The 159ers (part 2)

Golfer Gary Player is quoted as saying "The more I practice, the luckier I get." in reply to his critics, a statement which, I found as a youngster, certainly also applies to fishing. The more I fished and observed other anglers the better my results became.

By time I began the second year of senior school an acquaintanceship with fellow angler Phil (who had attended a different Junior School) had become a firm friendship and we were fishing together on a weekly basis, we travelled far and wide with the help of lifts from our long suffering parents but those eventful 159 bus journeys to Packington still featured heavily.

As a preliminary to our Sunday outing we would arrange to meet at Fred Blacow's tackle shop on Holyhead Road, a ritual which continued for many years. Here we would buy the necessary bait, groundbait and bits and pieces required for our latest assault.

Early on Sunday morning I would clump and clatter along to the bus stop and wait for both the bus and Phil, it was often a close call as to which would arrive first but Phil would usually appear in the nick of time with a familiar clumping and clattering noise.
We were by now equipped with lightweight nylon rod holdalls with protective rod tubes, proper net bags and it was Galaxy Riva seat boxes which now jammed in the bus doorway.

After the bus journey was the long and arduous walk, we would tend to take every bit of tackle we owned in those days including enough groundbait to cover us for the reddest of red letter days. Eventually, though, we would make it to the fishery and we usually headed for Gearys level where we could catch fair bags of skimmer bream on the float using red maggot and vanilla laced groundbait or Anniversarys where small tench and crucians could be caught. Early season the tench and bream of Molandsmere would fall to straight lead and bread flake.

Occasionally Phil's mate Steve would join us on these trips, Steve was our age, robustly built with a big round smiley face he was a good angler and a nice bloke but he did have a mean temper and if anything was going to go wrong it would always happen to Steve.

Tales of Steve's many mishaps had reached me long before I actually met him, he was a serial unlucky loser of fish and would blow his top each time throwing his hat on the floor and jumping on it like a cartoon character, his trials using Andrews Liver Salts in his groundbait were, by all accounts, disastrous and once, when fishing with Phil and an occasional angling friend known for his remedial traits, Steve was tying an eyed hook onto the end of the lads feeder rig for him when, out of the blue and just as Steve was biting off the excess line, he launched the loaded feeder to the middle of the lake taking a large chunk of Steve's lip with it, I had also seen a photo of him stripped off and waist deep in molandsmere bent into a big carp which had towed his rod in, he eventually lost it, naturally.

On one particular occasion Phil, Steve and I headed out on the 159 to Packington on the hottest of June mornings, dazzling sunlight filtered through the trees, the coos of wood pigeons dominated the dawn chorus and it was set to be a scorcher. Talk was of roach and skimmer bream which we fancied to feed in mid water in Gearys Level, with the whole day ahead of us it promised to be a good one.

Phil and I bundled our gear off the bus first closely followed by Steve and we set about loading ourselves up with tackle for the walk ahead. Steve swung his seatbox onto his shoulder and CRACK, what appeared to be a perfectly good strap snapped cleanly in the middle, the boxes contents erupted outwards as it smashed to the floor and we were all momentarily frozen in time. I saw a waggler go darting off into a hedge some ten feet away, simultaneously noticing a two litre pop bottle filled with squash explode with a plume of orange, reels, leads, sunglasses and terminal tackle went in all directions. I dared to glance at Phil only to see that he was in the same condition as me, stiffling an enormous fit of laughter. Steve of course was the next to explode, red faced and furious he ranted for several minutes and I'm sure he even managed to invent a few swear words in the process....He went to a Catholic school too!

Obviously we helped Steve gather what we could find of his stuff from the debris field being careful not to tread his ham sandwiches further into the dirt in the process but his anger, we realised, still simmered just beneath the surface. The walk to the fishery from the bus stop was about a mile and a half and neither Steve's mood or our need to fall about laughing were helped by his carrying his seatbox in front of him, hunched over and sweating profusely with veins bursting out of his arms and no refreshing drink of orange squash at the end of it. Later, when we finally got round to doing some fishing, it was never mentioned again.

