THE ULTIMATE ANGLING BUCKET LIST

The golden version on the other hand will be more immediately recognisable, having a very bright
reddish pink wash over an under lying silvery background, and very obvious bright red on the fins.
Some specimens might even look yellowish orange. Either way, a million miles away from anything
else.
Though I don't coarse fish much, I have caught both varieties. The golden orfe was one of the species
Graeme Pullen and I picked up on Lundy Island back in the 1980's while fishing for carp and prussian
carp with our sea fishing gear, because it was all we had with us at the time.
We had some very nice specimens there too. Beautiful fish. But it would be a good thirty years before
I would encounter the species again, this time in its silvery form as the ide.
I'd read about a huge match weight of ide coming out of a small commercial lake called Highfield not
too far from me over on the Fylde Coast at Hambleton, so I decided to take a ride over there to see what
I could gather in terms on information for my website Fishing Films and Facts.
Fishery manager George Wilson recorded an audio interview on the topic, then introduced me to match
angler Nathan Lumb who held the fishery match record with 138 pounds of ide taken in five hours.
Nathan also agreed to record an audio interview, then later, we met up again to film a video on stillwater
match pole fishing for YouTube, where again, ide were the main featured fish.
Loose feeding casters from a pole cup
and allowing the hook bait to do a slow
natural drop was the killing technique,
sometimes lifting it for a second drop
if it wasn't taken first time, as he had
them feeding just under the surface and
was knocking them out for fun.
Ide
Video demonstration over, I asked if I
could have go. Technically, I had
caught the species before, but as I've
said, only the golden variety. So having
watched very intently while I was
filming, and never having previously
tried it, I also wanted to feel what pole
fishing was like first hand, so Nathan
and I swapped places.
Watching is one thing. Doing it yourself is very different matter. The pole Nathan was using at just
short of £3,000 was one of the best. Even so, with sixteen metres out, and hardly a breath of breeze, I
still found it not as easy in practise as it had looked to me as an observer. So what it would be like to
handle on a windy day I can only guess.
Still, it worked, and I bagged myself a few nice ide, coming away from the place well satisfied on a
whole range of fronts.
Associated audio interview numbers: 34 and 38.
316