Twenty or so years ago I walked into 61 Pall Mall and was addressed as “Sir” quite an achievement for me at that time as I was a scruffy looking art student dressed in ripped jeans and a leather biker jacket. The man who addressed me looked more like an undertaker rather than the normal tweed clad (this is how you are supposed to dress like in the countryside young man, don’t you know) shop assistant. I was addressed with respect and asked no awkward questions regarding my request, a Hardy waxed wading jacket. A suitable jacket was found, wrapped and paid for with a credit card that was on the brink of letting me down, those two dreaded words ‘card declined’ thankfully didn’t flash up and I marched triumphantly out of Hardys with a waxed jacket. I was not going to wear this on the chalk streams of southern England but in the shady bars and night clubs of Shoreditch, East London. One day I would wear it on the Itchen or Nadder but until then I was to make my rural fashion statement in the Vale of Hoxton!
Soon after Hardy’s of number 61 Pall Mall closed down, my wading jacket still hangs in the basement and has since been blessed on the rivers banks of southern England for brown trout and Scotland in search of salmon. Looking back now I never thought that 61 Pall Mall was an era on the brink of extinction, I thought this establishment was to go on for ever, sadly it didn’t. If I had known of its impending demise I would have spent more time in there.
For those who remembers the wooden panelled shop and its calm atmosphere only broken by the occasional New York accent of an excited over seas visitor, you may also remember the changing faces of the shop window…
Finding suitable receptacles for fishing tackle can be a challenge, perhaps nerdy but ultimately good fun. Artist boxes are a good option as the outside finish is normally well polished which keeps the rain off in more extreme outdoors situations when angling.
Here I have an example of a small artist box that takes a modest tackle collection and will accommodate some floats where once brushes would have laid. Pictured here the box has some old tackle along with a collection of past fishing licenses. Dabs of oil paint cover the lid from a previous artists journey into colour and composition, brightening the greyest of days while out on the river.
Stuffing all my terminal tackle in a Oxo tin leaves one item of tackle un-protected, the float. Long waggler’s are always vulnerable to breakages so the Palmer Float Case is ideal, light and strong and can hold up to ten 14″ floats.
To store shorter floats I have come up the rather ingenious (I’ll say it myself) solution of using a cotton surgeons tool roll which looks like Efgeeco themselves could have stitched it together. It can take up to around twenty floats and rolls up into a neat little bundle, this one is made by S Rampling of 8 Market street, Cambridge.
The carp fisherman of the 1950’s had different requirements to the usual float angler, the Oxo tin was the perfect size to take a selection of hooks, numerous weights and spools of line. Just like the carp scene now, fashions prevail, so once the Oxo tin was seen in a few Redmire photographs the tin and specimen hunter became common place on the water’s edge for another decade in search of Leney’s.
This season (2012/13) I’m trying the Oxo tin myself, aside from floats, it can take all my terminal items plus a torch and two bite alarms. My angling this year will be very much grab it while I can approach, one small bag, a net and a rod (maybe two).
Gerry Berth-Jones is sited here with what I believe to be an ‘Oxo’ set up and a ‘Pup’ tent also an essential part of my 1980’s carp outfit. Pre sun-lounger stuff, I believe.
There was a time when the majority of the nations anglers were firmly sat on creaking willow but some had taken on the wooden seat box as an alternative, perfect for the river rover or carp stalker who requires the occasion resting perch.
I’ve seen an example of this box in a photo gracing the banks of Redmire in the 1950’s, if I can recall it may have belonged to John Nixon? So in homage to its pedigree my example contains the content of my 1980’s carping tackle, Les Bamford Optonics, monkey climbers, a pair of Cardinal 55’s, Zip leads, boxes of Nash hooks and old bubble floats.
With the removable tray and space for line winders down each side this could have be designed for earlier tackle or even for the sea angler? Until someone puts me straight on this I shall picture this in Willow Pitch with a motionless angler perched on top with a Ambidex and Hardy L R H No 2 in hand.
I pretty much dragged this box around lake and river throughout the 1980’s and 1990’s, it could take a lot of tackle and an impressive float collection. It was only when I discovered a low-fi approach to angling that this box was shelved, but it still remains the tackle box that has shared more personal angling experiences than any other. The interior wood is still stained with strawberry flavourings from my early days of carp fishing on a small pond near Ansty in West Sussex, in search of my first ‘double’. Eventually with the help of Carp Fever it did happen, a 11 1/4 lb specimen.
Even now, twenty five years on a light waft of strawberry essence mixed with pilchard oil lifts the nostrils as the lid is opened and a memory ignited, this box shall never be passed on!
I spent the summer of 1983 trying to learn to fish…properly, mainly on my own and mainly for chub, my apprenticeship for gudgeon had passed. There was a favourite deep run on the Sussex Ouse just a few hundred yards from the Ardingly road which I named chub corner and this was where most of my success came from. I spent a lot of time there with my Walkman listening to one song in particular on a loop just like teenagers do! Afterwards I would lie on the river bank and take in the summer sun, even then I knew these were cherished times.
