible locations thing struck a chord with me, as most of my fishing is like this. I don't think that makes it hard or easy necessarily, it just means that usually the fish aren't pressured and are quite naive. Easy to frighten, but apart from that not that hard to catch. This is my favourite type of fishing, I don't like to have to compete with other anglers. I love exploring and fishing new water, just to find out what lives there. As you say, pressured fish can be very hard, especially so if they have no need of anglers' bait.

 

Low stocks are hard because (obviously) there aren't many of them! Location and getting to know the water are then the absolute top priorities, often followed by baiting and avoiding whatever else lives in the water.

 

Should fishing be hard? Not always, no. But I do believe very strongly that there is a moral problem with fishing for fish that have no choice but to eat anglers' bait. For fishing to mean anything, the fish should always have the basic choice - to take your bait or not. If that's the case, when you catch, you've done something right. How hard you want it to be after that is up to you.

Edited September 22, 2011 by Anderoo

[gozzer]

An interesting subject Dave, but I think the answer is relative to what you are used to, and your experience.

 

Back in the late 60s and 70s, there were probably no 'harder' waters in the country than the Yorkshire rivers. It's no coincidence that the top anglers of the time would avoid the place like the plague. I did most of my match fishing during that period, and the average weights would make many of todays anglers give up in disgust. In winter especially, you would be fishing for bites, (at times just a single bite during a 4 hour match, was an achievement!), if they were converted into fish then it was a good day. There were of course often times when a good winning weight came out, but the back up weights were poor to non existent, often with more than half the contestants blanking, This was in matches ranging from 40 or 50 anglers, up to several hundred. Pleasure fishing, where you could pick your swim, was better, but it taught you how to 'scratch' for fish. Much of my success in matches came from days when 'scratching' was needed, and I think that those days taught me a lot. Even now, I sometimes just drop into a swim, that has no particular features, and looks less 'fishy' than others, just to face the challenge of trying to see if I can 'read' the swim as well as I used to, and catch whatever is available.

 

As to the stocking densities, less fish obviously means that you are less likely to catch, just because of the sheer lack of numbers. But the fish have an abundance of natural food, and don't need to take an anglers bait, so you have to 'wean' them on to it, adjust your feeding, and present it correctly, to make the most of any swim.

 

I tackle any 'hard' water the same as I always did, adjusting tackle, searching the swim for hidden features, changing tackle, and changing baits. In other words, not resting until I have 'found' the fish, and even then constantly adjusting my feed and approach to keep in contact with the fish.

I could give dozens of examples where I've 'found' the fish in the last half hour or so of a match, and gone on to 'place', and then kicked myself for not realising earlier. But that's just the learning curve we had to overcome, and it all added to the knowledge and experience we built up.

 

John.

[Dales]

I'm always a little puzzled on what is hard and what is easy fishing and it is a bit of a how long is a piece of string type question. I think at times anglers like to wear the hardness of there fishing like a badge of honour The perceived difficulty level in there fishing some how elevates there fishing to new heights that those mere mortals who like to catch a few could never understand. The more you blank the more challenging your fishing is

 

The idea of scratching for bites does not really appeal to me but then neither does "bagging" I doubt I would ever choose to make my fishing more challenging or even go down the route of delibertly choosing hard venues. In my mind both extremes of fishing over stocked or low stocked waters does not appeal. If you catch on the high density water, well its hard not to so not much of an achievement. If you catch on the low stock density is it just because of the hours you put in? I take very little joy in blanking and so not sure I could sit it out indefintely waiting for one of the dozen 40lb Carp to turn up at a 100 acre reservoir.

 

Surely the only hard fishing is the fishing you are rubbish at? If you achieve your target, then it could not have been that hard. Well for you at least.

Edited September 22, 2011 by Dales

[gozzer]

Hi Stephen, I feel that I should answer your post, if only for my own piece of mind.

 

The situation I described, wasn't one that was particularly enjoyable, and certainly not one to boast about. In about '68, most of the smaller species just seemed to disappear over a short period, especially the roach. It was later found to be a disease that wiped most of them out, but we didn't know that at the time. Roach, along with dace, perch and smaller chub were the most prolific fish at the time. They were considered to be the 'back up' species in a match, being bigger on average, than gudgeon or ruffe, but smaller than the large chub, bream and barbel that usually made up the big weights. We relied on them if the bigger fish weren't showing, or, as a way to get a decent weight, and maybe a place in a match. They disappeared so quickly that the other species hadn't time to make up the numbers, or spread out along a length of river, so the match lengths became very 'peggy'. Apart from the odd trip down to the Trent or Witham, (that became more than the odd trip), we were stuck with it. After several years the chub became the dominant species, but because of their predatory nature, that slowed down the survival rate of the small fish. My point was that we had to find a way of catching in these conditions. (I would defy even watatoad to catch every time back then ).

Just as things started to achieve some semblance to 'normality, we had the perch disease in the early 70s and the same happened with them. But that's another story.

 

Because at the time the Yorkshire season started 2 weeks earlier than the rest of the country, we used to have an annual flood of anglers from all over the country for the first two weeks in June. This became a trickle, and they only came if their was a 'special' match, or one with large prize.

