i miss coarse fishing

[phil dean]

to those of you who know me this may well sound like a stupid gripe but I never realised how much I would miss coarse fishing.

 

I used to live in Bingley next to a canal and a river, with dozens of coarse ponds around and other rivers just a short drive away if I felt the need for more. There were only a small handfull of trout fisheries and I loved to fish them and took the coarse fishing for granted.

 

Now I live next to a great salmon and sea trout river which I can fish as and when I wish, I have some of the country's best wild brown trout fishing to hand and a couple of stocked trout lakes, but the only coarse fishing for a good 10 miles is a lake where fishing is not allowed, and the prize if I take the risk, are perch from 2oz to 1.5lb.

 

What I'm missing is the whole "not knowing" magic.

 

Casting in a maggot/worm or piece of breadflake the float could dip under to a half oz roach or a 6lb carp. It was exciting not to know what was coming next. My highlights of last season included catching a 3oz chublet, why, because it was a coarse fish on the river near me, the forst I'd seen other than minnows, and because it wasn't a trout.

 

I can go coarse fishing, but work and home commitments are such that I struggle to justify the travel time to a decent water (about 30miles away) when I do have a few hours free.

 

For those of you who have it on your doorsteps and take it for granted, please remember to enjoy what you've got.

[chesters1]

plenty of course fish in the rivers up there we ate some walking hadrians wall in the 70's

i miss walking hadrians wall so you have the advantage roman walls are thin on the ground in surrey.

get a metal detector and fish for metal

Edited August 22, 2008 by chesters1

[Ken L]

Where is "Nr Hadrians Wall" ?

 

The Tyne has a good head of coarse fish and there's a park pool that's fishable at Whitley Bay.

[Tony U]

Phil

Whittle Dene is not to far away from you and is now an out and out coarse fishery you could always have a cast or two there.

 

 

Tony

[Sportsman]

Phil

I know just what you mean.

I live on top of some superb Salmon and Trout fishing and for the past 20 years have concentrated on fly fishing, and thoroughly enjoyed it, but this year I have become hooked on coarse fishing, to the point where I haven't cast a fly for probably 4 months.

We are not exactly blessed with coarse venues up here, apart from Pike and Perch, so I have to travel I have been learning the art all over again at the nearest thing we have to a commercial within driving distance (83 miles each way)

Tomorrow I am off to my nearest day ticket water (about 1.5 hours drive,) where I hope to catch a few roach and rudd.

I don't know what it is, maybe childhood memories, but there is just something about watching and waiting for that float to move

[yorkio]

The Tyne has a good head of coarse fish and there's a park pool that's fishable at Whitley Bay.

 

The Tyne's got some coarse fish, but they're pretty much all dace and not terrifically big ones at that. The problem is that they're spread out pretty thinly over miles of river - and that's river which is leased to a different game syndicate every few hundred yards! You hear about the odd decent chub every now and then and I once saw a pike decorating a bush on one particularly expensive salmon beat! But it's damn near impossible to actually target coarse fish on the Tyne.

 

Actually, the thing that's vexing me right now is the shortage of decent grayling water which allows float fishing. I'm a member of two clubs, both of which control rivers with plenty of grayling. One of those clubs is fly only and the other only allows bait fishing during the trout season, so as the grayling wake up you have to put your stickfloat and pin away for the winter!

 

I know I shouldn't really moan though. After all, as Phil says, the game fishing is spectacular and that's something which we do, I'm sure, take for granted.

Edited August 22, 2008 by yorkio

[Dick Dastardly]

What I'm missing is the whole "not knowing" magic.

 

I understand exactly what you mean Phil.I love my trout fishing but its probably the method I enjoy more as you are quite right "what am I going to hook next" is certainly missing on most of the venues I fish.Not only is the choice of species severely limited but also the variation in size! Oh another 1 1/4lb Rainbow...........................

[phil dean]

I'm glad I'm not the only one (for those who asked, I'm near haltwhistle, 50 miles from the east coast and about 40 from the west).

 

Then again, i was fishing yesterday on the dry fly and looked up to see a peregrine. Not giving too much location info for obvious reasons but it is magical up here, in a different way at times.

 

Tony, noted, and i've been told that there's a small pond in corbridge but it's still 20 miles each way and it aint exactly magical. It's the whole little escape near to hand. When I lived in Keighley there were a couple of oxbow lakes which benefitted from floodwater every couple of years. I could just bob to them in a morning before work or sneak off at lunch if the Mother in Law was visiting. They could contain anything from a few sticklebacks to a 10lb pike...it was the whole not knowing that I loved.

 

As I said, I shouldn't gripe because I have got some excellent game fishing to hand, but it may well be the childhood element of watching a float disappear that seems to be lost in game fishing.

[Alan Roe]

If your missing it give me a bell and we can sort something out.......

[peterpikefisher]

Phil

I know just what you mean.

I live on top of some superb Salmon and Trout fishing and for the past 20 years have concentrated on fly fishing, and thoroughly enjoyed it, but this year I have become hooked on coarse fishing, to the point where I haven't cast a fly for probably 4 months.

We are not exactly blessed with coarse venues up here, apart from Pike and Perch, so I have to travel I have been learning the art all over again at the nearest thing we have to a commercial within driving distance (83 miles each way)

Tomorrow I am off to my nearest day ticket water (about 1.5 hours drive,) where I hope to catch a few roach and rudd.

I don't know what it is, maybe childhood memories, but there is just something about watching and waiting for that float to move

 

 

hi sportsman try this link http://scottishcarper.co.uk/forum/index.php

you might be surprised about the amount of carp fishing there is up here

one or two places not to far from you so I'm lead to believe