Towards the end of our schooldays the bus trips to Packington ceased as we began to spend more and more of the Summer months at Coombe or Napton but I will always remember the huge sense of adventure and journeying into the unknown as a youngster and will always look back fondly on the good times we had when we were the 159ers.

The 159ers (Part 1)

The most enduring of all my angling memories are those from my childhood, time spent together with friends, family and acquaintances on fishing adventures and expeditions on endless Summer days during the never ending Summer holidays. There were occasions when we would travel by pushbike but more often it was the double decker bus which transported us, Coventry Corporation buses served us well for this purpose for many years and we would often travel to Coombe Pool or Ryton Bridge, journeys that involved a change of bus at Pool Meadow. However, by far the easiest bus route for the budding angler in our neck of the woods was the number 159 out to Packington Somers Fishery near Meriden.


In the very early days a small rag tag army from in and around our street in Coundon would meet in the early hours and make our way past our local shops on the Holyhead Road to the nearest 159 bus stop at the bottom of Grayswood Avenue. If memory serves me correctly the 159 (now the 900) would leave Pool Meadow at 6am bound for the Bull Ring in Birmingham via Birmingham Airport, we would spot it in the distance at about ten or fifteen minutes past six. Invariably it would be a bright and cool Summer morning with the promise of a blazing day to follow, as it always seemed to be in our youth, primed with the hope and expectancy of young men who knew no better we chattered excitedly about tactics and monster catches while we waited for the bus to finally reach our stop.

When the driver was close enough to see the whites of his eyes it was usual to observe him considering his options, faced with up to six boisterous, snotty school children and their ramshackle collection of beaten up leather rod holdalls, creels, fibreglass seat boxes and carrier bags. Could he really get away with pretending not to see us and whizz past? Or was this an elaborate trap set by the Corporation? Usually they would decide, at the last minute, not to take any chances, you could see the resignation in their face just before they would brake abruptly.

With much clamour and pushing and shoving (bus doors with their dividing pole, we found, were just the right size to jam a full size seat box solid) we boarded, paid the driver and promptly took over the bottom deck with tackle and baggage much to the annoyance of the early morning commuters.

With the same amount of commotion we would alight at the side of the A45, still about a mile and a half from the fishery, and would organise ourselves ready for the hike along Somers Road and up the long driveway to the ticket office. I say office but it was little more than a brick built shed really, the arrangement was to take one of the numbered tickets from the table, write on your name and address and post that half of the ticket along with your money (£1.60) inside a brown envelope through a letterbox in the wall.

Finally, we were ready to fish and each made our way, usually, to a pre-decided peg.
Tackle in my case was made up of a couple of glass match rods and a trusty Mitchel 300 loaded with Maxima line, a metal framed landing net with metal handle, keepnet and a small assortment of terminal tackle all given to me by my dad. Others among the group were less lucky and bought their gear from savings or had bothered their non-angling parents for a rod or reel, I remember that a couple of the lads had telescopic rods, the silver Shakespeare Alpha proved a popular budget reel and Winfield (Woolworths) terminal tackle was pretty much standard.

Bait was always maggots and most would use mixed but, with it becoming very much the vogue, some would buy bronze, I would tend to use yellows and whites on the advice of my dad who seemed to consider buying mixed maggots very poor form indeed.

Our simple approach of floatfishing maggots over loosefeed and aiming to catch whatever came along should have paid dividends but the simple fact that we were all raw recruits to the sport counted against us, our approach was crude and heavy handed as I suppose you would expect. We would catch the odd fish though often in the form of a very small perch and such a capture would usually ensure that the whole group would shortly be fishing in the immediate vicinity.

Indeed it was usual to move about during the day and fishing five or six different pegs on two or three different lakes was not unusual, these were, after all, marathon sessions which could be fourteen hours in duration with only a can of pop and a few sandwiches for sustenance, not for the lily livered and certainly not for girls!

