There's nothing I like more than having a good chat with an old friend about days gone by, especially when it comes to fishing. The friend in question was my old school friend and angling partner Phil, we have always stayed in touch despite my 23 year exile in various locations throughout the south of England, I phoned on Sunday for a general chat really but, as it always will, the conversation turned to fish and fishing, and to cut a long story short, we soon found ourselves at Coombe Pool for a little look round.
Built as part of the great Capability Brown's contracted re-landscaping of the Coombe Abbey grounds in 1771 Coombe Pool is the second largest body of water in Warwickshire and was to be a piscatorial Mecca to me throughout my childhood, very few waters in the region at that time had a reputation for either big fish or big weights of fish, Coombe Pool was known for it's big bream and 100lb catches were possible.
It's a good ten or fifteen years since I've been to Coombe and the memories were soon flooding back as we walked through the gates towards the lake. My earliest memories are of travelling by bus with my oldest friend Greg, we would catch the first number 7 of the day from Coundon into Pool Meadow and then catch another bus to take us out to Binley, we then marched (with full sets of tackle) on towards the fishery along Brinklow Road. A fallen tree across the stream behind a peg somewhere in the 80s provided a handy bridge and a useful shortcut to get us onto the water and on we would go to the furthest swims deep in the woods. At the end of the day we would endure the journey in reverse.....all in a days work for keen young anglers of the day, we took the bus everywhere were gone for 12 hours and your mum didn't need to worry. Simple, happy days!
These early expeditions were often fruitless of course as Coombe is no easy water but as time went on and I became more competent I did begin to catch some fish. I had some limited success fishing Courtaulds AS matches with my dad, these were often fished on pegs in the high numbers and would be won with 2 or 3lb of roach or a single bream but they proved valuable in terms of learning to 'scratch' for fish as my dad would put it.
In the mid eighties, now reguarly fishing with Phil, we really got stuck in to Coombe, with the confidence of youth we reckoned ourselves to be good anglers and felt we had earned the right to spend many hours in Fred Blacows shop on Holyhead Road drinking his coffee. We reguarly fished the big 100 peg opens at the water, The Coventry Championships and The Billy Lane Memorial, finding ourselves in a mans world probably for the first time. Enveloped in cigarette smoke in the Coombe Social Club, surrounded by tables of men eating fried breakfasts, some drinking pints (it was 8am) some were eating a breakfast, drinking a pint and smoking all at the same time, some wore match fishing team livery others looked like they hadn't slept, some looked like they would be more at home rustling sheep, some faces I knew, we were rubbing shoulders with the likes of Ivan Marks and Frank Barlow. The atmosphere was electric, these were big events and everyone knew their chances rested mainly on the drawbag, when the draw was announced the chatter would die down and the tension would build, the sheep stealers would wave their arms about excitedly.....
I usually drew a peg in a poor area and was fishing for a section (never won one though) only twice did I have a decent draw, peg 8 in the woods I lost a bream early on and then got battered by a Nottingham angler on peg 7 who went on to be second in the match "Oooo I've got another one Duck" he would say as he leant into another four pounder "Well done" I would say through clenched teeth as I watched my motionless tip. In 1987 I got a plum draw in the Cov Championships, 36 on the Lindley bank but the lake was fishing poorly, I was third in the match with 14lb 8oz of skimmers caught mainly on the float, probably the pinnacle of my match fishing career.
Phil and I had many good days at Coombe, memorably we hammered a shoal of very big fish from pegs one and two one day catching bream to around 7lb with not a single fish under 4lb, Phil had a good bag of tench from the big weedbed once too, I still don't know how!
Walking around the lake on at the weekend I had mixed feelings, the first Sunday of the season used to be a full house at one time but I counted just eleven anglers on the public bank on Sunday and many of the pegs on what they call the dam wall weren't sufficiently cleared of lilies to be fishable, I must admit it saddens me a bit to think that a fishery I consider to be one of 'my' waters may become a forgotten lake and it may not be getting the tlc it deserves. On a brighter note the angler on peg 16 in the woods was bagging up with some very healthy looking bream so that's good.
Maybe memories are best left as just that but then again I might just break out the tip rod.
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