last few pages jogged memories of personalities and venues.....Ian Heaps crossing to the taxi rank at "Ringway", still in waders and maggot spatter...Coombs midnight opening day of season about '64, fell asleep woke up red as a beetroot under a cloudless sky with quite severe sunburn. Good mate bought a house in Coombs village, once a year there would be a "plague ' of frogs leaving/returning to the lake. The Abelour Shield was a big match, on the B'water, 600 pegs or so, Agden Bridge draw, rejoining the queue was popular until you got a good peg...... Kevin and Benny always ended up with a crowd and a section...
Years went by and angling came and went as other passions rose and fell, one being stock-car racing and one of the drivers was notorious for a foul smell from his wagon.. which he used to collect fish offal from Fleetwood to supply his uncle's maggot farm, and delivering maggots to Sheffield by the ton...very lucrative business when maggots were the backbone of angling...Dipping in and out of the sport was to see the "arms race" of tackle development from the ubiquitous Mitchel and Milbro Enterprise combo to the wall-to-wall carbon that epitomised the match scene. The arrival of "carp fishing" for the masses in places like Sale and Chorlton water parks was when tackle shops began to smell more like chemists and had whole sections just full of over-nighting bivvies and triple rod set-ups, wheel-barrows and bite-detectors, so far away from my "tank ariel and omnia " days on Platt Fields and Southmoor ponds, and a bag of pinkies...
Been lucky enough to have spent time in the Pacific northwest, and the cult of Bass Fishing is a sight to behold, a tackle show at the now gone Seattle Kingdome was truly massive, and all about catching one species....being a guest at Potholes Bass Club just showed that "being on the water" was as big a reason for them as it is for most of us.....
Good post pal, enjoyable reading.
Heapsy in waders at airport covered maggot spatter. Quality! Lol. I bet he had ruffled hair with a crooked fringe his Mrs probably gave him with worm chopping scissors! And his Mexican B western movie style 'tache, fag in gob. Great fella though TBF.
If top anglers didn't draw a good peg many of them would drive off to another match venue rather than get their arse spanked fishing a no hope peg. That's how it often was back then.
And "development from the ubiquitous Mitchel and Milbro Enterprise combo". Bloody hell. Must be 35 years plus since those two were kings, more in Milbro's case. They used to sell a lot of cheap end thick walled arm aching fibreglass rods back in the day. Mitchell were well built solid and reliable reels albeit noisy gearing on retrieve, especially when anti reverse lever was on. Lost their way when Shimano hit the tackle scene with innovative features like fighting drag, bait runner and anti slip reel drum, crucial for finely setting tension on a fine quivertip. And they were almost silent on retrieve. Tackle has come on leaps and bounds since those days you mention, and maggot has long since been the biggest selling bait as it once was. Overtaken by pellets and boilies.
Your mention of a ton of maggots reminded me of an early morning crash I was in on the A515 Buxton to Ashbourne Road. My mate Gaz was driving his dad's builders transit van. Three lads in the front, myself and my mate Steve in the back sat on our Shakespeare seat boxes. 7 sets of tackle amongst us including two other mates following behind in an old Mini.
Gaz was being a speedboy racer dickhead taking the bends far too fast and this was in January or February in icy conditions. All of a sudden we seemed to be tumbling about in the back in the dol like rag dolls. Talk about life flashing before me, it did in nano seconds. I shit it until I realised the van had stopped and we'd smashed into a drystone wall. Tony who was driving behind said the van flipped over 3X demolishing a give way sign and knocking a hole in the wall slabs!
"Are you alright lads" - Tony and Carl asked..... "I'm alright mate apart from a few grazes and bruises". My mate Steve in back was a bit worse off having split a chipboard tool shelf with his ribs.... All I was bothered about was unzipping my holdall to make sure my beloved Fothergill and Harvey match rod was still intact. It was, phew!
Several gallons of maggots though we're crawling all over the road. Two ambulances shortly arrived, I can only imagine a farmer would have seen or heard the crash and phoned 999.
As the paramedics insisted we go to Derby hospital to get checked out cheeky **** Tony quipped - "seeing as you won't be needing the maggots today lads me n' Carl may as well use them on the Trent". He was on his hands and knees collecting up maggots like a scruffy Scouser looking for the league title!
We went to hospital and Steve was sat on the bed next door divided by curtains. As the nurse was dressing his wounds I heard "Ooh aghh oooh, it hurts nurse"...." Shut up ya soft bastard and stop whinging, I can hear you ya know" was my unsympathetic reply, but he took it well snd was and still is my best mate and that happened in '85 iirc. As for Gaz he suffered a broken collarbone and break to right hand and a few stitches from windscreen and side window shattering. Other lads in front had minor injuries I think. Gary's dad bollocked him good and proper as he put him out of being a builder for a couple of weeks.