Rarely would we venture onto Molandsmere, the largest lake on the fishery, as we considered this to be the realm of the serious angler, Anniversarys had a good head of tench but it required a certain degree of skill to catch them so more often than not we could be found thrashing our floats out in Siblings or Gearys Level. Gearys was our favourite and although it was really a carp pool it held vast numbers of stunted roach, rudd and perch along with skimmer bream and lots of gudgeon, huge catches of up to ten fish in a day were possible!

In the main though in the early days at Packington I probably learnt more about friendship and camaraderie than I ever did about fishing, my white and yellow maggots going largely un-noticed (thanks dad!).

When hunger and boredom got the better of us, usually long after tea time and many hours after the last of our sandwiches were devoured, we would wearily trudge back to the bus stop and hope the next driver along is a company man rather than a rebel.

Bumping Fish, Missing Unmissable Bites and Catching in Snatches.

Roach fishing, as we all know, can be a frustrating experience, not only are your quarry a wary and at times shy biting species with a tendency to favour one bait over another on any given day but they tend to move in easily scattered shoals and are influenced by the presence of pike and other large fish. Other species of fish, in comparison, are often more predictable perch and chub for example are gluttonous creatures, bream on some waters will arrive in certain swims at a certain time of day like clockwork and even carp, regarded by many as the most intelligent of fish, aren't half as clever as they are given credit for.

We arrived at Stockton Res at 10am, earlier than in recent weeks, and planned to fish until about 2.30, our chosen spot was the reedy corner at the bottom end of the lake in pegs one and two. Tactics employed were to be as before, strong match rods, floats and small hooks with mixed maggot for hookbait.

Surface debris, floating reeds presumably a result of the resident water bird's friskiness, hampered our presentation to some degree but bites were soon coming our way and the first of the days roach were caught. This is the point where you are tricked into thinking that it is easy, bites are frequent and positive and roach of four to six ounces come to hand almost every cast.

As each session wears on bites invariably become lightning fast with the float shooting away in unmissable fashion only for the strike to meet no resistance, worse still, on occasion, a fish is bumped off. Even more frustrating than that is the incompatibility of catching silver fish using barbless hooks, the twisting, turning fight of such fish inevitably resulting in a percentage of fish simply falling off the hook. Small skimmers seem to be the worst for this.

At this point of the session I usually feed my main swim (about three rod lengths out) with a good three pouches of maggots and resort to fishing a pre-prepared swim close in and to one side, here bites are once again positive and easy to hit with small rudd and perch showing up among the roach but sport is usually short lived.

Back out in front for the last hour and the pattern has changed again with longer periods between bites but the bites when they come are once again more positive and the fish slightly bigger at about 8oz. When we packed up in brilliant spring sunshine we were of the opinion that we'd had a good day, dad and I had both caught plenty of rudd, perch and roach. However, questions still remain unanswered.

For now we will persevere at Stockton as it seems to be fishing as well as anywhere, an angler fishing the disabled pegs had caught steadily on long pole and pellet throughout the day and included some chunky looking crucians along with carp in his catch, he had fished in a different area of the lake the previous day where he had caught several good carp and some pound plus roach on this method. Other reported catches included several carp a day to anglers fishing the method feeder so maybe, with warmer water and more active fish, it's time to change our approach.

18 Hours and Not a Sniff

Napton Reservoir was top of my list of early season venues, the hope being that I could catch a decent bream or two before the tench, the dominant species, wake up properly and limit the options of catching other species. In hindsight this may have been a tad ambitious.

The only two anglers on the water were fishing the hot early season pegs when Phil and I arrived at 3pm so we set out our stall on the car park bank of the big res in an area where bream used to be caught frequently. Each of us set up a pair of quivertip rods equipped with open end feeders, for hook bait we had sweetcorn, maggots and worms therefore allowing us plenty of options.

The other anglers had fished from 7am and had managed about a dozen tench each but told us that sport had slowed to a point where they hadn't had a bite for two hours, so not a great sign on a moody water like Napton but anything can happen and we made an enthusiastic start.

