Changing hands

Today I have been mostly catching.. little scamps on cockle and quill. Nothing bigger than six pounds, and some very very much smaller (although I did lose a real lump).

But the carp, despite their mostly diminutive size, are highly significant in being the very first fish caught on my 10ft B James MKIV G. It only took sixty years.  I love old tackle with a story and this one is very personal to me. The rod passed into my dear old Dad's hands many years ago - a swap for a gas heater with his car mechanic who had a cold workshop. 

The rod had never been fished, and when Dad gave it to me, perhaps fifteen years ago, I don't believe he'd ever got around to fishing with it either - except once with me on a pike dead baiting foray when the closest it got to a fish was the sprat on the end of the trace (come to think of it, this would make a nice wobbling rod). I said as much at the time and he gifted it to me on the spot, still with its cellophaned handle. Dad, my best friend and fishing companion these past fifty years, crossed the river to the other side this January. I would have loved to have been able to tell him how much I like fishing with this rod. Because, you see, it had stayed in its bag, un-fished but unforgotten since that day. 

Until that is, our release back onto the banks a short while ago, when I resolved to dust the rod off and use it as B James and Dad intended. So here we are, down at the farm pond, brushing up on the old Wallis cast and fishing the lift to bubbling carp. The rod has a lovely action for margin fishing - absorbing the runs and lunges of the carp that come to my cockle hook bait. Later I switch to free lining floating crust and its here I think the rod really shines. I'm amazed at how far I can cast a small crust with no controller or other weight on the line at all. It's pulse-quickening stuff as a huge bronze head breaks the surface and turns on the floater, but I've made the schoolboy error of keeping a taught line (I was tweaking the crust to check that my hook was still lodged within) and as the big carp turns the 8lb line parts near the hook with a disheartening snap! Happily it's a barbless hook. Next time I'll remember to keep a some line loosely in hand for such eventualities. For now though it's game over - the fish I've stalked has bow-waved across the small lake. But it's a fitting drama for my rod's coming of age and I know we'll share many more adventures yet.