The Fishing Challenge

THE FISHING CHALLENGE by Jan Fuller, author, Angler, Modern/Vintage tackle dealer and Fishkar Group expert.
Reading time : 20 mins 

January 1st Y2K; a new challenge was called for, but what exactly? A specimen fish of some description, that much was obvious but with time at a premium and work commitments limiting me to short, evening sessions, it had to be something local – so no globe-trotting to far away, big-fish waters for me!

By February I was still no nearer to deciding what my challenge was to be. The weather was cold and clear and the local rivers had fined down nicely after earlier floods. The only trouble was, the earliest I could get away from work was 4pm and it was dark before 6pm! Was it worth a near 50-mile round trip to the Rother for a measly hour’s fishing? You bet it was!

My first attempt at ‘ultra short-session fishing’ was a bit of a disaster in reality. By the time I had tackled up and plumbed the depth, not only had my fingers gone numb with the cold, but nearly half my allotted time had been used up and I still hadn’t managed a cast in anger. Rushing to put that right, I hastily lobbed my 3BB loaded Drennen crystal in the direction of a nice-looking, far-bank eddy, only to put it straight up the nearest tree! Pulling for a break, the saying ‘less speed more haste’ sprang to mind. Still, I guess we’ve all done it at some time or another and, fortunately, it only cost me my hook. Oh, and another five minutes – time I could ill afford to lose when I’d had so little to start with.

The sun had disappeared and the light was quickly fading by the time my double maggot hook-bait eventually hit the water. The float swirled around for a while before gently drifting off downstream until it was slowly dragged under as it snagged on an underwater obstruction. I quickly pulled it back and re-cast, only to have a repeat performance. This time, instead of reeling in, I held back, waiting for my hook-bait to lift over the obstruction and continue its trot downstream. The result was almost instant. Before it had travelled another foot the float buried, only this time it was something with fins that was responsible and, judging by the way it was jagging on the other end of the line, it was a roach and a good one at that.

Careful weighing confirmed it to be 10 ounces – not a monster but a worthwhile fish on a cold and frosty February evening. Quickly slipping it back, I re-cast, waiting for the float to make its way out of the eddy, carefully lifting it over the obstruction (probably a dead weed-bed because it never properly snagged me), and striking as it was nailed in exactly the same spot as the first time. Another jag-jag fight resulted in a second, slightly larger roach, its silvery blue flank and bright orange fins showing up well in the last of the evening light.

Another four casts, another four fish, all roach and all from exactly the same spot behind the dead weed raft. By now it was as much as I could do to see the end of my rod, let alone the float, and reluctantly I began to pack up, de-briefing myself as I did so. Six fish in six casts all from the same square foot of water – they must have been packed in on top of one another! Interestingly, I didn’t get a single bite from the back eddy which had looked so inviting to start with, so possibly there was an important piece of knowledge gained – location!  Had I found a hot spot or had it been a fluke?

Driving home, I continued with my de-briefing. If I wasn’t to have much time, then surely I had to maximise the use of what little time I did have, and that didn’t include spending half of it setting up and plumbing. Having an estate car, the first part of that problem could easily be rectified – instead of packing up after each session, why not just break my rod down and leave it in the back of the car? That way it would only take a matter of seconds to re-assemble and start fishing. The second part of the problem could easily be resolved too – thanks to my friendly, fish-holding, weed rack. All I had to do was set the depth by eye – if it didn’t slowly submerge as it passed over the weed then it was set too shallow and would need lowering an inch or two. Transversely, if I received any false bites anywhere else, then it would be set too deep and would need shallowing a tad. Satisfied that I made significant progress, I decided to give it another go the following day, determined this time to be fishing within five minutes of arriving in the car-park!

