Happy Birthday, Tangles With Pike and Scouse Anglers

It has been a long time since I have sat down and read a book, and longer still since that book was about fishing.  There are a few solid reasons for this; the first is the internet which is not strictly reading in the traditional sense but it is a very useful source of fishing related stuff and dancing cats. The other reason being I really have not had much luck with fishing books. With some angling authors I have wondered if they would have been better not writing about fishing altogether, but concentrated on their favorite topics; the immense size of their testicles and how brilliant they are.

As it was my birthday I felt the need to buy myself a present that would of been difficult to get hold of using the unreliable method of dropping hints to loved ones. Luckily Dominic Garnett’s new book entitled, “Tangles With Pike” is just off the presses and with a little forethought I ordered a signed first edition from his website which despite Britain’s postal service arrived on my birthday.

I am not one for penning book reviews as having to write reports about memorably dull books at school has scarred me for life and I feel if I was to write a review it would in some way be a victory for my english teacher who was shit.

Back to the book.  This is really a collection of short stories about Dominic’s own brand of pike fishing which he treats less like a religion and more like a pleasant drug habit. Along the way he gets to bump into some fellow addicts and the odd bit of fishing royalty all sandwiched neatly with a bit of travel.  

That is the hard stuff out of the way, what I like about this book is that quality in the writing that transports. I can watch a video and it is great to see Robson Green shouting about losing some monster fish on some tropical jaunt, but it is not going take me there. By contrast reading a few lines from this book and I am away in Finland pulling perch from pristine water or sneaking along some stretch of semi urban canal to put a bit distance between myself and the town’s delinquents.

Should you buy this book? I don’t bloody know but I wonder if I had spent the £15 on a spool of braid would I have gotten the same pleasure, would I have travelled and would I have learnt anything worth knowing. Cheers Mr Garnett and keep dipping them quills in the ink and occasionally in some water attached to a hook and a worm.   Link to Dominic's Site

I also need to say thanks, to all those fellow lure makers who sent birthday wishes. I think apart from the Artic and Antarctic I got a happy birthday from somewhere on every continent and thanks to google translate one of them came out as “Happy cow feast”

I spent the best part of the day practicing filming with Jordan and Jordan to local lure nuts and youtubers (The Scouse Angler) on a stretch of canal close to the city centre. It was great to get away from videoing myself carving lures and see another side of filming. It gave me some great ideas for future films and projects. I also felt little old realizing I had left my glasses at home and also watching the pair of them flip lures round like Jedi’s with graphite sabers. I put together a little experimental intro to a video and hopefully I can get out soon with them again.

Old Red Eyes Is Back

Image Above: Balsa Crankbait Prototype, foiled and waiting for paint and epoxy

Crankbaits are as American as a certain type of pie; so it is with a bit of apprehension that I have begun messing round with my own little version of a trusted classic. Regrettably in the UK we don’t have that other American Classic to accompany the lure, freshwater bass. We do have the humble Perch and then there is always a chance that a pike may be in the market for a snack rather than a full meal. 

Why a crankbait? I was looking for a lure to work at close range on a particular type of water we seem to have a lot of in this country, old industrial canals. As man-made structures I often get the feeling when fishing them I am somehow just testing lures in an overly large bathtub and to certain extent because of that uniformity I find them very hard to read, but water is water and needs to be fished. Depth wise my local stretch is a maximum of  4’3” or 1.3m and anything from 15ft wide to double that, on the plus side it does run for 127 miles and at times it has felt like I have walked or possibly trudged every mile. Structure can be sparse with long sections of aquatic motorway hemmed in by concrete or reinforced banks. But then there can be narrow sections under bridges or turning bays for long boats, sometimes wild sections spring up with reeds and water lilies but still conforming to an engineered geometry.

To date my forays to the ‘cut’ (slang for canal) have not been particularly fruitful but then winter can bunch fish together create whole swathes of canal that are almost devoid of fish, so I make my excuses. Part of the problem has been making lures for open water fishing and expecting them to translate easily into more restricted situations, here working with short casts is the norm but not just short they also have to be a little more accurate.  

Like all bits of water that skirt urban and industrial areas the canal seems to attract  almost surrealist debris, I have found whole desktop computers with screens happily bobbing along still tethered with cables to the keyboard and hub. Supermarket trolleys are almost a staple hazard but a more common and unseen one is the plastic bag, half filled with silt they line the bottom ready to grab stray hooks and hold them until the little sack can be dragged to the bank. All inviting stuff; but then there can be sections so steeped in that Victorian past with cobble stones and brick warehousing that it would not seem out of sorts to bump into Dickens enjoying a constitutional.

I suppose I should know the basics of what makes a crankbait, but no matter how many lines I lay down on paper or re-plot on the computer the test and then the refinement comes only after I have had a good chance to throw it in some water; even then I devote more time than is healthy wondering if I should tweak it a little. So my latest crankbait balsa prototype is waiting for some coats of epoxy, paint and a lip. It’s through wire is reinforced by a brass weight so if I should find a monster or a monster plastic bag the wire will hold up. Rather than make it in two halves I have gone for the simpler slot approach with a hole for the belly weight.  It should end up about 65mm (2 1/2”) long and 10g (1/3oz) just on the light end of what my rod will cast. The shape is standard stuff but rather than taper to the tail or head I have gone for a flat sided approach to make it pump a bit more water and also simplify the design, should anyone else want to have a go at building it.

For finishes, well I have been experimenting again with resin additives and new ways of laying up foil to create some depth in the facial features.

So next comes a little more testing and the start of another How-to video with hopefully some fish catching footage or bag retrieval. 

The Wrong Side of the Tracks

Image Above: Sefton park lake drained for repairs

I knew he was a fisherman; his eyes like mine were focused on the water, I had the pram and kids and he had a dog. I walked scanning the lake as far out as the reflections would allow and back in toward the shore and the path. As he passed three large carp of least ten pounds zoomed over a patch of low weed. I pointed them out and he stopped and told me the local anglers had been doing a bit of restocking on the quiet. I asked him about pike and he winked and said a few may have made it back in. The lake the largest of Liverpool’s park lakes was drained a little over four years ago for bit of a restoration project. Officially the fish were temporarily re-homed in other local park lakes by the council. I don’t know a fisherman who shares this view of what became of out fishy friends, what is certain is that what came out never went back in. So a lake that for most of childhood and teenage years was a mecca for anglers and kept more than a couple of local tackle shops in business is free of fishermen until the brave venture back, maybe I might be a bit braver.

Finding a bit of time in the afternoon I headed up to the north end of the city to a leg of the Leeds Liverpool canal. This had also been somewhat restored, but it was still the wrong part of town and I was conscious that I was spending an equal amount of time sizing up the locals as fishing. Having little success with the lures I took the bait caster off and replaced it with a small fixed spool spinning real loaded with three pound line,  tied on a homemade jig weighing a little over a gram and dressed with whip tail cut from washing up gloves.

Passing under a bridge to a more neglected stretch I spotted some movement at the surface and began working the opposite bank. Popping the jig just short of stone edge to the canal brought a bite and I was in, I landed a small bream as the water further up the stretch erupted. A group of lads playing football on the opposite bank had decide to launch a bottle attack on guy who had just walked past be on the tow path. Bottles gave way to bits of brick and rocks which lucky all missed him before they ran for it. I packed up and headed back south wondering if I will fish this water again. The fish was hastily returned without the customary photograph.

I spent the evening with the airbrush and some lures.

Image Below: Airbrushed lures