Tangler's Tales

The Early Years

At the risk of boring anyone with my fishing exploits over the last 45yrs of my life I am going to tell you a few fishy tales. Most of them are true - well, by danglers' standards anyway.  I've just joined you this spring and you know me as Tangler. I have met a few of you already this season and I look forward to meeting more of you, later this year hopefully.
I started fishing about 1956 when my uncle Roy took me in his sidecar, attached to a thousand cc Aerial Square Four motorcycle, to a local reservoir in Swindon, called Coate Water.  Whether it was the attraction of riding on the powerful motorbike or the fishing, I couldn't say for sure. Both proved to be exciting to a young nipper like me.
I'd do the usual thing, scrounge a few slices of bread from me mum and mix the paste at the lakeside in an old teacloth. No fancy baits then! Half the problem was getting the paste squeezed out to the right texture to enable it to be swung out just past the end of my 6 foot solid fibreglass rod end!
You didn't need to cast far out, good job with the heavy line and basic reel I had them days, but the small silver and common bream were in abundance and easy enough for me to catch.  The experienced anglers were prebaiting with buckets of worms and ground bait from the rowing boat, then catching gorgeous bronze breams slabs from 4-8lbs, big fish in them days. Not too many carp caught or even seen at the net, though there must have been some swimming about, it is a large area of water.
Then circumstances changed for the worse as far as I was concerned, my uncle got married and for some unknown reason I didn't get many more invites. Oh how I missed the motorbike rides!
Then later at about 12, I got a push bike with gears on it, which opened up the world to me, or rather it allowed me to venture out and about in Wiltshire. I'd tie my rod along the crossbar, secure my willow basket precariously on the rear wheel carrier and set out to cycle the 11 miles to Lechlade and fish the River Thames. It was hard work too, uphill most of the way until you reached the village of Highworth. A steep hill then led down from there to the river valley. I would freewheel at 30 plus miles an hour, grimly hanging on for dear life and hoping the wobble did not eject the basket, or me, from the bike.
Later on, went with a pal especially. We caught vast amounts of gudgeon, small chublets, dace and roach, with the occasional skimmer or two. At this stage in my fishing I had progressed to taking a tin containing sixpence worth of maggots or a few hand dug lobbies from the back garden.  (What is the old fart rambling on about I can hear you saying!!!....)
Apart from that we scratched around fishing semi-stagnant farmponds for perch with tail ends of lobworms, or spent endless hours on a poor strech of the local canal after tiny little tench  (this canal is filled in and has a major shopping centre built over it today).  That canal was well stocked with old bike frames, plastic carrier bags, weed  and too many usanitary items fit to mention. If we behaved ourselves a relative of my friend who owned a small farm let us fish a narrow feeder stream that fed into the Thames. Here we caught chub up to a pound and a half, big fish indeed! Gradually my personal fishing tackle improved as birthdays and Christmases passed by. Still using heavy hollow glass or steel rods, my pride and joy was an Appolow Taperflash (hollow steel) rod of eleven feet, it seemed the bee's knees then but compared to carbon fibre, very hard to trot the river all day with due to its weight of course.
Hooks were mostly clumsy barbed ones, often fatal to the greedy little perch of course. How far we have come since them days thank goodness.
How simple the fishing seemed then, just the pleasure of schoolboy fishing, no worries of how big a fish was or how near to the record weights it was. I don't hanker to be back then, tackle is much more pleasurable to fish with, venues have opened up to allow the ordinary angler access to superb waters at reasonable ticket prices etc. The commercials have enabled even an average pleasure fisherman to catch big weights etc.

This takes me up to when I joined the army at 15. If I don't receive too many critical comments I would like to continue my fishing tales some time in the future. For now I'll say I still have many things to learn about our hobby and enjoy going as much as I did then.  Bye for now