The next day at work my mind kept drifting back to the evening before and those beautifully conditioned roach. Each one looked as though it had been freshly minted and the largest at just over a pound would even qualify as a HBDFAA* specimen. I began wondering just how big they did grow in the Rother; could there be any true monsters lurking there, thriving on neglect, as most anglers on the little-fished stretch concentrated on the chub and rarely bothered with the roach? What could their top weight be? A pound and a half? One and three quarters? Two-pounds? Surely not! I’d certainly never heard of any being caught even approaching that weight, but who knows? Anything is possible, and isn’t that one of the greatest joys of fishing, the chance of catching the unknown? Something that seems to be lost on modern-day, commercial pool-raised anglers, where every fish has a name and a birth to death growth chart. Suddenly it hit me! Here was the challenge I’d been searching for – to catch a two-pound roach from a local stream! Not easy, but could it be possible? After all, it had to be a challenge that I had some chance of succeeding in, otherwise it would be an absolute no brainer fishing for something that didn’t even exist!

I spent most of the morning racking my brain, trying to think of a way I could  find out for sure if any roach of that size did swim in the Rother. Then, of course, there was always the Brede and the Uck, not to mention the upper reaches of the Ouse and the Cuckmere, all of which could be worth a try. Just before lunch I had a brain-wave and, like most good ideas, it was blindingly simple. Just what did or did not swim in the Rother currently I would have to find out the hard way, and that would mean rod hours and lots of them, but there was one way I could find out if it had the pedigree to do a two-pounder, and that was to look in the HBDFAA handbook where there was a list of all the club’s records going back more than fifty years. It would all depend on where the roach record had been set, from the Rother or from one of the Society’s other waters…

Lunch-time arrived and I rushed out to my car to search for my membership book. Hands trembling, I turned the pages until I came to the page containing the club’s records and there it was; roach, caught in 1977 by P. Sweeney at a weight of 2lb 3 1/2oz. And you’ve guessed it: it was from the River Rother! Challenge on!!!    

That evening, it was more like a finely-tuned military manoeuvre than a fishing expedition. With rod already set up, I was out of the car and into my boots almost before the wheels had stopped turning. A quick march across the field, a little slide down the bank and, seconds later, my float was arrowing out towards the far-bank eddy ready to take up its starting position. All that, and the sun hadn’t even set yet! With baited breath, I waited as the current dragged it away from the eddy and started it trundling down the main straight. A few seconds later and it slowly pulled under as the hook caught on the weed rack, a gentle lift to free it and, any time now…wait for it… wait for it… Nothing happened! The float carried on doing just what it said on the label: floating! Perhaps it was taking its job description too literally and didn’t know how to sink! Hmm! Have to try again, I guess. Another cast, another lift over the weed rack, same result. Nothing! Another cast, and another, and another; still nothing. Perhaps I had caught them all yesterday? I could feel my newly found confidence draining out of me quicker than the light from the evening sky. Should I try somewhere else or should I stay put? With a final crimson glow, the sun sank beneath the horizon, appearing to extinguish itself in the river as it disappeared from view. All my plans and time saving had come to nothing. Here we were at the same time as it had been the previous night and with the same result.

Feeling dejected, I re-cast, waited for my float to come out from the eddy, lifted it over the weed rack and watched it disappear from view beneath the surface. A bite! A few seconds later and a nice, shiny half-pound roach graced the bottom of my landing net. Next cast, same spot, same result! It was as if someone had turned on the light! Only they hadn’t – they had turned it off. Or to be more precise, the sun had set. The fish must have been there all along, my bait tripping over their heads time and time again, but until the sun had gone from the water they had ignored it. And there had been today’s lesson. When fishing for roach the level of light is crucial – too bright and they wouldn’t feed – which meant all my fishing had to be done in a thirty-minute slot between the sun setting and full-on darkness.

It soon became too dark to see what I was doing again, but not before I’d enjoyed a frantic last half hour’s sport, with fish after fish finding its way to my waiting net. And all at a time when most anglers would have given up and declared the river devoid of fish!  

