Return to The Cottage Pool
Back in 2007, when writing the penultimate chapter of A Waterside Year, I stated that it was my destiny to return to The Cottage Pool. This two-acre pond was where I learned to coarse fish back in 1988. That's thirty years ago.
Given the importance of anniversaries, I decided to return to where it all began.
The full story of 'the return' will form a bonus chapter in the upcoming book version of A Waterside Year. However, I thought you'd like a taster by reading more about The Cottage Pool, how I came to fish it, why I ceased fishing there, and what it was like when I returned there after nearly 25 years.
The Family Pool
My father first fished The Cottage Pool in 1963, when it was known as for its big pike, so it's very much part of the family's angling DNA. I used to go there with him when I was a toddler in the mid-seventies (I can remember going out in an old wooden punt with him, sitting on the deck and eating chocolate digestive biscuits, while he fly-fished for stocked trout). But it's a separate and 'pleasantly painful' memory that lingers.
The Cottage Pool as it once was, when the trees were small and rhododenrons cascaded down to the water.
First memory – 1977
My first-ever memory is of running down a potholed farm track towards a dark but enticing lake. I tripped and fell forward, hitting my head on the crushed brick roadway and fracturing my skull. I was three years old. The lake, which I was so keen to get to, was The Cottage Pool. It called to me then and it calls to me now. I thank the brick that tripped me, and the one that caused the scar above my right eye, for ensuring that this lovely little lake would always be a part of me.
Trout Pool
The Cottage Pool was a trout fishery in the seventies and early eighties. But it never really suited trout. The water was always muddy and the surrounding trees cast a lot of shade and leaf litter. So in 1983 the trout anglers decided to net the lake, attempting to remove all its coarse fish in the hope that this would enable the water to clear. (Coarse fish, being bottom feeders, muddy up the water as they root around for their food.) I remember the netting, as the lake was drained so low that I found a Mitchell 300 reel in the mud twenty feet from the bank. It must have fallen overboard when a coarse fisherman was fishing from the punt back in the sixties. I also remember seeing dozens of pike laid out on the bank, and 'huge' carp leaping the nets.
Netting The Cottage Pool. With the water drained so low, the coarse fish were easy to net and remove – with the exception of the carp which jumped the nets.
A carp fishery in the making
The trout anglers were successful in removing nearly all the coarse fish from the lake. Those that remained were the fry of roach, perch, gudgeon and bream – and carp of all sizes which had evaded the nets. These carp thrived in their new home, having virtually no competition for food and no predators. Within five years The Cottage Pool was the best-held carp fishing secret in the area. Not for the size of fish (which, being feral fish, only grew to ten pounds or so) but because it was possible to fish here for carp in a way that had escaped the modern carp-angling scene. There were no bivvies or bite alarms, just anglers sitting on wicker creels or deckchairs while watching either a float or breadcrust.
Carp were soon the dominant species in the lake thanks to the trout anglers' failed attempts to eradicate them.
Fishing rights – 1988
My father, seeing the potential of The Cottage Pool as a coarse fishery more than a trout water, secured the lease in 1988 when the trout anglers admitted final defeat. The water was still muddy, the trout barely lasted a season, and 'those wretched carp' kept taking their flies and breaking their lines.
The Cottage Pool was a pretty barren place in 1988. The trout anglers had stripped all the vegetation from one bank so that they could cast, and the new owner was doing some large-scale earthworks around the pool.
Earthworks begin behind The Cottage Pool. The sound of diggers was common for two years.
I used my horticultural skills to replant the banks with alders, oaks, birch and willows, and set about planting lilies, reedmace and bistort in the water. I had the vision, knowing it would take many years for the banks and features to mature. I later planted poplars, osiers and oak trees from Redmire Pool, a beech tree from Beechmere, and holm oaks and horse chestnuts from Jade Lake.
First fishing
My first casts into The Cottage Pool were pleasure fishing for roach and bream, learning how to shot a float and time the strike. Indeed, this was a brand new style of fishing for me given that I'd previously only fished for trout using fly or spinner. But then, out of the blue, I hooked a fish that travelled at missile speed before snapping my line and leaving me wondering whether I could pluck up the courage to cast again into the water. The fish – a carp – had picked up my sweetcorn bait and implanted itself deep within my psyche. I'd lost the fish but was absolutely hooked on carp.
Fishing at The Cottage Pool in 1988. I was content to catch roach and bream – until I hooked a carp!
First carp – 1989
My physics teacher, who worked at the same school as my dad, learned of my recent run in with a carp. He lent me two books: Confessions of a Carp Fisher by BB, and Casting at the Sun by Chris Yates. These books changed my life, setting me on a path that enabled me to catch my first carp.
I learned from these books that stout tackle was needed. So I swapped the four-pound line on my reel for 'boat rope' six-pound line. I also increased the size of my hook from 12 to 8 and bought a 'huge' 24-inch-wide John Wilson deep mesh landing net. I made some paste bait from honey and bread (as recommended by BB's book) and – knowing that the carp and Chris Yates approved of sweetcorn – bought 18 tins of Green Giant from my local supermarket.