A couple of hours in and bite less our enthusiasm was waning though, eight rod hours and not a single twitch on the tips is a dire scenario to have to face, but we soldiered on.

Corn, worm, maggot and all conceivable cocktails failed equally for another two and a half hours of stationary tips before we pulled the plug at 7.30pm now having endured 18 rod hours of inactivity.

It seems to me that in the early part of the year if you aren't on those hot pegs, beyond the bridge in the big res, you will struggle.

Two For Twenty Pounds.....Bargain!

Having set up on the nearside bank of Stockton Reservoir in order to avoid facing into a stiff and cold breeze we were fishing maggot and waggler from pegs 56 and 57 at two to three rod lengths from the bank in what was some relatively flat water.
Minor adjustments to both depth and shotting were required in order to counter a slight undertow but as soon as the tackle was fishing correctly the roach were more than willing, a good stamp of pristine looking fish they are too.
Not long into the session my double maggot bait was picked up by a common carp which gave me several hairy moments on the light tackle before eventually being banked. A tidy looking fish, well proportioned with mouth and fins in excellent condition, weighing in at eight pounds one ounce.



Dad was picking up occasional roach and I caught a couple more before latching into another carp which again gave me some scares before succumbing to the net, this time it was a mirror of eleven pounds nine ounces but in quite poor condition.

The carp was quickly returned without photographing and, with two carp for very nearly 20lb already on the score sheet, it was back to the business of catching roach. The roach fishing on this water is very good and, in our experience, you usually get an instant response from fish ranging between four and six ounces which will feed readily for the first hour or hour and a half, after which bites become more and more difficult to hit before petering out almost completely towards the end of four hours. This pattern played out once again during the course of the afternoon and although we caught quite a few up to about eight ounces we were once again left scratching our heads as to how we can keep the fish coming.

Are we over feeding or simply depleting the shoal or are carp pushing the roach out later on in the session?

Under the Boardwalk

With a little sunshine eventually peeking from behind the seemingly ever present clouds of recent times my dad and I were prompted into action and arranged an afternoon session at Stockton Reservoir. With very little local information to go on at the moment other than some not so inspiring reports from Ryton, the very shallow reservoir and it's healthy head of roach seemed as good a bet as any given the only very recent upturn in temperatures.

Pegs 11 and 12 are midway along the wooden walkway and are adjacent to a small island which acted as a wind break on the day giving us an inviting area of flat water in which to float fish. We employed the simplest of tactics, each selecting small waggler floats capable of casting two thirds of the way to the island and size twenty hooks for our maggot bait.

Loose feeding three or four maggots each cast I was soon getting the odd bite and catching nice little roach ranging between 4 and 6 ounces on single yellow maggot, dad was starting to get amongst them too catching fish of a similar stamp.

Bites increased as I built the swim and I was eventually getting a bite a chuck then I momentarily hooked something much bigger, the hook came back bearing a glob of indeterminate slime and my roach shoal was scattered.

Bites were now at a premium and although I did catch a crucian carp of about a pound and a half the roach seemed determined not to return. Fortunately one thing I have learnt over the last year is to always have a plan B and in this case I had, from the start, been flicking the odd maggot down by the boards to my left between my platform (peg 12) and the next (peg 13).

The walkway structure at Stockton is a couple of inches above the water level and runs the full length of the far side of the lake it was constructed to make an swampy unfishable bank fishable, each peg is a wooden platform jutting out from the main walkway and is equipped with a brolly hole and metal clamps designed for attaching rod rests.

It seems that the fish now see this walkway as natural cover as I was getting indications straight away and was soon catching roach again. Dad had found his sport slowing too and followed suit by feeding inside to his right where he was soon into some roach too.

The fish were still biting when we packed up, we had caught plenty of roach a single perch and a crucian, I reckon a good pole angler could easily have put together 20 or even 30lb of fish on the day. The carp don't seem to be showing yet though, I only heard of one caught although there was around fifteen anglers on the water.