De-briefing on the way home again, I reflected on the evening’s action; twelve roach, three over a pound, with the biggest weighing in at a creditable 1lb 4oz; a step in the right direction for sure, but if only I could extend that feeding period! I was fairly certain they wouldn’t feed any earlier in the day, even if I went right down in hook size and line diameter, something I wasn’t very keen on doing anyway. So how about if I could extend it the other way? Some waters have no restrictions on night fishing whilst others do. HBDFAA stance was that it was okay to fish for an hour after sunset, so perhaps tomorrow it would be worth staying on a bit longer. I didn’t really fancy trying to ledger for them, so that would mean a trip to the local tackle shop to buy some night lights to fit into my Drennan crystals. On both my trips to date, the last fish I had caught had also been the largest, so perhaps that was something worth considering as well.

 I managed two more trips that season before the rains set in and the river flooded, rendering it un fishable. On both occasions, the experiment with the night lights failed to work, although I was to have much greater success with them later. As usual, I caught some roach just as the sun went down, but as soon as it became totally dark, they switched off again, which was puzzling.

That year the close season seemed to drag on for ever, as I’m sure it does for most river anglers, but eventually June arrived, and with it the start of a new season. I missed the first few days, but it wasn’t much after the 16th before I was heading back to the Rother, in an attempt to get re-acquainted with my favourite quarry.

What a transformation! The swim in which I had enjoyed so much success in winter had changed almost beyond recognition. Not only had it become very over-grown, but it seemed altogether narrower and shallower and the flow had gone, and along with it the roach. I soon began to realise there are winter swims and there are summer swims, but rarely would the same swim produce both winter and summer. After a few fruitless sessions, when all I had caught had been a few chub along with a splattering of small fish, I reluctantly accepted it was time to return to the drawing board and start afresh.

For the rest of the summer I messed around and caught my fair share of fish, but it wasn’t to be until the following winter that I started having any success with the large roach I so desired. Bit by bit, I fine-tuned my techniques, and progressively my results improved. Cloudy, warm days were the best, and if the river was carrying a bit of colour, then so much the better. I had a number of roach over a pound and, over time, developed a kind of sixth sense as to where they were likely to be and when they were likely to feed, but as for a two pounder… well, to be honest, I never even got close.

Until 2007 that was. 2007 was to prove to be a year without equal; six personal bests and all taken from waters I had fished for many years previously. And it wasn’t just the personal bests which made the year so outstanding, for I seemed to bag up every time I set foot on the bank and, had it not been for a cruel twist of fate, I’m sure I would have achieved my target in the very first week of that epic season.

Instead of my regular, 13ft soft-actioned, float rod, which had been so forgiving to the sudden, last minute head shaking which roach are so renowned for, I was using a similar length ‘pool rod’, more adept for dealing with the brute force of commercial carp fishing. My old rod had given up the ghost during the run-in to the previous season and as yet I hadn’t got round to buying a replacement. Still, it was June, and my back up rod would probably prove useful at keeping the vast population of chub away from the far bank snags they so loved to dive for. As I set off for an afternoon session on the old mill stretch, big roach were the furthest thing from my mind.

I’m not sure why, but I have often found river roach will occupy swims which you wouldn’t normally give a second glance to but, as with the weed raft swim, sometimes luck is on your side, and there is a really inviting swim close by which grabs your attention. This particular swim near the old mill fell into that category; a narrow, featureless straight, opening out into a wide pool. The obvious feature was the pool, but as luck would have it the only access point was by the straight, and so it was there that I set up. After an hour without so much as a nibble fishing the pool, I decide to have a little trundle along the featureless straight and almost immediately started catching chub, and good ones at that. In amongst the chub, was the odd decent perch and for the next hour or so I had a fish almost every cast but, just as I thought things couldn’t get any better, I hooked into something which felt altogether different.

