Tangler's Tales

"The Mad Miller"
And
"Fishing in a Firepond"

Before I tied the ultimate knot and got married I enjoyed the freedom to go fishing whenever I liked, well when Her Majesty's army allowed me the time off from fixing up those guns on the Chieftain tanks. I palled up with a young lad from Bolton who shared the same barrack block, he was as keen as me to get out and fish, whenever we could skive the workload.  In the army certain sports are approved and this means you could become a member of an official team and get time off and equipment to indulge in your hobby.  Unfortunately at that time Fishing was not one of them, you weren't recognised and unable to get much help from them, even in the interests of improving relationships with the local population (that scam worked in other areas I can vouch for that!) So we fished at the weekends whenever we were not collared for guard duty, which tended to occur about every third or forth week, being a junior N.C.O.myself this also entailed a few extra duties to my dismay, the extra pay wasn't worth it on many an occasion.

The main problem when arranging to go fishing was to get my mate out of his pit early in the mornings; his main hobby was getting drunk as often as his pay would allow him too.  From Friday night bars were opened in various squadron blocks, not closing till early Monday morning, if any customers remained standing or the bar man chucked them out so he could get some kip. John, my fishing buddy was Ok once I had pushed him into the shower to wake him up, the tackle was stored in the cellars and after loading the car we were soon away, me driving, John still dozing.  The nearest venue was actually a caravan site that bordered a fair sized lake; a main road ran through the complex and spans the lake at its narrowest point.  We joined the club for a modest fee and it gave us all year fishing as there was no close season out in Germany in them days.  Our clothing was very appropriate for the task, army camouflage, little did we realise then how the carp anglers would be wearing the same gear in the future. We didn't have many tackle seat boxes between us then, we simply concocted something practical out of plywood spares cases from the stores, pretty basic but mine served till I got a wicker basket from England later when on leave.  Only problem we found with the lake was that being part of the caravan site you had to put up with a multitude of people swimming, messing about in small boats, and exercising their dogs in your swim and the usual feeding of the wildfowl as well.
To avoid all of these nuisances we trudged over to the more remote areas of the venue, sitting amongst the reed beds, which proved to be the most productive areas as it turned out. The lake contained plenty of Roach, Ide, Skimmers a plenty some reasonable Tench and a good number of slab bream.  Fishing matches were held there whenever we could muster enough members of our club, St Barbaras, could attend. We didn't have poles in them there days; it was mostly float fishing or the straight legering method.  We frequently used quite a lot of groundbait though, piling the stuff it at the start then waiting for those Bream to appear, which they usually did, the greedy beggars.  Nice perch upwards of a half pound would turn up, especially in the autumnal months and there were a lot of Pike and some Zander, which the German anglers fished for, leaving the rest for us Brits.  It was about 4-6ft deep on average around casting distances, not too weedy as to spoil our fun, nicely coloured for most of the time. Matches would be won with weights of 25-30lbs if those Bream appeared, otherwise ten pounds might do the trick, we thought it was good fishing anyway.  I actually won one of our club matches there, a rare occasion indeed, it must have been something special in my groundbait I think.  We fished for pleasure mostly but I do recall one match especially. The local German club decided to stock some carp on the day we were holding a competition, releasing the new stock at the far end of the lake.  About half an hour later everyone shouted out that they had just seen carp swimming through their pegs and topping as they went.. Not a single carp was caught that day, much to our frustration, the fish were simply sussing out their new surroundings of course!  My best weight was caught on a windy day when the wind was blowing directly towards the weedbed where I sat in wait for them.  I had pre-baited with nearly a full bucket of mashed bread and it held them for most of the day, I finished up with nearly 50lbs of slab Bream, best fish 6 ½ lbs, a real bronze beauty too.

John and me had our own way of obtaining our grounbait, usually when we were on guard duty together, I was the corporal in charge you see, John was a private soldier doing the sentry rounds of the camp.  During the day we would approach a friendly cook with a peace offering, bottle to you, asking him to put all the left over bread into the still warm ovens to dry it out.  At midnight I would make sure the officer had retired to the mess and taking the cookhouse key out of the guardroom cabinet, nod to John, make some excuse about visiting the sentries and head for the cookhouse.  We gathered up the many slices of crisped bread and poured them into a giant mixer machine, switched it on and got the bags ready to be filled up with the fine white crumb in no time a all.  Providing these breadcrumbs were dry enough they would keep for a while, sometimes though they went mouldy on us in the damp cellars where we hid them. Maggots were damned expensive two or three quid for just a little yoghurt potful, and not of a very good quality either.  Worms could be quite simple to find as the officers had quite a large riding stables nearby, most of these worms would have been brandlings of course.  One day I was at work when our workshops commanding officer came and spoke to me, he wanted to know why I wasn't out playing sports with the others on such a nice Wednesday afternoon.  I replied and told him that I wasn't quite good enough to get in any of the teams but I did like to go fishing, for a s I reminded him you were not allowed time of.

He paused for a moment and said would I like to go if he unofficially gave me permission on Wednesdays, providing the workload allowed it.  I was delighted and told him about the others as well, I thought in for a penny in for a pound and asked if we could borrow a Land rover to take us to the places.  He was a bit taken aback at my cheek, pausing before he relied, Ok you can take a vehicle with my permission but you will have to book it out as being on a road test of course, what a result. After that, whenever we got the chance we arranged with the vehicle mechanics (our mates) to have ready and waiting for us to shoot off somewhere. At weekends it was not permitted so then we went in several cars and shared the petrol costs amongst us.

