Do you know the way to Bridport? 30/05/26, Coaching, Chester's Lake, Whitemoor.

Jurassic Juniors is nearly two months old now and, well, there are times when I have thought that things could be better. From a membership of thirty-seven, we are now struggling to get past twenty at the time of writing. It would be easy to get despondent and wonder if it was worth the long hours, days, and months of preparation.

Then a day like today comes along and one starts to think that those that couldn’t or didn’t want to come to our coach session, really missed out.

When you get the coaches saying that they had learned something from the day, you can’t help but feel satisfied. I don’t often blow my own trumpet, very rarely in fact and often quite the reverse. But today was flippin’ good!

Before I tell you all about it, let’s spool back a couple of days to a trip with the Old Gits Club to Mangerton Lake near Bridport…

It was going to be warm, but not as hot as it had been. Mangerton had spawned, the fishing was going to be good, and life was great. This was the feeling inside me as I passed a sign pointing to Yeovil…

Yeovil?

YEOVIL!!!

All that good life feeling evaporated in a split second as I chillingly realised that I was on the

WRONG ROAD!!!

I should, of course, have been heading to Bridport. I mean, who WANTS to go to Yeovil?

I had just zipped past a sign to Maiden Newton, and you can’t handbrake turn with an electric handbrake! The next road was to Cattistock, so I took that one because it looked right (or left in this case…)

Weaving through high hedged lanes, and passing high walled properties, I travelled through some very pretty places including Beaminster, which looked quite picturesque at a quarter to eight in the morning. Beaminster is now high on my list of places of interest.

For the record, the fishing was fantastic, as it always is at Mangerton. However, the accompanying background noise was a little off. The atmosphere is usually created by twittering birds, sploshing fish. The day’s sponsor turned out to JCB, as a large concrete breaker did it’s thing inside a massive new open ended grain store in the field next door.

The cacophonous sound attracted a swarm of excited helicopter’s too, which just added to the soothing ambience of the day.

I am going to suggest the next Old Git’s Day out should be in Ukraine, the Gaza Strip, or the Leeds and Liverpool Canal for some peace and quiet.

Back to the coaching then and Jerry looked resplendent in his new ‘High Viz’ vest. We would have both looked good only, one of us is an idiot and had forgotten theirs. So Jerry had to take the swipes about being a car park attendant, or enquiries about deck chair hire, alone. I’m going to buy him a toy radio to clip on to the vest so he can enjoy flash backs of his days on the beat…

Of course, being a former match angler, nothing is ever my fault. So I squarely blamed Neil, who was my travel partner for the day, for distracting me with his presence that morning.

With a giant turnout of nearly four juniors, I had stood down gentle Jon Bass for today’s session. We will see him next week for the match at Harbourbridge instead.

I say nearly four juniors because our newest junior, Alfie (6), got a touch of the fidgets and I didn’t even get round to see how they were doing! Which was a shame. I can’t blame him though. Maybe listening to some guy droning on about rigs and shotting patterns used up his ‘spoons of patience’ too early? Even Harriet yawned after just 90-seconds of waffle, and Jayce’s face was contorted with stifled yawns not long after. Rafe is new and still keen enough to maintain a façade of interest. A weaker man would crumble in the face of such damming feedback. But I am nothing but resilient in the face of such harsh criticism. They’ve paid for this and they’re gonna get it!!

To be honest, it went well. The fish had been thoroughly briefed in advance by both me and Nice Bloke Tim prior to the start of the event, and they played their part well.

It was good the hear ‘slap, slap, feed, slap, slap, feed’ going on around the lake as the juniors tried to emulate the high quality of coaching that they had just witnessed.

The water was soon being whipped to a foam and poles and rigs crashed repeatedly upon the water. Pellets rained down from on high as they practiced their new skills. I have arranged for some therapy for the fish over the following days to help reduce the long-term effects of trauma. Imagine if we had more juniors attending? There would have been a line of the larger Carp tapping me on the leg for ‘a word’…

The day settled down as trees provided some much-needed shade despite the cloud cover which filtered the sunlight. A light breeze provided some welcome relief too, but even so, the day was starting to get to our coaches.

