With the lack of angling I have been looking through some old pictures I had and it got me thinking about some of my old fishing sessions when I was much younger that I had never written about. I thought I'd make a start with a few here and there from now on as a bit of an autobiography. So here's the first story.....During the mid to late 80's and very early nineties I lived in the New Forest and spent my time fishing many of the local day ticket venues and club waters around the area. Probably one of my favourite venues was a wonderful now syndicate venue known as Sway Lakes, near Lymington. Sway is a very pretty complex with lots of rearing ponds around it for the koi breeding shop that they have on site.
This has been running since I can remember and the fishing was almost always a side line for the owners. I first came to learn about the lake when I was about 11 years old and my late father Chris took me there for a days fishing. Back then we were very amateur with just a handful of tackle items to our name. Fishing was generally done with fairly inadequate float tackle and worms, maggots, sweetcorn or bread as bait. My first few trips I caught a few Roach, odd Tench and a good helping of Perch. I saw the odd angler with 'carp gear' catch an odd carp but I wasn't bothered what I caught really back then.
As time progressed I caught more fish and gained some newer tackle and more expertise. I also made some local friends who were also into fishing and there were 5 or 6 of us that would fill up the swims and socialise on regular occasions. I was starting to get into my night fishing more and more and my parents were allowing me some freedom to go on my own or with mates.
We all started to fish Sway regularly and started to catch quite a few fish. Bare in mind that in those days, bedchairs, bivvys etc were a thing of the future! We were still using 45" brollys, tarps and old ex army tents etc and sun loungers. Many nights were spent shivering and wet under the stars! We also had fairly inadequate rods, reels with no drag systems and leads tended to be drilled bullet style which just rolled down the far shelf and tangled up your rigs. How we ever caught much I'll never know?
Now, there was a swim at the end of the lake known as the bottom bay. It was a large circular swim with a wire fence at the end to stop anglers walking around to the far margin. The far bank was always a good area to target and a lead positioned 4-6 inches off the margin was a sure fire way to get a bite! Bare in mind also this was pre PVA bags, bait boats etc too! I remember one particular 3 day session I spent doubled up with a friend Mick in the swim. The fishing had been particularly tough going and the previous angler had struggled to get a bite in there.
I chose the right hand side of the swim up to the fence and Mick had the left entrance to the bay. My idea was to cast our rigs over to the far side bank when things were quiet and I would then sneak under the wire and crawl round the bank to then position the baits in the water by hand and introduce what could only be described as a shit load of micro pellets over the top! At the time I was messing around with my first home made baits and using Nutrabaits Sting Fish mix with a Chocolate palatant and these were hand rolled and presented over the huge bed of pellets. This same technique was applied to all 6 of our rods and done when nobody could see us from the house behind.
It was very cheeky but my god was it exciting! The fishing was explosive and that 3 days were some of the best I ever had at the venue! Both Mick and I caught continuously throughout the session with numerous twenties coming to the nets. At that time a twenty plus fish was a fantastic capture too!
On this one occasion Johny had set up 3 rods in the bay and his middle rod, having no buzzer on it.....He'd put a 2 pence piece on the spool and a biscuit tin underneath the spool as an audible alarm. We were all sat mid way along the bank 2 swims up having a 'naughty' cigarette or two.
We had called Johnys middle alarmless rod....'Dong rod' as it made a clonking 'Dong' noise when it went off! We sat up around midnight talking about girls, fish, etc and smoking a pack of twenty Marlboroughs when all of a sudden we heard a Dong sound! It was obviously Johnys rod! We all jumped up and ran towards his swim along the high bank that separated the swims. Now, Scott hadn't smoked much before and I think it had gone to his head just a bit as all I remember was watching him run about 10 yards before wobbling to his left and plunging around 8-10 feet down the bank into nettles and the waters edge. Needless to say none of us helped him back up! We were in fits running past him to see what treasure Johny had on his Dong rod!
As it happened, it was a mid double figure fish we used to call the Camel as it had a weird warped shaped body. I later went on to catch the same fish a couple of times but it never really seemed to put much weight on. We often had fun down there and Scott was also often the blight of much of our gags. We turned his bivvy round one night so his exit was into the field behind rather than to his rods. We would then get immense gags from setting his alarms off and watching him try to get out his bivvy into the side rather than that of the exit he had set up! Night time jump scares were a regular occurrence too with masks and capes donned to scare the absolute shit out of each other!
Another fun game was 'Rat Rod'....we would set up a piece of line and then tie on piece of meat and throw it up the bank before placing it on a buzzer. We would then sit and wait for a screaming take from a rat running off with said meat item! Huge laughs were had.
I also remember a visit to the venue when I was 16 with a girlfriend. She was quite large up top shall we say.....and we went for a days fishing, I chose the furthest swim up the lake away from prying eyes so we could have a little bankside fun so to speak! Well, I couldn't have written a more annoying situation as every time I got to nearly seeing those fabulous knockers, I had a run! I purposefully chose that swim as it was quite a duff one as a rule of thumb.
Not that day though! You honestly couldn't write it! Every time I got near her the buzzer went with another fish. It's probably one of the only times I can remember that I really didn't actually want to catch a fish! In the end she got so fed up she got a lift home and left me at the lake with the fish! I never did get to see her knockers! Still, at least I got to catch some great mirrors that day including my first ever twenty pound carp!