Later we obtained permission to fish a millpond, for the price of a packet of English cigarettes from the NAFFI (cheapest day ticket price we ever had). The millpond was in a remote location, it was about 2 acres in size with lots of lily beds scattered all around, plenty to go at and best of all no one else seem to fish it.  The old mill house looked more than a bit spooky, like something out of an old movie, with most of the windows broken, but the old miller was still living in there somewhere we were informed, some said he liked to spy on people from within the darkened windos.  One warm summers evening we visited the lake to fish for the carp, which seemed to be the only species in there.  The surface of the water was speckled with the rises of the feeding fish and we knew it was going to be a case of fishing bread on the top.  It was great sport and the fish were being very obliging, each of catching to our hearts content. I had seven nice fish from 4 -7lbs apiece by the time it got a bit too dark to spot the takes so we both decided to pack up. I was stood out in the shallow water in my wellies about to tip the catch back when suddenly the mad miller came charging towards me, entering the water in his normal shoes, waving his stumpy arms over his head and cursing me in German.  These words fell on deaf ears; I could not understand what he wanted of me, after all I was brung up in Swindon town, wun't I?

As he snatched my keep net out of my hands I guessed he wasn't too happy at what I was attempting to do, namely release the carp, as he continued to use the best swearwords he could pronounce in German.  "dumkopf, shiztehousen etc".  A short tussle ensued, he pulling hard to gain possession of my net as I grimly refused to give way; eventually he got the better of me with great Germanic determination.  He rapidly gathered up the net and strode out of the lake to disappear behind the dark mill house, I followed him carefully to see what he was going to do next.  He was difficult to spot in the darkening gloom, and then I saw him down below the millwheel where the millstream led away. He had placed some chicken wire across the stream, creating a restraining area in which he tipped the fish, so that was his game I thought, bit weird I thought to myself.  Returning up the bank he thrust the dripping net across my chest, still cursing a bit, thank you very much I thought you mad bugger you!
We soon scarped back to the barracks before the madman appeared with a shotgun or whatever, he was a real loony tunes.
Later on while chatting to other anglers we discovered the truth about the evening, apparently  the owner he was fully entitled to retain any fish caught on his premises and that Germans often ate carp, eugh I couldn't do that myself, surely they would be very muddy in taste.  I forgot the monks used to do the same in the Middle Ages, perhaps like them they used to marinate the carp in loads of herbs and spices before cooking them?  It turned out that he used to sell them to a local Guesthof (Inn to you) and that explained his hasty abduction of my fish that night.  We did continue to fish there afterwards, but in order to cheat the gloating old miller we did not use our nets again and he only got the odd fish if he happened to be on the bank when we were landing one Perhaps through eating carp all the time it had driven the old git a bit mad.  I am quite certain he used to watch us fish from up in the old mill house, peering out through one of the broken windows to se if we were doing any good, made you shiver sometimes too.  He was pleased enough to keep receiving the cigarettes we paid for the fishing, it was too good not to fish, something like a commercial water is today, very well stocked and the fish easy to catch.



A venue we discovered quite by chance, we were always on the look out for these places, was spotted while on maneuvers on the tank ranges.  It was situated on the fringe of a small village and consisted of a rectangular pond, approximately 100mtrs long and 20mtrs wide, with a depth of 4-6ft.  The proper purpose of the pond was to provide a source of water for the local fire service, in case the stupid British clowns set fire to the adjacent heath land.  We knew it must contain some fish as we spotted an angler crouched amongst the weed beds as we thundered by in our armoured vehicles, it was worth a dabble any road!  We asked for permission at the local Guesthof and were told we were welcome to it, for free…We had no idea what species of fish were in the pond, it was a case of suck it and see, each of us trying different baits and tactics to start with. Fishing float rigs on or near the muddy bottom would get the skimmers going quite quickly, while near the surface we got plagued by small Rudd and Roach especially using maggots for bait. On the next visit we took some bread and worms and succeeded in winkling out some better stamp of bream and Tench.  We caught something there nearly every time, whether the weather was hot or cold, excepting when the temperature really dropped down.  It was the kind of water you'd call a banker and we kept its location a well-guarded secret.  Selfish weren't we?

We fished some club matches for the members on various other rivers in our part of Germany, with variable results, as usual the bigger the river the harder it proved to crack.  One small river only 6-10mtrs wide proved terrific, but I can't remember its name now, but it fished well for its quality roach.  It meandered between steep sided banks, with lots of bushes and other growth along its winding course, from 3 to 12 feet i9n depth it gave us some excellent bend pegs to fish.  One of our best match anglers drew one of these deep bends and feeding it carefully built up his swim until he reached the stage where the fish seemed to be crawling up his rod.  We all caught fish that day, quality Roach from 10ozs-11/2lbs, but to our amazement when he dragged out his net with the aid of two helpers he weighed in a magnificent total of just under 40 Kilo'.  What a tremendous sight it was, that's close to 85lbs, I've never seen anything like it since. All the fish were in tip-top condition too, no lip or fin damage, each a plump bar of silver with a smoky dark colouring on its uppers.
 
The water quality was so good in that area, no industrial works for many miles, just a lovely clean dark river flowing through the countryside.  I wish I could se it again and find out if it was still as good as it was all those years ago…