Jerry looked abandoned as he tucked into his lunch at 11:30am. Junior-less, he turned to eating and coaching one or two parents instead.

Neil, who had wandered off for a few moments solace, was spotted ‘having-a-go’ himself on Jerry’s vacant fishing equipment. I couldn’t help but notice the unusual style that Neil has adopted seated, as he was, facing the wrong way. His catch rate is impressive for someone who doesn’t even look at the lake he is adjacent to. Imagine how good he’d be if faced the right way round!!!

Tim seemed anxious as he consistently glanced towards the gate. I thought he was twitching get home early, but it emerged that he was simply waiting for the arrival of his

delightful daughter.

But it was Captain Chris that gave me the most reason for concern.

A screech from Harriet alerted Chris to the presence of a rather thick, but very angry Wasp which had found itself trapped within the confines of a fishing umbrella. Chris gallantly disappeared beneath umbrella to confront the unwelcome beast, and I witnessed something very strange.

Only Chris’s lower extremities were now visible. These ‘legs’ which I knew to belong to Chris, started to skip and jump as the umbrella swayed and jerked in time with the movements within.

The Wasp, who by now was probably thinking ‘I’m not staying under here with this lunatic, despite how many small girls there are to annoy’, zipped out, paused after looking both left and right, and went ballistic by shooting vertically away from the scene.

Chris emerged from beneath the brolly clutching a white handkerchief. Who knew that Morris dancers are people simply attempting to rid themselves of a troublesome nuisance…

The second tutorial, which was better than the first, was focused on paste. A bait that I knew was very effective at Whitemoor in the past. It still was and made the Head Coach look like a rockstar. Always select your venues carefully kids!

I was so content that I even let Rafe use the sacred pole, much to the shattered nerves of dad, Ricky, who was far happier when he put it down. (carefully!)

With Alfie on his way home, Rafe was catching fish on expanders at an impressive rate and has an alarmingly loud voice for someone so demure. He ended the day with well over 30 fish and had a great session.

Harriet was improving her skills and was also catching impressively well through the middle of the session. The catch rate tailed off a little towards the end, but she rallied with a final flourish to also catch close to 30 small Carps…

Finally Jayce, who was pining to get back onto a more familiar feeder for most of the session, was forced to fish with a pole for at least half the day by dad, Jake.

Being a tent dweller (Carp Angler), I am impressed with this dictatorial stance and look forward to seeing more of it in the future. Jayce got his revenge before the end, however, by donating one of the Head coaches Margin rigs to the lake curtesy of a broken elastic.

Being the most experienced junior on the day, Jayce impressed with his pole fishing, but more so with coping with finicky short casts to the island. Landing a feeder in front of bushes that constantly invited you to cast closer so they can keep the feeder, is an art.

So, there you have it. Another coaching session consigned to the history books, and another blog almost finished.

It has been so easy to write off JJAC as non-starter because of an apparent lack of interest. Jerry and I have been talking about what is going wrong and how it can be improved to get juniors to come to our events.

But maybe it isn’t broken.

Maybe everything is how it should be…

A large group of people cannot not always commit to a date all at the same time, and life can get in the way, even with fishing!

We have been questioning our motivation lately. I know I have, and Jerry feels the same.

JJAC has a year, maybe two, to prove itself to be viable. But maybe it is quality, not quantity that we should be striving for. Those that came today definitely had quality from our tutorials and from the coaches individually throughout the day. That should be our focus going forward.

Thank you to Jerry, Neil, Tim, and Chris for some quality coaching today.

Thank you to Tom James at Whitemoor for accommodating us at such a well-kept fishery.

A reminder that midnight tonight is the cut off for inclusion on Spond. If you do not have a membership by tomorrow, those names will be cut from Spond.

Our next event is on the 6th of June for a match at Harbourbridge. Coaching is available for those that do not want to enter the match.

You have been Bread Punched…