 

We used to chuckle, (and this might be of interest to Phone), when anglers from down South came up here on holiday, and tried to fish with the same tackle they used at home. Size 14/12 hooks, to 3 and 4lb line, and they couldn't (or struggled to) catch. When we explained the situation, and got them on smaller hooks and lighter line, as well as showing them the tactics, they caught, or their catch rate improved.

 

Nothing to shout about, or feel superior about, just the situation we were faced with. But it did make us work harder for our fish, and stood us in good stead in similar situations on better stocked rivers.

 

John.

[Mark Wintle]

Hi Stephen, I feel that I should answer your post, if only for my own piece of mind.

 

The situation I described, wasn't one that was particularly enjoyable, and certainly not one to boast about. In about '68, most of the smaller species just seemed to disappear over a short period, especially the roach. It was later found to be a disease that wiped most of them out, but we didn't know that at the time. Roach, along with dace, perch and smaller chub were the most prolific fish at the time. They were considered to be the 'back up' species in a match, being bigger on average, than gudgeon or ruffe, but smaller than the large chub, bream and barbel that usually made up the big weights. We relied on them if the bigger fish weren't showing, or, as a way to get a decent weight, and maybe a place in a match. They disappeared so quickly that the other species hadn't time to make up the numbers, or spread out along a length of river, so the match lengths became very 'peggy'. Apart from the odd trip down to the Trent or Witham, (that became more than the odd trip), we were stuck with it. After several years the chub became the dominant species, but because of their predatory nature, that slowed down the survival rate of the small fish. My point was that we had to find a way of catching in these conditions. (I would defy even watatoad to catch every time back then ).

Just as things started to achieve some semblance to 'normality, we had the perch disease in the early 70s and the same happened with them. But that's another story.

 

Because at the time the Yorkshire season started 2 weeks earlier than the rest of the country, we used to have an annual flood of anglers from all over the country for the first two weeks in June. This became a trickle, and they only came if their was a 'special' match, or one with large prize.

 

We used to chuckle, (and this might be of interest to Phone), when anglers from down South came up here on holiday, and tried to fish with the same tackle they used at home. Size 14/12 hooks, to 3 and 4lb line, and they couldn't (or struggled to) catch. When we explained the situation, and got them on smaller hooks and lighter line, as well as showing them the tactics, they caught, or their catch rate improved.

 

Nothing to shout about, or feel superior about, just the situation we were faced with. But it did make us work harder for our fish, and stood us in good stead in similar situations on better stocked rivers.

 

John.

 

In the deep south we had dire match fishing circa the mid 70s. It may have just been the waters I was fishing but the Dorset Frome was desperate at that time. No chub, barbel, bream, bleak, ruffe, very few dace and the odd roach. Like John we developed scratching strategies to have a chance of winning. Some matches no one weighed in, others were won with single dace (I won one with 1/8 oz - a 2" dace), others a single dace would frame, it was 22 hooks and fish for a bite. Typical matches were 30 pegs, yet in the later years of the 70s it slowly got better, and it wasn't always bad. One stillwater declined terribly after 1976. Weights were never high - 3lb of stunted roach but when they died off a pound or less would win a 50 peg match and again eventually it got better when bream were introduced - the match record is now way over 100lb.

 

Then we started winter league fishing! Average results on the Dorset Stour in 120 peg WL were a third blanks but on the bad days it could be much worse. My team won one WL with 3 dace for 9oz. Several times I fished knowing that the entire section would blank come what may, another day on a split section, split by a weir, I had 16lb of chub to win, 3rd was next peg and the peg the other side was 7th, yet above the weir 60 blanks in a row.

[Anderoo]

On the harder fishing I see some blanking as inevitable, especially to start with. That doesn't bother me at all because this type of fishing has to be seen over a much longer term than 1 session, usually a season or number of seasons. It's a journey and you need to learn the way as you go. That's the fun part You try things out, you make mistakes, you try again, and bit by bit, over time, it all starts to come together.

 

Time on the water... yes if you are fishing competently, more time helps a great deal as you're more likely to be fishing at the right times. But extra time on its own is no substitute for fishing well.

 

I was fortunate to have a very good winter's chub fishing last season, but even so over the whole winter I averaged between 1-2 fish per session, and had a lot of blank days. By the end of the season I felt like I had really got to grips with the stretch I had fished, and as this season's chubbing gets closer I have no wish to try to do the same again this year. I have a totally new bit of water to explore this year, and that appeals to me far more than going over the same ground again and again.

 

Might be easy, might be hard, but there's only 1 way to find out! When the tip trembles and pulls round I would much rather get a bolt of adreneline and think 'I wonder what this will be?', than think 'I wonder if I will recognise this one'.

[Dales]

Hi Stephen, I feel that I should answer your post, if only for my own piece of mind.

 

John.

 

I was not replying to your post or any one in particular but the idea of hard fishing in general

 

I don't like knocking the Carpers but it tends to be Carp anglers that wear the badge of hardship more then most.

Edited September 22, 2011 by Dales

[gozzer]

In the deep south we had dire match fishing circa the mid 70s.

 

Mark, did you have as many matches as us, where the result read,

 

!st 3oz

2nd 1oz

3rd Ace, two, three.

4th Queen flush.

 

 

On the odd occasion, a pair of Aces was enough to win a match!

 

John.