Coarse fishing
Coarse fishing — fishing for species other than trout or salmon — is the
biggest branch of the sport, with more than 847,000 regular anglers. There
are more than 30 native species in Britain, many so individual in behaviour
that fishing for them is practically a sport in its own right.
The pike, a predatory species, is the largest native fish. It is found in
rivers, canals, ponds and lakes and in ideal conditions — lots of
easy-to-catch prey fish — can grow to 40lb. It is fished for exclusively
with whole fish or pieces of fish, or with artificial lures.
The most popular coarse species is the carp, a big, wily and hard-fighting
import that is now as omnipresent as the pike. Lakes and small ponds stocked
with carp have proved so popular that they are drawing anglers away from
traditional river clubs, bringing many to the point of bankruptcy. At
commercial fisheries — lakes run as a business and stocked with fish such as
carp, bream, roach, rudd and tench — success is almost guaranteed because of
the densities of fish. Not everyone likes such waters because fishing here
does little to polish skill, but they help youngsters to get something on to
their lines — and keep them out of trouble.
Tackle has changed completely for coarse fishing. On stillwaters and
slow-flowing rivers, rods and reels have given way to poles — high-tech,
tapering, hollow carbon-fibre tubes up to 40ft long. The line is attached to
elastic at the end of the pole — the elastic buffers the plunges of a
fighting fish — and the bait is lowered into the water in the spot required.
Poles are now universally used in competition fishing, once a popular
working-man’s pursuit attracting thousands to lakes and canals in the
Midlands and the North.
Coarse fishing overall is not expensive. Clubs provide season-round sport for
less than £50 and many commercial lakes, with their guarantees of success,
can be fished for less than £20 a day.
Coarse fish are in season from mid-June to mid-March. Species to go for in
summer include carp, tench, chub, roach, rudd, dace and bream. In autumn,
barbel and perch come into their prime. Pike and grayling are winter fish.
Useful website: www.anglersnet.co.uk
Trout fishing
Trout are “game fish” like the salmon, but not all trout are the same. Most
stay inland (“resident trout”) but a minority go to sea like the salmon.
These “sea trout” and salmon are separately categorised in law as “migratory
fish”.
Fishing for migratory sea trout is a separate angling form to fishing for
resident trout: the two behave differently and have separate seasons.
Anglers call migratory trout “sea trout” and resident trout simply “trout”.
Fishing for “trout” is synonymous with fly fishing, a branch of angling in
which fish are pursued not with real flies but with confections of fur and
feathers on hooks.
The most interesting flies imitate the bugs trout feed on and tend to be small
and drab. Others are large and gaudy to arouse a trout’s curiosity or to
provoke a fish to attack. Imitative “dry” flies are for the water’s surface
where many natural flies end up. “Wet” flies and the large, bright lures are
fished beneath it.
Trout fishing, once the province of those who lived near upland rivers and
lakes and the chalk streams of the South, has boomed in recent decades.
Water supply reservoirs have been stocked and smaller commercial,
purpose-built trout lakes have broken out like an aquatic rash across the
countryside.
Pretty well all waters now need to be stocked artificially because angling is
so popular that native stocks are under pressure. Rivers tend to be stocked
with the native brown trout, but rainbow trout, originally imported from the
US, are most commonly stocked in lakes because they are cheaper to rear,
grow faster and fight harder.
Manmade stillwaters, some of which specialise in stocking trout as big as
salmon, can cost from £25 to £100 a day to fish, depending on fish sizes and
the numbers that might be taken. Rivers in the West Country, Wales, the
North, Scotland and Ireland can provide excellent fishing for much smaller
trout.
Trout in enclosed lakes can be fished for the year round. On rivers the season
runs from March to the end of September, with local variations.
Useful web site: www.flyforums.co.uk
Migratory fishing
Salmon and sea trout, the two types of migratory fish in Britain, are born in
rivers, go to sea to grow and mature, and then come back to the rivers of
their birth to spawn and repeat the cycle.
The numbers of sea trout have collapsed in recent years, the result of attacks
by the parasites that bloom around salmon farms built on their migratory
routes.
Sea trout in Devon and the west of Ireland tend to run at 1lb or less but some
rivers in Scotland and Wales produce monsters up to 12 times as big. They
are almost exclusively fished for at night with single-handed rods of about
10ft using sunken flies — though some will take tiny flies off the surface
during the day.
Salmon populations collapsed after commercial netsmen discovered their
high-seas feeding grounds in the 1950s and 1960s, but changes in government
policies, heroic efforts from angling conservation organisations and a
greater willingness by anglers to return the few fish they do catch has
resulted in more fish getting back to the western, northern, Scottish and
Irish rivers they came from.
Rod catches in 2007 and 2008 from Scotland have been among the highest
recorded since record-keeping began in 1952. Although salmon can be caught
on baits and lures, fly-fishing, again, is the most popular technique.
Rods need to be much bigger than those for sea trout and are typically
double-handers between 12ft and 16ft long.
The Moy and Foyle systems in Ireland, the Tyne in Northumberland and the Tay,
Spey and Tweed in Scotland are among the most prolific fisheries in these
islands but there is excellent salmon — and sea trout — fishing in Wales and
some in the West Country, though for smaller fish.
Useful website: www.salmonfishingforum.com
Sea fishing
Sea fishing is the most varied and accessible of all forms of angling and has
several advantages over the others: you don’t need any state licence and you
don’t have to pay any fishery owners’ fees. Plus, the quarry is delicious to
eat.
According to the most recent survey, sea fishing has about 425,000 followers
in England and Wales, with tens of thousands more in Scotland and Northern
Ireland, plus vast numbers of dabblers.
Most sea angling is done from the shore from piers, breakwaters, beaches and
rocks. The estuaries of tidal rivers are favourite places, while out to sea
any sea-bed features such as reefs and wrecks are magnets for fish. Every
boat skipper taking anglers out — for about £50 a day — will have several
marked on his charts.
While most fishing from a boat requires short, heavy rods and shore fishing
needs long, powerful “beach-casters” capable of putting a bait 100 yards out
in the surf, there is a growing movement to catch sea fish on light,
freshwater, fly fishing tackle. Hooking any sea fish on delicate gear such
as this can mean electrifying sport, but rods and reels should be washed
down afterwards because salt water corrodes. Tide tables are a must for fly
fishing, as for sea fishing of all kinds, as tides influence fish movements
profoundly.
Popular and widely available shore species include cod (in winter), bass and
mackerel (in summer), whiting, plaice, sole and wrasse. Regular boat species
include pollock, ling, conger, tope and rays.
Like anglers everywhere, sea anglers are concerned for their quarry.
Commercial fleets have made huge inroads into cod stocks and netsmen will
sweep up the hugely valuable bass yards from the shore. The plight of the
bass is especially aggravated by the fact that the sizes at which they can
be legally netted are below the sizes at which the fish can reproduce — an
administrative folly that has led to an accelerating downward spiral,
despite years of protest by anglers.
Useful web site www.anglingtrust.net
