Have you ever had one of those fishing days when you can do nothing wrong? Here are some classic strokes of luck we all appreciate. How many have happened to you? If the answer is more than two on the same day, make sure you buy a lottery ticket!
TWO FOR THE PRICE OF ONE!
ONE of the oddest flukes any angler could hope for is the capture of two fish at the same time. On multiple-hook sea angling rigs, it can happen quite often, but have you ever done it on a single hook, or with just the one lure, while coarse fishing?
Just occasionally, greedy fish like perch will go for the same offering and end up snared on the same hook! Rarer still is the capture of a small fish such as a gudgeon that has somehow lodged itself in your swimfeeder. Now what are the chances of that?
WHO NEEDS A DISGORGER ANYWAY?
IF IT’S sheer agony to lose a fish at the net, the opposite applies when the angler lands a fish in the nick of time, just as the hook pings out!
Most seasoned anglers will have won and lost a good number of these toss-of-a-coin moments. Of course, other incidents are less of a close shave, but the fish manages to shed the hook as soon as it’s safely netted and the line goes slack. That’s saved you a job!
A BIG SLAB OF FORTUNE
WHILE you won’t catch the smallest fish on big hooks and thick line, the opposite is so often true. Fine tackle is great for fooling wary fish that you might not have intended to catch – it’s just that you might need a change of underpants to tame a creature that weighs several times the breaking strain of your line. Fortune favours the brave, though, and if you can hang on for long enough to get some degree of control, you might just land that lucky monster – as this chap, Scott West, did with this 37lb carp on a 6lb tench hooklink.
And if you do bank a giant carp or barbel on light line, you can certainly claim a degree of skill as well as count your blessings.
ACCIDENTAL ‘JAWS’
ANOTHER timeless piece of good or ill fortune, depending on how you look at it, is to have a large predator gatecrash your swim. If having your next roach or dace stolen by a pike is relatively common, however, the same can’t be said of getting ‘Jaws’ on to the bank!
First, you need that small hook to catch right on the edge of the jaw. Second, a large predator might need to be folded to fit into a landing net that suddenly looks decidedly small. Some fantastic pike have been caught like this – but some lucky anglers also catch big perch in the same fashion.
MISCAST OR S
