~clap
Some of you might remember that JohnH and I won the auction to have a day out with Giles Cochrane earlier this spring. Wheely had arranged this auction for charity in memory of one of his mates.
From the outset Giles turned out to be a lovely bloke. The weather was awful (frost in May) for the original dates we’d planned and so we asked him a day or so in advance whether we could cancel until the weather was better and the fish were feeding. For such a busy guy, he was very easy going about that, and we were very grateful.
Our day finally came on 24th June and Giles arranged for us to meet at Solhampton in Worcestershire. This was the first of many things he got right. For those of you who don’t know it, Solhampton is a lovely fishery, more akin to fishing in someone’s garden than on a ‘mercial. Burgess Homer took us around the place before Giles got there and its clear he is very proud of his fishery, as he should be.
On to the fishing. Giles gave us some advice on setting up Giles-style. For those of you who do not know him, Giles’ summer approach means keeping it simple, fishing with big hooks, heavy lines and light elastic. For us that meant 6mm pellets on banded to size 12 meat hooks and 0.18 lines. The water was quite shallow (2 feet) and so we were encouraged to feed 1 or 2 pellets 12 times a minute. Its difficult to say whether he had the venue sorted or whether its stacked with fish (almost certainly both are true), but it is fair to say that he got us catching from the off and we caught all day.
More important though was what we learnt. Giles is a very good teacher. He is patient (he needed to be with me) and yet encouraging and provides constant little tips that, added together, made a huge amount of difference.
Its amazing to see the qualities that make a great angler. Giles is famous for his innovations like hook in the loop, but that shouldn’t hide his incredible skill and ability to read what’s going on under the water. He is an innately great angler.
After a few dodgy days out I really needed something to set me on my feet again and this day did just that. Even on a 2 hour drive home feeling hot, sunburned and knackered I was itching to get out on the bank again to try to put all these new ideas into practice.
I wanted to thank Giles publicly for giving his day up for us. As well as his fishing exploits he is a university lecturer and studying for a PhD (no mean feat on its own that). His time must be precious and yet he we practically had to drag him away from the bank in the afternoon. On top of this, his skills as a teacher really shone through. Thanks also to Wheely for putting in the effort to arrange the auction. Not enough people do that kind of thing.
Well done all.
TF_Paddy.