On my return to school that september one of my science classes was shared with a guy called Mark who always brought a copy of Anglers Mail in on a Wednesday and due to the old style science lab benches (the ones with the gas taps that you could simply switch on at anytime and gas out the whole class) we could secretly read each copy on our laps, undetected by our teacher.
At that time Anglers Mail were running a series of extracts from Pete Mohans’ ‘Cypry the Carp’. We were transfixed each week as the story unfolded of Andy and Cypry the Carp but what also captured my attention was the ‘make your own tackle’ features that were so popular back in those days and in september pike tackle came into the spotlight. Spoons made from, well… spoons! Toby style bars made from spoon and fork handles and slider floats made from broom handles carefully carved out. Pike fishing seemed another world away and new precautions needed to be taken in the pursuit, wire traces, pike gags and forceps all needed consideration.
With talk of pike in the back of the science lab, my friend Mark told me tales of large pike caught in the Horstead Keynes lakes and he had witnessed a few captures as he lived right next to one of the lakes with his mother and brother in a small cottage. Horstead Keynes was only about four miles away but these lakes sounded out-of-bounds to me, still my fascination with large pike was growing.
At that time I was a member of Haywards Heath and District Angling Society and another story was relayed to me about more monster pike encounters and this time it was on a water I could fish in Slaugham, a HHDAS water. A large pike was hooked by two lads fishing dead baits, it had them all over the lake and finally it shot under the platform where the two young intrepid piscators were standing. Hesitantly one of them hand-lined the pike from under the platform not realising how close his hand was to the wire trace until the shock of seeing such a large toothed mouth caused the pike to be dropped, resulting in the line parting. A return visit had to be organised and this time I was going to be properly prepared.
It was a saturday morning, crisp and bright, I had already purchased a PDQ wire snap tackle trace, bound multi-stranded wire with red cotton whipping over the twisted knots. The trace carefully coiled in a tracing paper bag, I could only afford one trace so it had to last. Also I had purchased a Vortex sliding pike float (carving a broom handle was a lot harder than made out in the Anglers Mail article) along with various swivels beads and swan shot. The rod was my trusty old Marco fibreglass carp rod with extra whipping over the joint where a split had started to show, the reel was a Mitchell 300s.
Standing outside the fishmongers by the roundabout in Haywards Heath I purchased a few joeys and some sprats which were a cheaper option. I was now a hunter using fish to catch bigger fish, maggots were for boys…I set off in trepidation!
The journey to Slaugham lake was a good forty minutes bike ride so I set off, now prepared like ‘proper’ fishermen do, off to do battle with rod and landing net tied to the crossbar and a faint whiff of sea fish following behind. On arrival the lake was calm, the trees bare and the air cold. My choice of swim was one of the platforms that protruded from the large reed bed that surrounded a good forty percent of the whole lake, the rest of the lake was un-fishable as the banks were covered in fallen trees that even the most cunning of stalkers could not penetrate. Once on the wooden platform I tackled up, carefully tying on my wire trace and setting the sliding float so that it ‘cocked’ nicely in the flat calm water. I couldn’t remember from my Observer Book of Coarse Fishing whether the dead bait was to settle on the bottom or dangle in the mid-water? A few adjustments over the morning covered both options but the float never moved. By the afternoon I had covered a large corner of the lake and then remembered the illustrations in one of my books back home of a pike snapping at roach near some reeds, so I cast as close as I would dare, fearing that I could loose the wire trace and that would then be curtains for the day.
After only moments the float bobbed, then slowly towed away, just a foot or two but then stopped. Mixed emotions of excitement, fear and disappointment all came at once but I reeled in, kept calm and replaced the now tired looking joey with a fresh tail and re-cast. Again the float carried off and this time I struck, instantly there was a swirl that broke the stillness of the day and I was in a true tussle, like nothing I had experienced before. After a short while the pike was under control and I netted a pike of around six pounds. My next thought was how to un-hook the pike, I had forceps and a ‘humane’ gag but this was an operation all new to me. So straddling the fish I managed to get the gag in place and thankfully with shaking hands, managed to get the trebles out. I leant down and returned the pike using the landing net, I then stood up on the platform and thought, that was a ‘proper’ fish, was I a proper fisherman? Well time would tell but I certainly cycled home feeling a foot taller!
Always in search of fishing tackle shops of the past I present local angling legends Tommy and Tony Wadsworth (Tony is now a local radio show host) of Wasdworth & Son of Leicester. ‘Let Tony fix ‘u’ up’ alas no longer possible.
Also I have a short film from 1968 sadly with no sound..
Back in the days when Stewart and Efgeeco weren’t producing plastic injected tackle boxes, a visit to see grandad could result in a cigar box perfect for fishing tackle items. In my case, some pike tackle.
For those observant types the hypodermic needles are for injecting oils into dead-baits not a nasty habit picked up in the east-end of London!
the tuesday swim... 