At first I thought it was another chub, such was the power of it, but instead of making a bee-line for the submerged tree roots which adorned both banks, this fish seemed content to sit it out in the middle, remaining deep as it ploughed up and down the swim. With half a dozen or so chub already under my belt and a powerful rod in my hand, I started to bully it towards the surface, when suddenly it rolled in front of me, causing my jaw to drop open and my eyes to take up independence, whirling in opposite directions as they struggled to take in the sight before them. Surely it couldn’t be? By the time my eyes had refocused the fish had seized its opportunity and dived for the depths again.

The second half of the fight took a totally different course. Gently I tried to follow the fish’s lunges with the rod, while desperately trying to loosen the drag which I had set far too tightly. Slowly, I started to gain line on it, until gradually the float came back into view and then, one by one, the shots reappeared until my quarry was floundering on the surface right in front of me.

I had never seen a two-pound roach in the flesh before and, come to think of it, nor had I seen a three-pounder, but this could equally have been either – it was massive! With fins erect and gills flared, it wallowed on the surface, full of angry indignation at having been caught. It was the most beautiful fish I had ever set eyes on and, for the second time in as many moments, my mouth dropped open and my eyes went their separate ways.

For the briefest of moments, this beautiful creature lying not ten feet in front of me looked me in the eye, until with almost casual distain, it shook its head, threw the hook and was gone forever. Of all the fish I have ever lost, and there have been many, none have ever come close to hurting as much as that one did.

For months after I tortured myself in the belief that had I not paused to look at it, or had I had my softer rod with me that day, then I would have landed it, but I guess the truth is, it just wasn’t meant to be. I felt privileged just to have set eyes on such a wonderful creature, and the image of it lying there on its side, with the bright afternoon sunlight radiating from its flanks, will always haunt me and delight me in equal measure. It goes without saying that I tried many times for that particular roach again, and to a lesser extent still am, but locating one fish in many miles of river is hard, to say the least. One thing in its favour is that, in my brief glimpse of it, I would have to say it looked like a young fish in perfect condition, so who knows? Maybe there is still a chance that one day I will get a second chance to cross swords with it.

At around the same time, I had started dedicating a lot of time to fishing the River Uck and, to a lesser extent, the Sussex Ouse. In its lower reaches, the Ouse does have some pedigree for producing two-pound roach, but I really wanted to catch one from the upper reaches and, as such, spent most of my time on its smaller tributary, the Uck. To those of you that have never fished it, and I’ll be bold enough to stick my neck out here and say that will be most, if not all of you, then you don’t know what you are missing. Never have I known a small river so stuffed full of fish, and quality ones at that. The first time I ever fished it on a cold January afternoon/evening, I had eleven different species, and the following day added a couple more (answers on a postcard please!). Mostly it’s free fishing, and during the winter months I often used to stop off on the way home from work to catch a mixed bag of up to fifty pounds, before growing tired and heading home at one or two o’clock in the morning. Again, I had a lot of roach around the pound mark, but nothing much bigger until one night I landed one of 1lb 14oz. It was completely out of the blue and, to be honest, although it was only a couple of ounces short of my target, it was so unexpected that the disappointment of not achieving my goal didn’t hit me until a few days later.

By now my confidence was sky-high; two near misses in as many weeks and the season had only just begun! I had a truly beautiful crucian from the Uck, which weighed 3lb 5 1/2oz and, just to prove it wasn’t a fluke, caught the same fish a week later at the same weight in the middle of a Saturday night session. A couple of lads just happened to be passing on their way home from the pub and one of them offered to take a photo for me. Although it was pitch dark and he had undoubtedly had a skinfull, the picture came out spot on!

A few days later I was back on the Rother, and I had a session I shall never forget. During the late evening, I started catching chub from a far-bank swim under an over-hanging tree. Suddenly, in amongst the chub, I started picking up roach, many of them around the pound mark and, even more bizarrely, some bream. In the upper reaches of the Rother, bream are almost unheard of, but that evening I had well over a dozen, both commons and silvers, with the biggest being a creditable 4lb 6oz which in itself was strange, because it was exactly the same weight as the biggest chub which, equally strangely, I managed to catch twice in little over an hour. It was almost as if the fish had been observing a fishy-style Ramadan and, as the sun went down, so they threw caution to the wind and went on a massive feeding binge.

