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DEAR D/ARYPART FOUR

OCTOBER"The toughest thing about success isthat you've got to keep on being one."

IRVING BERLIN"When I hear a man applauded by themob I always feel a pang of pity forhim. All he has to do, to be hissed, isto live long enough."

H.L. MENCKEN

FROM T H E

R I V E R B A N K

October was a busy month. It beganwith another Angling Times feature setup weeks previously in the RowingGlub at Evesham. I was to be Ron Lees'Ron Lees showed me up on the Severn

losing three barbel to my one.

of mine, Trevor Empson, but at leasthad the decency to warn Ron inadvance of his reputation for being aJonah. I will not expand on this for Ifeel sure that Ron will at some point,explain all in one of his own hilariousarticles.I love doing these photo features. It'sgood exposure for you, for yoursponsors and usually somebody putsyou on a few fish. It also serves toeducate youngsters if handledproperly. On face value this one lookedal l set to be no exception.With Andrew James sat on my boxbehind me taking notes and MickRouse stood up to his dangly bits in thewater I kicked off talking my waythrough th e basic skills of stick f loatfishing and demonstrating what Imeant. For anyone who hasn't done it,it's a little bit like the advanced drivingtest where you do a runningcommentary to explain your actions. Infact when things go wrong it is verymuch as nerve wracking as taking anydriving test.After 40 minutes, during which smallfish had been coming regularly to thenet, I got that certain feeling, you knowthe one that says something big hasmoved into your peg. I turned round toAndrew and said, "We have beenfishing an d feed ing fo r about 40minutes now. There is a good chancethat a bigger fish might have movedinto the peg so I am going to increaseth e depth (pushes f loat up a foot) andbulk my shots lower down (moves shotto suit). I a m going to inch th e f loatthrough my peg searching fo r thatbonus fish."On the very next cast th e f loat can'tha ve travelled much more than acouple of yards before it buried. Thestrike met with a solid resistance, Iwa i t ed , sure enough it was a barbel.Iglanced over m y shoulder to see Mickshrug his shoulders and shake his headas Andrew whispered "how did heknow?" The truth is I didn't butwouldn't you have liked to have beenborn lucky too?For a while the barbel wasobliviousto the fact that i t was hooked but themoment it did realise it tore of f into th emiddle of the river an d sulked. Let metell you there is no better time to poseand look good than whilst playing asulking barbel on a long line with a softrod in a snag f ree swim. I made th emost of it, explaining th e importanceofremembering to keep the feed going in,discussing tactics and the meritsofdifferent rods, even turning my back onthe fish to explain things and generallylike a true superstar. The fish wasbehaving like a true gent and playingit's part well. I'm sure it knew who wewere and fancied getting it's photo inthe paper but felt it had to go through

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at my side giving lotsofOne of the secrets ofbarbel is not to rush them.you can bring them to thefirst time knowing fullit wil l bolt, so pushing the net at itserve only to fr ighten it further.might as well treat th e first showdummy run and net it on thecame fo r it's first breath of air,i t was a big bugger, surei t turned a w a y but we were all

for that. Down i t went, outround and soon it was coming upready for the net. Onto th ei t came, mouth open, hugeflank gleaming and ping, th eflew out. I couldn't believe it .i t, neitherWesang "always look onof life" but it had aring to it. My float w as also inme, my halo round myOver to you now Ron.times crew departed and settledThe pretender had had hisit was time to study the oldr iver was gettingcolder and beginning to rise.first experience of

n showed them a completelystyle to my little an d often. Infour pints of hemp in one go. Fori t threatened to work becausehooked three barbel in a briefhad to be something to do withfish were taking the bait,ew colder

colder and our chances of successWe were the chumps nowof the champs. Still we had ai t wasn't our fault, i t wasto Trevor Empson, theJonah!

of f i shing a match on thefeet of extra water in the river an d

ts of Droitwich trying tofronthe suddenly slapped on theand leapt out. "This is yourday, I want to introduce you to'Pete the Poacher'. Youve read about him in my

us stood an unforgettableOne man and this mongrel dog.as a bat you know, he things thea rottweiler. Right, you can F***didn't bring 'em to listen to yourstopped to saythe distance

were in hot pursuit again.at the lake we wereto another legend, Johnnywho was instantlyand told to put the kettle

Upton Warren and a few fish for thecamera. At last.

on. Being close to Ron is like being inthe eye of a hurricane, a sense of calmpervades whilst all around are sweptup in the wind. What a character. Italmost seemed a pity to start f ishingafter listening to the old tales of theAvon and Severn. I'm sure they hadmore fu n then.Trevor worked his magic once moreand whilst all around us caught wellwe struggled. We chose pegs closeenough together to talk and have alaugh. During the day I fished out a tubof Maestro Boilie Dip which KevinMaddocks had given me back in July atLinear. The bream I caught at Withycame to a bait dipped in it, much toKevin's surprise, because he felt it wastoo strong to work. Once again it

reproduced the mir acle here and Icaught straight away. Ron was utterly-sceptical, but could he try some? "No,bugger off!" Sure enough it worked fo rRon too, but he didn't believe the dipwas anything to do with it, but couldhe have some more to try again later?.... "no, bugger off!" ....It w as back to Ron's for tea beforereturning home. A lovely man, a saintfor a wife and two days full ofmemories. Do you think I was missingteam f ishing?.. .Forty eight hours later came theDivision Three National on the Trent. Iwas looking forward to watching thisone. Being in our back yard so to speak,anglers from South Yorkshire take theriver in their stride. We fall into thetrap of assuming that the methods weemploy are simple and should come assecond nature to everyone. Alas it wasnot so. Never have I seen so many

