12/09/26, Coaching/Casting Lesson, Harbourbridge Lakes, Chickerell.

IS THERE A DENTIST IN THE HOUSE?

There is only one thing more annoying than having juniors drop out of events, and that is not being notified that juniors are dropping out of events… Carting a tackle shop of gear to a windswept lake, setting it all up and then packing it all away again without a single drowned maggot is annoying. The annoyance is escalated by the fact that the Head coach KNEW that this junior wasn’t going to attend and had completely forgotten.

I can still feel the prickly feeling that creeps over your skin when you realise that the faeces has hit the blades, and you’re the one that threw it…

Sorry Jerry…

In all seriousness, every event on Spond has an ‘Except’ and ‘Decline’ button. Everyone gets a notification of every event. Please be courteous and let me know either way, especially if you have already booked into an event.

Make a dentist poorer, and don’t make me grind my teeth!!

DANCING SQUIRRELS

The journey to Harbourbridge was delightfully uneventful. That was until a Squirrel decided that now was a good time to grab a spot of lunch in the middle of the road.

I like Squirrels, but even I didn’t know the kind of movement a startled Squirrel has in its locker. The animal looked at me like it was my fault as I stamped on the brakes forcing all the tackle I was carrying into the front passenger seat. I swear it grabbed its crotch and started doing a convincing impression of Micheal Jackson from the ‘Bad’ era, thrusting its way across the road before disappearing into the bushes. I even paused a while to offer light applause before continuing on my way.

Unusual…

BECAUSE YOU'RE WORTH IT!

Upon arrival to a now much greener Harbourbridge Lakes, I parked Walter (the car) in a bush and was immediately greeted with a strong breeze. I felt like I was being filmed for a L’Oreal advert in the 1980’s and shook my head in slow motion in homage…

(For the Kids, the 1980’s were a time when everything was black and white, and you could say things without offending anyone…)

GNASHING OF TEETH

The first disappointment of the day was the giant pallet that contained a Poly-tunnel which had been dumped right in the middle of the area which I had earmarked for casting today.

I turned around to see if we could launch in the other direction and I found a 6ft wide hole which I hadn’t noticed before. (Always observant)…

What to do?

I made the sound through my nose and mouth similar to a Donkey being gently choked and embellished the noise with two words, one of which was ‘it’, and the other I can’t write here…

WHAT IS IN A NAME THAT A ROSE MAY STILL BE AS SWEET?

By now, the coaching team of Timothy, Jerrothy, Chrisothy, and Mikothy had arrived. We were joined by guest coach, Dave Coppothy…

Bizarrely, the junior with the furthest to travel, Seth, was the first to arrive (?). He was slowly joined by the others who had slithered out of bed from 10-minutes away. Apart from Tory who had been stuck behind a ‘Brake enthusiast’ all the way from Bridport. We knew she was annoyed because she launched into a tirade of language that made a Navy guy blush, caused a heard of sheep to simultaneously vomit, and all the birds in the nearby trees to take flight. Even the boot of my car closed on its own and it’s not even motorised! We may have to work on that a bit…

FLYING PRICKLY BALLS

The event begun with a casting lesson on what was left of an area of thistly scrubland.

Nice flat and friendly so it seemed. But every time you reeled in a tennis ball after casting it, it came back bristling with thistle leaves like a tooled-up hedgehog.

We looked at basic casting, more fluid casting, casting to a clip and a bit of underarm casting. All executed with skill and dexterity, whilst being heckled and barracked by my ‘faithful’ bunch of coaches/’friends’… Thanks lads…Comments like ‘That would have been even better if it was straight’ and ‘At least they know how NOT to do it’ were frequently heard. Just for the record, I always scratch the back of my head with my middle finger. Just so you know.

Benji asked me ‘When is the fishing club starting?’, Which is just what you want to hear when you are in the middle of a fishing lesson.

‘This is it!’ I replied.

‘Is it? Oh… Do we get to catch anything today?’

‘Well, yes, hopefully. If you use what I’m trying to teach you, then you have a good chance’…

NO ARGUEMENTS

This moves me on to a subject that has recently come to light.

Fishing is THE hardest sport to teach, bar none…

Take football for instance…

Once learned, you can coach football skills anywhere, any time of year and they will work. The ball won’t affected by air pressure. It won’t stop working when it’s full. It won’t move away on its own. A ball might be affected by wind and rain, but it won’t suddenly stop rolling if there is a change in weather conditions that you were not aware of. You must keep the attention of the participants for 5-hours, not (mercifully) the 90 or so minutes of a footie match.

It's hard and we do flippin’ well… So there!

THE SESH

At the lake, the session was going swimmingly (not literally) even with reduced numbers. The lake, like most places, performed as usual despite that painfully low water level. It was the right decision to call the match off, but everyone caught loads of fish and went home contented.

IS IT WORTH IT?

I’m not going to lie, this year has been challenging so far. Challenging to the point of asking myself is it worth it anymore?

The simple answer is yes, of course it is!

Even with reduced numbers, the satisfaction of teaching kids the skills that have been such a joy in my life is immeasurable. The dedication of the coaches is unwavering and, remember, we don’t get paid for this!

The demographic of the juniors has shifted towards a foundation level of skills this year. By that I mean that we have lost 10 of our regulars from last year. These have been replaced by new juniors to the sport, and now our work must look towards bringing them through to the level of those that we have lost. It is a dynamic challenge for us to evolve in line with our membership, and we will rise to meet it.

Besides, for me it is worth coming out even if it’s just to hear Alexander laughing at my humour! At least someone finds it funny…

CH - CH - CH - CH - CHANGES

There will be some changes to accommodate some of the feedback we have received.

One of those changes will be to reduce the length of matches and/or events from 5 to 4 hours, with a weigh-in at halftime. This breaks up the day, meaning we can release fish from keep nets earlier, have a running score of how the match is progressing and even stop for lunch.

There will be changes to the coaching program back to a system that I wrote before using the Get Fishing certificates. This will be an eight-step program that will build skills towards juniors being able to fish independently by learning specific skills aimed at competitive fishing. Remember, fishing in a match is a choice as to whether you ‘go for the win’ or ‘enjoy a day’s fishing’. It doesn’t matter if there is a match on or not if you want the latter.

A pet hate of mine has always been the way that coaching sessions end. Everyone just drifts away, and we don’t get a chance to discuss anything or to properly say thank you to our coaches.

Coaching sessions will end with a one-hour match to help develop skills learned on the day or in previous sessions. A small prize will be given to the winner. This will help juniors to not be afraid of competitive events and that, in the end, it doesn’t really matter if you win or not. You’ve just been fishing! What could be better than that?

All these changes will happen now.

There are other planned changes to the membership that we will discuss at the appropriate time.

FANKS

Thank you to Jim Roper for allowing us to use his lakes and land today.

Thank you to the best coaching team ever, Jerry, Tim, Chris, Mike, and Dave.

Thank you to those who turned out to go fishing with us today.

NEXT!

Our next event is a match only session I’m afraid. This is currently due to the lack of usable space at Silverlake due to water levels (again!)

The next event after that is on the 10th of October (TBC) on the river Stour where there may be limited space for coaching depending on numbers wanting to fish the match.

There will be a coaching session before the start of the match, so pay attention to that.

I will run through the stuff you will need for the river for those at Silverlake and on a PDF coming soon.

This is the Bread Punch, and I am Mostly Tired…

G…