I get some news during the week. My good friend Ray Harris has had a Roach. Not just a Roach - but a ROACH! This magnificent creature (and I’m talking about the fish, not Ray!) turned the scales at over three pounds! Three Oh Four to be exact. For me (and I suspect for most anglers) this is not only the fish of a lifetime but a monster of unimaginable proportions. I have never seen a creature of this size and I am moved to get the rods out and get down the lake to try and catch one of this size for myself. With a ‘Pass Out’ from Mrs. S. I’m off!

Once again the weather is rough; there is a cold easterly blowing and I elect to fish it with the wind behind me. I have no stomach to fish straight into it and prefer the comfortable peg to the skin-tingling, freeze-your-face-off one any day. This is a platform swim and I try out the Stage Stands for the first time. Perfect on paper, but do not account for the hardness of the railway sleepers the screw must penetrate nor the unevenness of their surface. Rods are slightly akimbo but all is well and I set up two rods; a short line at fifteen to twenty meters and a longer line at sixty to seventy meters.

First cast and there is a wait of ten minutes or so and I get the slightest, almost imperceptible twitch on the bobbin which is almost tight to the rod. On the off-chance I strike and I am connected! A solid thump-thump comes down the line and I eventually put the net under a fine Roach. It weighs one pound ten ounces; good start! This is a pristine fish and a true Roach. There are a lot of Rudd/Roach hybrids, species which readily interbreed and it is nice to catch a ‘purebred’.

Back out with the feeders, long and short, and there is a long wait before the next bite occurs. Again, it is a very tentative pluck, pluck on the line and I slacken off the bobbin to give about half an inch of ‘drop’ to give the fish more line on the take. This makes no difference; some of the bites are so gentle, they move the bobbin but the alarm fails to sound. Something needs adjusting. I lengthen the distance between the feeder and the ‘helicopter’ trace to enable the fish to move further without hitting the resistance and this partly works when I get a tap tap on the bobbin, strike, and am connected to a rudd of about half a pound. Making adjustments to the bobbin drop and moving the ‘helicopter’ up and down the line goes on all day in an effort to get better bite indication but there is no single answer and I have to content myself with the fact the fish are just not feeding confidently.

Meanwhile, the wind gets up again which for the long rod range rod is a good thing as it aids distance. There is virtue in fishing one ‘short’ and one ‘long’. At the beginning of the session it is the long range rod which produces all the bites, the shorter effort receiving no attention. As the day wears on however I begin getting more bites on the shorter rod while the long range one remains biteless. For only a brief spell there are bites to both but this lasts barely fifteen to twenty minutes out of the whole day.

This illustrates the mobile nature of the shoals which roam around the lake and informs my casting ‘pattern’. The accepted wisdom is that when feeder fishing, the line is put in a clip and cast to the same spot every time, the aim being to concentrate the feed and keep the fish in one small area. This works, but I find it increases the amount of small fish that are caught. Because the fish roam about a lot, both big and small, I stick to a more randomised casting pattern. Unclipped, I cast roughly the same distance but to the left and right of the peg, never concentrating the feed in one spot. The aim is to try and find the fish rather than draw them to me.

I get another bite, on the rod cast sixty yards to the left. As soon as I hook it I know it is a good one, thumps down the line signifying a larger than average fish. I actually give line to it knowing the very short hook length is vulnerable and play the fish gently.

As the fish surfaces near the net, I realise another personal best is on the cards. I reach out, stretching the landing-net as far out as I can. Got him! On the scales he weighs two pounds twelve ounces and is indeed a new PB! Two pound plus Roach in successive sessions! This has never happened to me before in a long angling career and I wonder why it has taken me so long to absorb myself into this form of fishing. Most of my fishing life has been an obsession with carp and I am a little saddened that I have missed out many, many years on what is some of the most pleasure you can derive with a fishing rod!

This is an absolute clonker of a fish and is typical of the small head/large bodied fish the water holds. As far as I know, only Ray, Richard and myself are privvy to this ‘Shangri-La’ and I must say I feel like keeping it that way. Is this being selfish or just practical?

Into the keep-net she goes and I carry on fishing although the bites continue to be shy and difficult to hit. I miss several attempts at striking the shy bites although the odd one or two connect with fish in the four to twelve ounces bracket.

Suddenly there is a vicious pull on the short range rod… a familiar thumping up the line tells me it is a perch and I am astonished when I get it to the net - two pounds one ounce! This is not the first good perch I have heard of from the water and I speculate as to the possible size these might grow to in this lake. With such a ready supply of prey fish, and of a good size too, it is totally possible fish of four pounds or even five are on the cards. I note that many of the roach and rudd I have caught from the lake have patches on their sides where they have obviously been the victims of attack from a predator. Some of these may be cormorants or grebes - both eat fish, and lots of them and indeed one of the rudd I catch today has a severe ‘chunk’ bitten out of its shoulder which looks like it has been made by a beak. The scar has healed over time leaving the fish with a severely damaged spine. Other fish however look as if they have been victims of a vicious ‘suck’ by a toothless predator - Perch! I am convinced there must be big ones in here but leave this for another time. There are big Roach and Rudd to be caught!

The rest of the day is a struggle to get bites. They are there but the fish are not feeding confidently and my ‘conversion rate’ of bites to fish in the net falls. In late afternoon I run out of bait and pack up. I am glad to do so. It is very exposed out on the platform in the teeth of a very cold wind and it is time for tea. I ‘phone Christine to let her know I am on my way home; she tells me she has started the tea and a warm drink awaits me… I love fishing!