Formerly Loughborough Fishing

Saturday 23 February 2013

How it all began

Ever since I can remember, I have been fascinated by water. I'm not sure why this is, maybe I was a fish in a past life or something. 

Anyway, I used to go on holidays a few times every year to a caravan park near where I lived in the North East at a place called Staithes. The park is in a valley, with a small river running through only a mile or so from the sea. 

This river is stuffed with little brown trout, which led me to trying to catch one. I must have been around 11 years old when I bought my first fishing rod and gear. My tactics for catching my first fish were very simple: a small piece of bread freelined off a bridge. The water was so clear that the bread could be placed just in front of the trout, and then you could see it take the bread. I managed to catch a couple of brown trout this way, and then I was well and truly hooked. 

I started trying to refine my technique a bit, by starting to float fish the river below the bridge to give a better range of water i could fish. I had to learn quickly how to cast fairly accurately, as there was lots of bushes and trees overhanging the river; perfect cover for the trout, and if I could cast just upstream of these areas I had a very good chance of catching one. 

I played around with different baits, using bread, sweetcorn, cheese - all stuff I could take from the dinner table. After not much success on these, I went to the local fishing shop and bought my first bag of maggots. These turned out to be wonder bait for the trout, and my next mission was to find some of the deep pools where the bigger trout would live. This was a lot easier said than done as the bank sides were often steep cliffs or very heavily brambled. 

I began by taking a kayak down the river all the way to the sea mouth, to scout out the deeper pools. I found a particularly good spot just above the point where the river turned tidal. I decided it would be easier to walk down the river in swim shorts, sticking to the shallows, and stand in a foot or so of water to fish this deep pool. 

The deep pool, notice the extreme foliage

Float fishing this pool with maggot about half depth resulted in a fish every cast, with the brown trout pushing up to 3 or 4 ounces, which is respectable for a river this size. 

One of the many brown trout caught

I have come a long way now from the times spent fishing for tiny brown trout on the little river, but it definitely shaped me as an angler, and made me learn lots of techniques that I still use today. 

On occasions I have spotted larger sea trout and baby salmon in the river, which will be my next challenge when I am in the area.  

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