Being such a narrow swim, I was hooking, playing and releasing fish almost on top of one another, but at no time did I have to wait more than a few minutes for the next bite. As I had already lost a couple of chub in the tree, I was applying maximum side-strain in order to get them away from the snags and out into open water as quickly as possible. It had now become dark enough to necessitate the use of my head-lamp, and as my latest capture rolled in the light, I thought I had hooked another bream, until suddenly I saw a red eye looking back at me! Along with the bright red fins it soon became apparent that I had hooked another large roach and, judging from the size of it, one that was well over my target weight! I reached for my landing net and began gently pulling the fish towards me, when you’ve guessed it – the hook pulled! 

If there were reports of unsolved murders going on that night then, sorry Sussex police, it was me! But I ask you, three in three weeks! I screamed every obscenity I knew into the night air, and then made up a few new ones just for good measure. Hastily, I resolved never to go fishing again, my rod was going to end up in the nearest bin and…and… In the end, I simply put on another couple of maggots and cast back out to the bush, still shaking, still mad but somehow operating on a sort of auto-pilot of despair. Within thirty seconds the float buried and 4lb 6oz chub put in his second appearance of the evening!

By now, I knew I really should have been packing up. The extra hour I’d allowed myself was well and truly up, but somehow I just couldn’t pull myself away. I had another chub and a bream, but I was still cursing the lost roach when the float went under again and, in the light of my torch, I saw my third, two-pound plus roach roll on the surface. With trembling hands, I reached for my net and said a silent prayer to the fish Gods in the sky.

It soon became apparent that my biggest problem now was that it had become too dark to net the fish without having my headtorch on, but every time the fish surfaced it would catch sight of this unnatural light emitting from my head and would quickly dive for the depths again. Just to make matters worse, I could clearly see the maggot hanging out of the corner of its mouth, under which I knew my tiny size 18 hook was doing its best to hang on and prevent me from committing Hari karri later that night!  

Slowly the fish began to tire, until eventually it was laying on the surface just out of netting range. As I gently increased the pressure, so it drew closer and closer until, suddenly, it caught sight of my headlight again and began a head shaking session any punk-rocker would have been proud of. As it rolled from side to side it sent up a frenzy of spray, all beautifully illuminated in the light of my torch. My heart was missing more beats than a broken engine while I waited for the hook to fly out again, but unbelievably this time, both the hook and my luck held, and a few seconds later it disappeared into the waiting folds of my landing net.

Weighing was a formality. Although it only beat my target by two ounces, I just knew it was over two-pounds and, although I would like to say I went mad and punched the air or ran round the field, in reality I was far too busy weighing, photographing and returning her, for any real celebration. I packed away happy, but in the back of my mind a couple of niggling doubts remained: how big had been the fish I’d lost and were either of them over the club record of 2lb 3 1/2oz? Still only in the second week of the new season, I was determined to find out!

The summer went from strength to strength, but the really big roach eluded me until the final few weeks of the season. In a way, it was a case of back to the beginning, as my car slithered to a halt in the car park near the weed-rack swim, and I ran across the field in an attempt to get a whole hour’s fishing in before darkness descended. First few casts provided a couple of small roach and a chub before the light faded and the bigger roach took an interest. A steady procession of fish in the 10oz – 1lb bracket followed, until I miscast when the line caught round the reel handle. With my float hopelessly out of position, it trundled down the quicker-paced middle of the river while I desperately tried to untangle my line in the gathering gloom, when suddenly it disappeared!

A firm strike not only succeeded in hooking the fish, but also in tightening the line around the handle. The fish felt quite a good one, but until I could sort out the tangle, I could neither give nor retrieve any line, which would prove disastrous if the fish went on a run. Trying to ignore the urgent pulling on the rod, I concentrated on freeing the handle, having to point the rod almost directly at the fish in order to slacken the line sufficiently to free it.

