LRF, well almost

LRF On the East Float, Birkenhead

I am not very good with labels; it seems like latest one, LRF (light rock fishing) should stand for something new, despite that in the tackle shop the old gits tell me they have been making little worms from bathroom sealant for longer than they can remember. When all said and done I am no stranger to dangling bits of fluff and rubber off piers and landing some little monsters. But I think like all labels or brands LRF is a bit aspirational, and my trouble with it is that it seems to be something that is vaguely cool and for most of my life if not all, cool has always been some other country I would of liked to have visited.

So I set off to do some kind of rock fishing with light gear in the docks where I had fished as child with garden worms and a rod bought for me with my grandfather’s cigarette coupons. Instead of a selection of miniature soft plastics I had tied up some micro sabiki rigs with size eight hooks on 6lb fluorocarbon line and rather than just lash on some curling ribbon I got the fly tying vice out. The inspiration for my newest lure venture had come from another handmade fisherman Jan from the south coast of England who had sent me some standard sized rigs he had tied himself based loosely on one of my mackerel feather rigs from the videos I had made. I say loosely because it is fair to say he had taken them to whole new level and by all accounts has been going home early from his fishing trips due to reaching his personal bag limits rather more quickly than expected.

Where as Jan had used fur, at short notice I could just about rustle up some marabou from a bag of craft feathers and a bit of flash borrowed from some Christmas decorations. For thread I had sewing thread in some garish colours all topped off with a drop of nail varnish. After dropping no.2 son off at school it was off the docks.

Dockside I sat in car testing the air temperature by winding down the window down far enough to

realized that even with the vast amounts of insulation tucked into my clothing it was not going to be enough. Undecided on whether to stay or go I was finally encouraged out by another hardy soul who was threading line through his rod eyes at the far end of the car park. Out in the wind I set up quickly while I still had the use of my fingers and dropped my feather rig into the water. There was to be no yanking or long cast this was LRF, all be it a bastard form. I made delicate taps and tweaks to the line imagining myself performing tai chi, which I then realized was Chinese in origin were LRF is Japanese inspired so I tried imaging myself as graceful geisha but I couldn’t really find a mental connection between high class prostitution and fishing with feathers plucked from a turkeys back.

It was a baby cod that fell for the dance first in a little spot sheltered from the wind by the rear end of a Mersey ferry. I made my way along the dock to fish and chat to the other fisherman, who as luck would have it was making coffee on a stove in the open boot of his car. A mugful later I was feeling almost human again with just a touch of freezer burn on expose parts. I took a few more fish finger sized specimens and a whiting before I finally succumbed to the elements and retreated to the car.

Was it LRF, who gives **** I caught some fish, shared a coffee pot and some of my ludicrous fishing stories, my rigs worked and I got to come home with all my fingers.

Image above: Jan's rig, Cheers Jan

Image below: Iris's rear end

Fishing 9am Monday Morning

 A German Sub that used to sit on the dockside of the East Float

I can see that the bus is full but the driver pulls up anyway. The queue of commuters ahead of me is slowly absorbed until the vehicle is packed tight enough for it to feel like we have been poured into a mould. There is a thick scent of Monday morning, cigarettes, coffee, breakfast and the poison created when all are mixed with the miasma of competing perfumes and aftershave.   It is still a little before nine when we reach the city centre.

 I get off the bus a couple of stops before the terminus to avoid being swept into an office job by the wave of workers that will eventually crash through the doors as the bus finally draws to halt. A few people followed me and then disperse amongst the glass doorways anointed by brass plaques.  When I reach the docks I am alone save for a man wearing a captain’s hat and carrying a brief case, he descends  a set of stone steps  and boards what looks like a large sailing barge before disappearing below deck.

By the time I reach the Pier Head and the ferry terminus the rush hour is over and I am the only passenger to board from the Liverpool side of the river. In the lounge bar an oversized child of man is returning back over the water having just come along for the ride, he paces needlessly clutching a plastic bag as if it held some indescribable value.

 Facing into the flooding tide the boat growls its engines to make headway from the landing stage. The course is set over the narrowest gap between the shores lines a little under a mile, but what a mile. The water here runs near constantly at speeds over five knots pausing briefly as the tide turns and with it the direction of flow.  Apart from the speed and movement the colour of the river is a little more daunting varying between soft grey and muddy brown. This isn’t dirt in the dirty sense of the word but silt stirred up by the surge of the tides.

The ferry lands clumsily and I leave the man-child to ride out the day on the river and make my way to the East Float part of a vast dock network that was once an natural inlet of the Mersey, the river I have just crossed.

I last fished here when I was kid using garden worms for bait. Today I am spin fishing even though the water is too murky and my lure would probably only hook into a fish by pure fluke. Even so it is not long after nine and I am holding a fishing rod while decent folk are at work. A lot has gone from here the docks are no longer enclosed by warehousing and cranes but by naked concrete pads as vast as the water. I move freely where the cancer of fencing and barbed wire has yet to gain a foothold but it is to no end.  I leave after a couple of hours empty handed but proud that I had kept a promise I had made to myself to fish on Monday mornings at nine am.

On the landing stage again an old guy spots my fishing rod and asks if I had had any luck. And so we fall into talk about fishing, the docks, the river, cod, dabs, and a sea trout he caught off the dock wall. I tell him about the fishing on the island I used to live on and that the water that was clean down until the light ran out. As the ferry moves down the river on its longer route to take in another landing stage he points out fishing marks and the routes of the shipping channels, and where he moored his boat before his wife made him get rid of it.