Dylan quickly caught his first gudgeon

I met Dylan and his grandfather on the Castles Lake coaching platform for what was intended to be a quick chat about our upcoming session, but as they had a whip set up
already I figured we might as well make the most of things! With the wind in our faces, Dylan’s rig needed a bit of tweaking to allow him to control things a bit more easily, but we
soon had it set up at the right depth and he quickly caught his first gudgeon (the first I’d seen from Castles!). Dylan really paid attention to the details and it was great seeing him
fascinated by the gudgeon’s subtle colours.

A switch to Tolpits allowed us to fish in a wind-free swim and work on the technique of swinging out the rig smoothly, fishing straight away for bites on the drop from some of Tolpits’ chunky
rudd. As with Ted, we went through the ‘perch have spikes’ rite of passage and spent a LONG time squinting at the hook while trying to put maggots on. A lesson for me: I’m going to make up some ‘oversize’ pole rigs with a fair amount of shot to help with the technique of swinging the rig when fishing to hand, and a larger hook for those new to baiting with maggots! We’ll try those
rigs at Dylan’s first full session in a week, when we might or might not get on to running line fishing.

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