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11
THE
CLUB
EVENTS
And
setbacks
at top
level!
M
OST anglers haveregrets about someaspect of their sporting
life.
In mycase givingupmatchangling
at the
tender
age of 15 is
top of the
list.
I had
done quite
well,
for my
age, winningoccasionallyagainst good
opposition,
but I
packed
it in for
the usual reasons.
A few
years
on and
settleddown to married
life,
I took upfishing again, becominginterested
in
both tench
and
pike.
Living
in
South Yorkshire,however, and with transport
problems
seriously limiting
my
results,
I
soon became
disillusioned
and looked foranother challenge.Maybe I should have gonestraight back into match fishing
then,
for it
does
not really matterwhere
you
live
or
what
the
level
of
sport
is
like
in
match fishing.
The
main
aim is to
competeagainst whoever
is
there
on the
day,
and to
achieve
a
feasibletarget weight
for the
water.
It
was
perhaps fortunate
for me
that I
didn't,
though, for the
intervening venture was the onewhich laid down
the
foundations
for
my
future
competitive
efforts.
The
purchase
of a
motorcyclebrought
the
River
Idle
within
my
reach,
and a
great love
of
river
fishing
developed.
The
Idle
is a
tributary of the lower Trent.
14
Nowhere is it much more than 20yards wide, averaging between
3
and 5ft
deep.
It was a
jungle
of a
river, with
rafts
of
weed makingit almost
unfishable
during thesummer. Even
a
light shower
would
flood it in
winter,
a
handicap which
was to
lead
to itsvirtual
destruction, though
I was
blissfully
unaware
of
that
at the
time.
Floods
were such
a
problemthat 22,000 acres
of
land wentunder water almost every winter,
for
weeks
at a
time.
Fish
stocks
were low and
whilst
the
averagesize was
high,
good catches were
few
and far
between.
So
wereother
anglers!
I am making it sound so
uninviting,
but I
came
to
love
that
river, haunting its banks
from
its confluence with the
Trent
at
West Stockwith
all the
way
up to Mattersey. It was myriver,
and I fished it as
often
as I
could.It was hard work, but it was
rewarded.
You could not catch
onthe
Idle
by
fishing
badly.Baits
had to be
presented
perfectly
with
float
tackle
or the
bites
did not
come,
but
each yearbigger and bigger roach turned
up — glittering
indications that
I
was
getting better.Eventually came
the
fish, a
Opening day catch from the
Idle
in
1982
roach
of
21bs 4oz.
I
will never
forget
that fish as long as I live. It
was
beautiful,
and
almostcertainly had not been caught
before.
Only someone
who has
caught
his first
genuine
21b
roach,
by
design,
will
understand
why
I
could
not fish any
morethat day.
An
ambition
had
beenachieved; there seemed no point
in
fishing
on.
Littledid Iknow thatmyparadise
was
about
to be
lost.
Notices
went up announcing theSevern-Trent Water Authority'sRiver Idle ImprovementScheme. The floods were aproblem, no argument there, butto cure it the river wasdevastated. Every bush
and
tree
was
removed on the banks whichhad the treatment, and the bankslandscaped so they could be
mown
by tractor. The wholeriver bed was lowered by about ayard, and Europe's largest pump
was
installed at Stockwith.Lew Grade's crack about
'Raise the
Titanic'
—
that
it
would
have been cheaper
to
lower the Atlantic! — could havebeen made reality by that pump.I was devastated. Some
boffin
of
an
engineer had turned mydream river into
a canal,
without
even
asking my permission, and
had added
insult
to
injury
by
calling it an improvementscheme!
It was
time
for
another
change,
but where? Around that time I
was
fancying
myself
as a
good
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