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anglers out of their depth in one go.Never have I seen the pressphotograp hs grow qu ite so nervo us asflier after flier was cocked up. Thepapers MUST have a photograph of thewinner, either in action or with hiscatch. Everyone knew th e winner ha dto come from the bottom pegs in theweir field if someone only did it halfright. Half way through the match itwas becoming patently obviou s that anupset could be on the cards an d withthe pros pect of only 10 or 11 kiloswinning, several other areas were backin contention.In an attempt to ensure a sneakywinner didn't get through elsewhere,photographer Mick Rouse an d myselfshot off towards the opposite end of thematch to search for the proverbialneedle in a haystack. After visitingGunthorpe, Shelford, and Burton Joyceto find th e stewards reporting nothingmuch going (Christ, I hope they'reright), I dropped Mick off at Caythorpewhilst I covered the hot pegs atHoveringham, arriving in the nick oftime for the weigh in. As expected thewinner did come from one of thepredictable pegs but our trek paid offwith a big carp at Caythorpe fo r Mickwhilst I was the only photograp heraround to get snaps of the guy whofinished third. Unfor tunately I didn'tpass on the captions with the film an dwhen the times rang on Sunday I hadbeen called into work. A ll my hardwork was therefore in vain as I learneda very impo rtant lesson th e hard way.Back at the headquarters it waslovely to meet up with Chippenhamstalwart Mick Olden again who hadmade the long journey up from th eWest Country simply to make sure hewo uld kno w exactly where next yearspegs would fall for the first divisionNational no w that Ea st Stoke is not in. Icall that dedication.The biggest buzz ricochetting aroundth e Newark Showground was howbadly ho t favo urites Gold thorpe ha ddone. It seemed very likely they hadfinished well down the field. Not onlydid the crowd believe it but the teamdid as well. When the result wasannounced w ith them scraping apromotion place they celebrated thewindfall in as muc h style as in theprevious w inning years to theresounding jeers an d laughter of thecrowd. Roger M ortimer told me laterhe felt a bit embarrased because hepersonally was responsible fo r startingthe booing which the crowd gleefullypicked up on. Perhaps time does healand he has forgotten ou r laughter an dderision the previous year on the Nene.The photo accompanying this articlewill give you a clue as to which teamwon. Does Roger look happy to you, ordoes he remind you of a Jack RussellTerrier about to rip the head of f a rat? Ifthis season is anything to go by hewould perhaps benefit in the futurefrom ditching sponsors Keenets and

securing a deal with D uraglit. Mindyou, judging by his antics with th estunning Alex afterwards (what onearth does she see in him I ask?) hisdays of concentrating on anything,never m ind fishing, are over.A s a postscript to this I went along toa Roadshow and actually paid to listento him at a time when he wou ldwillingly have paid anyone prepared tostand still long enough for him to tellthem how the abso lutely brilliantKeenets Central won the Trent Nationaland picked up a set of gold paper-weights to go with the silver ones!The question and answer forumfeatured Roger, Downsie, Ivan M arksand Ray Mu mfor d. Someone from th efloor asked if the panel thought airpressure had an effect on the behaviourof fishes. Each angler in turn offered his

Supreme Champion, Crufts. 1991.

with them long walks nowadays, no twi me heart." ... but Roger capped itwith, "What do you do if your peg isfacing the wrong w ay Ray, Tu rn theriver round?"One other event happened inOctober which brought into focus ho winsignificant events on the river bankreally are. Driving home from workafter a night I fell asleep at the wheel onthe Motorway.I awoke an instant before hurtlinginto space from a 3 0 foot highembankment. I shudder to think of theevents that followed as the vansomersaulted its way along the bottomof the bank before it came to ashuddering halt in a dyke fully ahundred yards away from the point itleft the road. Only the rear doorsremained recognisable in what lookedlike the aftermath of a terrorist bombattack.I sat stunned amongst the carnagetrying to make sense of what ha d

views and widened the subject slightly.Mark Downes explained how fallingwater tem peratures in the week leadingup to the N ational had affected Starletsteam plans. Ray Mum ford confirmedeveryone else's theories and added hisown a bou t phases of the moon and theimportance of carrying a thermometer."In fact" he said "I have recently takento carrying a compass!!"This prompted Ma rk to ask, "Is thatso you can find your way to your peg?".... meantime Ivan studied his shoesand shook his head, "I can't be doing

happened. My only injury a bruise onthe shoulder where th e seatbelt hadheld me secure.Scrambling up the bank I knew mylife ha d irrevocably changed in theinstant it took to realise I was neithercrippled no r seriously injure d. 1 wasbeing granted an op portunity to live onknowing every single day was a bonus.I had no right to be alive yet here I was,a very much w iser man, destined neveragain to bemoan a bad draw or a wetday. From here on just going fishing is ..the bonus. LJ