your earliest memory of fishing

[Andy_1984]

my very first memory about fishing was when i was about 7 year old.

 

i found a long bit of wood and cut the string off an old guitar (not the metal string). i hammered a nail in to the wood and tied on the string and got a hook from the guy next door and tied that to the end of the line witgh a granny knot. i nicked a slice of bread from the kitchen and proceeded down to the burn that was filled with trolleys, cones, tires. it was only about 1 foot deep.

 

i remember seeing loads of stickle backs but i never actualy caught any . think ill go back to that very spot. i remember it as clear as day, there was a tiny little bridge about 10ft across and under it there was a little concrete ledge in the water so i would sit there for about an hour to try and catch these things.

[BoldBear]

Like a lot of kids I started out with a cane, cotton and bent pin after the huge (to me) mnnows in the local brook when I was about 8 or 9 years old.

 

But my earliest memories after real fish were when my dad and his mate used to take me fishing on the canal at Croxley Green when I was about 10 (or less). I used to use a heavy Tonkin cane rod which was huge both in length and width together with a tiny wooden reel. I was shown how to tackle up with a large porqupine quill float and a 16 hook to 'Cat Gut' (well my father called them 'hooks to gut' although they might have been whipped to nylon). Hooks were 'GoldStrikes' (or something like that) and were litterally like gold as my dad usually only had one packet of ten and I would get the customary moan "and don't lose this one as it's your last!!". I used to catch gudgeon and the occasional stunted roach using 'Gentles' (maggots) as bait (in tin bait boxes).

 

When I got into my early teens I got bought a solid fibreglass Abu spinning rod and an 'Intrepid Extra' reel and some cork bodied Thames floats; and used to float fish with my father and his mate on the Thames & Great Ouse. My father used a Mitchell reel with a 'half bail arm' that swung outwards for casting and a spit cane rod with a swing tip, and his mate used a 'hollow Steel Match rod' which I thought was state of the art.

 

I will always remember the early mornings when we we always stopped on the way at a bakery for some fresh bread and a bag of breadcrumbs at about 5 am for a days fishing on the Thames where the mist was on the water and the church bells rang out in the distance and the woodpidgeon cooed and the bleak and roach always seemed to be feeding near the rushes.

 

Nowerdays we are lucky with the tackle that's available today and a lot of anglers start out with a Carp rod n reel, bite alarm, chair and a landing net. And a book on Carp fishing. But I look back to my earlier years with great fondness.

BB

Edited December 8, 2008 by BoldBear

[Andy Macfarlane]

I'll show you how to make a minnow trap Andy. You'll get that leviathan stickleback yet mate.

[Anderoo]

What a nice topic

 

Me and my little mates used to catch sticklebacks all through our primary school years. The Norfolk fens are criss-crossed with drainage dykes and are (or, were?) full of lovely, shimmering, spiky sticklebacks. We used to 'fish' for them in a really weird way that only kids would think of - we had an old wooden front door (I have no idea where it came from!) which we put in our favourite dyke, and we used to jump on it to sink it, then jump over to the other side before getting wet feet (which were very common), and the door would float back up with stranded sticklebacks flip-flopping on it We would take turns, and on a good go you could get half a dozen or more. We used to put them in our jars or buckets and take them back to our garden ponds - or in my case, a big old sink full of water and weeds in the front garden

 

My first 'proper' fishing trips were with my dad (who wasn't an angler at all) at a local lake, float fishing off the rod tip with maggots. The first time we went we didn't catch anything but I was sold on it immediately, I just loved the whole experience. On the second attempt I caught a perch of about 6oz and I remember it as being the most incredible creature I'd ever seen. I couldn't believe something so exotic and beautiful could be hidden away like that in a normal pond. We put it in an orange bucket full of water and I remember sitting and watching it for what felt like ages, gills moving as it breathed, its amazing green and black stripes and vivid red fins, and it's dangerous looking spiky dorsal. After a little while we let it go again and from that point I had this constant burning to find out what else was living hidden away in lakes and rivers and thinking up ways to catch them. Still got it bad!

[Steve Walker]

I remember catching sticklebacks from the canal in one of those little nets on the end of a bamboo cane - can't have been more than 6.

 

I remember catching crabs on a crab line from those lagoons at Morecambe.

 

I remember going fishing with my stepfather and his brother Jeff when I was about 7 years old. I remember two occasions, neither of which resulted in any fish, and one of which resulted in being kicked off by the bailiff On the other occasion, I asked Jeff what groundbait was - he said that it was a kind of flour that you threw in to attract fish. I spent the rest of the day throwing daisies in... It was all very exciting, though, getting up and leaving the house while everyone else was asleep.