By the time it eventually came clear, the fish was in the rushes down at my feet, a typical chub trick if ever I knew one! But as the fish came out it certainly didn’t look like a chub, more like a bream or a roach. Before I’d had a chance to properly identify it the fish dived, taking line which until so recently it wouldn’t have had access to, and a mist appeared, settling on the water in a swirling white mass which made positive identification impossible. Battling to regain control, I exerted pressure and before long, the fish was boiling on the top, and this time I was certain it was a roach. Keeping up a steady pressure, I steered it deftly towards the waiting net and duly missed! Maybe ‘mist’ would have been a more apt description, for the weather had certainly closed in, and just seeing the river was proving difficult. For a few heart-stopping moments I wasn’t sure if the fish was still on, but as I hastily pulled the net out of the way I felt it thump again, and it wasn’t long before it was back on top and this time, I’m glad to say, I made no mistake with the net.

In all of the confusion with the tangle and the botched netting, I hadn’t really had a chance to get unduly nervous at being attached to such a large roach, but now, looking down at it in the net, the enormity of what I had achieved began to hit me. After careful unhooking, I placed her into a plastic bag, before hooking it on to my scales and holding it aloft. Hardly daring to breathe, I watched with baited breath as the needle shot past the 2lb mark before settling at just over 2lb 5oz, a new HBDFAA record, and probably the biggest roach ever to have been taken from the Rother. Hardly able to believe what I was seeing, I re-zeroed the scales and weighed her for a second time with exactly the same result. EUREKA! And just to think, if the line hadn’t caught around the reel handle causing me to miscast, then I would never have hooked her in the first place! After all of those years of trying, I would love to have claimed it was a perfect cast as part of a perfectly laid plan which eventually caught the fish of my dreams, but fate has a funny way of paying you back in the long term, both good and bad, and I guess this time it was just my turn to get lucky.

Without a keepnet to hand, I placed her back in the landing net and secured it as best as possible while I went off to try and find a signal for my mobile so I could ring my friend Matthew to come out and witness it. An hour later, and it was Matthew’s turn to slide to a halt in the car-park, before running over to the river bank with camera in one hand, and another set of scales in the other. His father, Alan, had come along as a second witness, and had brought with him a record fish claim form and a camcorder, on which he recorded the moment for eternity.

It was a happy party which trudged back to the car-park that night, before driving the short distance to the local pub for a celebratory pint, and to fill in the necessary paperwork to submit my record claim. And that was to reveal one more surprise for us all for, although we had fished together many times over the years, it wasn’t until we signed the form that we realised we all shared the same surname! It’s a small world as they say, but one which is made all the more beautiful for the chance to enjoy such wonderful moments as those shared by us on that cold and frosty March evening. Lifting our pints, we toasted the new record and relived the capturing of it before turning our minds to the season ahead, and the new challenges it would undoubtedly hold. Matthew really fancied trying to track down one of the elusive sea-trout which still occasionally ran up the Rother, while his father was on a mission to prise the chub record away from his son who was the current holder. And as for me? Well, what I really fancied was trying to find somewhere… but that’s a story for another day!

Footnote: The ‘record’ was caught again a few days later by a chub angler ledgering a large lump of cheese paste. When weighed and witnessed by the club secretary, it went 2lb 5 1/2oz; one quarter of an ounce bigger and a new club record. In all, I held the record for a little over a week, and all that after seven years of trying! I couldn’t help wondering where the extra ¼ ounce had come from; perhaps it had swallowed the cheese paste on the way in! A few days later, at the start of the close season, I saw a large mink fishing in exactly the same spot. Hopefully this beautiful fish will prove rather better at avoiding being caught by the mink, than it did by two lucky anglers.

 I, for one, certainly hope so, but then, I guess, only time will tell.
Jan Fuller May 1st 2022

But that will be another fishy tail 🙂 *Editor