H&C

“I have just caught a dace. A solitary silver dace. Not a chub, but a dace.

They can get mixed up, I know. Sometimes a dace can be mistaken for a small chub. But I have the eyes of an expert where issues like this are concerned. I have never caught a large dace and you may argue that this dace, this seven ounce dace, was not a large dace. However, I want you to think again.

The British record dace as I was growing up weighed in at a mighty one pound, four ounces and four drams. It was caught in 1960 by a Mr Glasson. My seven ounce dace was over a third of that weight.

Let us consider the blue marlin. The world rod-caught record weighed in at one thousand eight hundred and five pounds. A blue marlin weighing a third of that would weigh over six hundred pounds. I have never fished for a marlin, nor am I likely to, but you have to say a 600 pound fish is a big fish – a very big fish indeed.

Incidentally, my seven ounce dace was caught within sight of a tackle shop. You can see it over the road in the accompanying picture.

I almost took the fish into the shop to show it off in the net, but then I realised it would be wrong on so many levels.

1)      I would be laughed at.

2)      A fish should never see the inside of a tackle shop.

3)      It might not have weighed as much as seven ounces when weighed on their scales.

4)      It might have been a chub.

So I placed the net gently back into the water, lowered it, and I watched my biggest dace to date swim off over the rim. I loved the way he immediately turned right into the water and darted off upstream away from the tackle shop. I watched him as he sped into the depths. In ratio terms, all 600 pounds of him.”

“I have some new favourite fishing tackle.

A fellow member of the DSC recently bought me a really small rod in France. It is approximately two and a half feet long.

It has five rod rings and is possibly the sweetest thing in the history of the world – ever. I was wondering if I would be able to find a reel small enough to complement it when I remembered that once – in the dim distant past – I had purchased a miniature fixed-spool reel.

It took some finding but eventually, in a large box of tackle in the cupboard under the stairs, I found it.

I bought it a number of years ago when the owner of a fishing tackle shop told me that the business was going through a difficult patch. For the sake of his livelihood, I decided I had to buy something. (Does this sound plausible as a reason for yet again returning from a tackle shop loaded with items I didn’t set out for?) So I ended up with the teeny, tiny reel, for I am nothing but benevolent and helpful.

On returning home, I must have put it in the cupboard in its minuscule box and that is where it has lain for some years.

But the other day, when I put it together with the new short rod they looked beautiful together, like they belonged.

I loaded the reel with three pound breaking strain line and I have been using it ever since. It sits in the back of the car tackled up with a float, shot and hook all ready should I chance upon a canal or river where I can fish.

The very first catch I made with this set-up was a rudd of about three ounces.

The bait was part of a discarded crust from a half-eaten sandwich which was lying in the rear footwell of the car. I realise that this statement makes me sound like a grubby individual with a messy car. But at that moment I was a grubby individual with a messy car, some tiny tackle and a beautiful plump little red-finned rudd to admire, so I didn’t care.

A few days later I fished a stretch of a splendid little river and located a seemingly endless number of fish. The largest was a bream of about a pound and a half and the miniature rod was easily up to the task. I was fishing directly in front of me about ten feet from the bank.

Just as I was leaving an arriving angler approached me. He told me that he was heading for the swim I had just vacated.

"Any good?" he asked.

I told him about my success and wished him luck.

He asked what distance from the bank I had been fishing hoping, I imagined, to fish over all the loose feed I had been throwing in.

As I got into the car I replied honestly, "Just over four rod-lengths out, directly in front."

"Surely that’ll put me in the weeds on the far bank," he said, looking puzzled.

I couldn’t keep up the devilment though.

I lifted the rod off the back seat and waved it out of the window at him as I drove off.

I watched in the mirror as realisation dawned on his face, he broke into a smile and waved goodbye.”