 

I remember my first fishing rod, which was 6' long, solid glass and bright green. It came in a plastic sleeve, with a reel and some bits of tackle - hooks to nylon, a perch bob float, some shots, a spinner. I had a little tackle box to put my bits and pieces into, and I can almost remember the smell of it.

 

I remember going fishing on the local canal with my granddad - who wasn't an angler - with a little packet of tares for bait. Couldn't get 'em on the hook, I didn't know you had to boil them.

 

I remember the Winfield display in Woolworths.

 

I remember dad buying me my first proper rod and reel from a tackle shop - a 12' Daiwa Delta float rod in hollow glass and a Mitchell 204 reel. Both second-hand, I think, but they made such a difference to the solid glass wands I'd been trying to use.

[Andy Macfarlane]

Hand-lining for Podley (local name for coalies, pollack, saithe), codling, flatties, scorpion fish, eels, blennies, mackerel and CRABS with hand-lines off Anstruther Pier next to the North Carr lightship. My Mum and Dad still tell people how they could leave me on the pier at 8am and collect me (crying my eyes out) at 8pm. That was me for a fortnight every Glasgow fair and then one day, while using a fibreglass match rod as a makeshift beach rod, I caught a COD.....a real proper eating fish. I can still remember everyones' excitement on the pier. I didn't really know what all the fuss was about but I remember everyone asking me all kinds of questions. What bait was I using. What rig. How far did I cast and that was it. I was very important you know (in my small mind anyway) I just had to target cod after that. It wasn't the first species I caught but it was the first fish I decided to target by design. I got my first beach rod for Xmas when I was about 10. My parents thought I was mad. We lived in the middle of Glasgow and I only went fishing for a fortnight every year but a rod it was.

Look at the state of me now....

[MikeT]

Growing up by the seaside on the south coast, my first experience of fishing was of the saline variety. From the age of about five I went ‘rockpooling’ with my sisters, and I suppose the first fish I ever caught was a blenny. We used to break limpets off the rocks with pebbles (with many a splatter to sting the eye or ruin those shorts or tee-shirt that were ‘clean on’), and drop them into the beautiful little aquaria formed by the receding tide. Crabs, shrimps and little fish would swarm to the feast, and we were ready with our tiny red nylon nets on the end of a three-foot bamboo garden cane. A blenny was a most prized catch, and we put them in the warm water in our sandcastle buckets until they became, rather tragically, less animated. I can vividly remember the taste of limpet goo on my fingers. Those happy days were always warm and sunny.

 

My first attempt at freshwater fishing was on our local stream, to which my twelve year-old neighbour took me when I was eight. You have to travel some distance to the nearest proper river from where we lived so hardly anyone did coarse fishing, but my friend knew a pool on the little stream where some big kids had reputedly captured a real trout, and we took a half pint of maggots (my first encounter with the wonderful beasts- I remember being more excited about them than the fishing itself) and his pier rod with eight-pound nylon and a cork float. I was there to ‘assist’. Almost unbelievably we caught a small brownie, and because I was the one who noticed the absence of the float, my friend let me take it home for tea. I couldn’t eat it, but my mum loved it. I’m sure I could identify that trout in a line-up- I still occasionally see it in my dreams.

 

And so an obsession was born.

[Vagabond]

My first quarry - Bullheads in the local ghyll at age 7

 

Four stages were involved :-

 

Seen in the course of "exploring"

Caught by hand

Then by linen thread, handline and worm fragments on a bent pin

...and later by attaching the above to a bushpole

 

Second species caught was stone loach in the same ghyll

 

Third species stunted roach in a pond

 

Read all about it at

 

http://www.trafford.com/4dcgi/view-item?item=22309

 

and you could even order it from Traffords for your stocking!

Edited December 8, 2008 by Vagabond

[David.W]

I was a later starter, I was 12 and on holiday with the family in the lake district. My brother and I got the starter kits from Woolies, mine was the 5'6" spinning rod and brov's was a 6' "float" rod. I never caught anything but bro caught a tiny trout.

 

For my next birthday my Granddad bought me A 12' Diawa 12' glass float rod which I used to catch my first fish, it was a 1/2lb stocked rainbow trout. I then started catching perch too, and I was bitten by the bug.

 

I still have all my rods (even the wee first rod), I just don't get the time to go these days.

[john-d]

I remember catching sticklebacks and minnows with my hands when I was very young.

The very first time I caught a fish on rod and line was in July 1976, I was 13 years old, my dad had brought me a 13ft split cane rod and a small closed face reel from some chap he worked with, he also had a wooden seat box made for me in his works maintenance department which I still have.

No one in my family knew anything about fishing, luckily my grandma had brought for my birthday which is in July,the ladybird book about coarse fishing, I still have the book.

And my first fish all those years ago was a Roach, I had another roach a while later and that was it I reeled in and sat on the canal bank and decided there and then I would fish for ever,and ever,and ever.....