I lost the first three carp I hooked. Two snagged me in weed and the third broke me as it ran for open water. (I didn't know that the clutch on a Mitchell 300 – yes the one I'd found in the mud all those years ago – could be loosened to allow the fish to run.) And then, in late summer, I hooked and landed my first carp. The fish, which weighed five pounds, took two grains of float-fished sweetcorn. It stayed away from the weed long enough for me to turn it and pull it towards me. Most of the fight was under my rod-tip when it realised I was winning the battle.
After landing the carp, and once I'd stopped shaking, I placed the carp in a keepnet (I didn't know better back then) and cycled home to tell my mum. I asked her to get Dad to visit the lake when he returned home from a parent's evening at school. If he could bring the family's camera, I'd be able to capture the momentus occasion. I then cycled back to the lake to carry on fishing. (In those days it was fine to leave one's tackle set up at the lake for days or weeks on end. There was no risk of them getting stolen.) But I didn't catch another carp that evening; I was too busy grinning and gazing up at the sky.
At last, I was a bona fide carp angler. Photographed by car headlight once my dad had come home from work. The Cottage Pool, 1989.
My perfect place
The Cottage Pool was my perfect escape from the pressures of school and college exams – and the challenges of adolescence. Always the shy introvert, I preferred to be at the pool away from the noise and bustle of others.
This was my favourite swim on the lake, where I was happiest. Even to this day, whenever I'm stressed, I close my eyes and picture this scene to escape to my place of calm.
Fishing at The Cottage Pool was a father-son adventure. Dad would fish opposite me and we'd keep each other updated of fish movements from each side of the pool.
As Dad was the only one who knew how to use a camera, I'd be the one running round the lake to hold his fish while he photographed it. (My photo album from the period is impressive, though they're nearly all Dad's fish.)
Abolished – 1995
I fished at The Cottage Pool virtually every weekend of the fishing season from 1988 to 1995. The 16th June was the most special date in the calendar, which marked the start of the nine-month season. Dad and I would arrive at the lake at 10pm on the 15th, bait our swims, then sit back and await midnight. Dad would signal the start of the season with a hearty "Okay!" and we'd then cast in our glow-in-the-dark floats. Typically it would be first light before we got a bite, but we'd been there are the key time, honouring the age-old tradition of Opening Day.
Sadly, in 1995, the Government abolished the closed season on lakes and canals. The Cottage Pool syndicate were unsure about whether to allow fishing outside of the traditional season so, at the AGM in April 1995, they put it to the vote. Dad and I voted to keep the closed season, the other 10 anglers voted to abolish it. Being dependent upon the other angler's money to pay the lease, Dad decided to give up the lease. He and I felt so betrayed that Dad gave up coarse fishing and I went in search of a water where the anglers still honoured the old season. (It led to me being invted to join the Jade Lake syndicate to fish with Chris Yates, but that's a different story.)
Although I'd known the pool all of my life, I fished there for just six and a half years. Dad and I thought that we'd always fish there. It was our pool, yet we'd lost control of it over a decision that favoured angler's needs over environmental stewardship.
My last view of The Cottage Pool, on an overcast day in 1995. I couldn't bear to see the lake being fished in spring, so I would find a new water which still honoured the magic of June 16th.
The in-between years
By 1996 I was living in Berkshire, half a day's drive from The Cottage Pool, so I had few opportunities to visit. But, whenever I could align my travel, I'd call in to say hello to my old friend. But I never fished, always sensing an unease as though the lake were asking me for help.
It was clear from the ever-deteriorating platforms and uncontrolled lily growth in the pool that a lot of work and investment would be needed to bring the pool back to the standard it was in the early nineties. So I could never fish, always knowing that if I stayed there for more than ten minutes that I'd want to roll up my sleeves and help rather than sitting back and fishing.
So as the years passed, I visited The Cottage Pool less and less until I stopped visiting altogether. I preferred to hold the memory of it, rather than see that memory disolve in an overload of present-day images.
A glimpse of The Cottage Pool, on a visit when I was "just checking it's okay".
Return to The Cottage Pool
My father, having rediscovered his love of coarse fishing last year, set about finding out who controlled the fishing at The Cottage Pool. It turned out to be a family friend, so he was able to secure a place on the syndicate that now fishes it. And, last week, he invited me there as his guest.
I'll write about the experience in the extended version of A Waterside Year, but here are the photos from the memorable day:
A sea of green. The Cottage Pool had matured spectacularly, though I wish I'd never planted the lilies. They'd grown three times larger than I'd expected.
Continuity
A mirror of childhood dreams. The swim where I caught my first-ever carp – just off the bistort weed to the right – and where I hoped to catch again. I'd planted the trees opposite 25 years earlier.
Dad fishing in his favourite swim. It was great to be fishing alongside him again.
Connection
Dad was into a carp before I'd tackled up, proving he's still the master. Just look at the speed that the fish is swimming to the left. The ripples are from where it was hooked, yet you can see the float zipping to the left.
Dad's carp. It was an angry and difficult to hold fish, dashing off quickly when we returned it to the lake.
My first carp from The Cottage Pool in 24 years. Mirror carp are pretty rare in the pool, so I was really pleased.
Reflections
Dad and I caught more carp but the journey was about connecting with the past and coming full circle to the present. I'll go back, both to fish and help tend to the lake. I need it as much as it needs me.
I sit here, typing these words, pausing every now and then to feel the scar on my head. I'm never away from The Cottage Pool. My first memory is of it. I wonder if, in my fishing, it will be my last? I couldn't think of a better water to fish for the rest of my days.
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