The art of spinning

A new spinner arrived on my doormat tonight. A design that I'm hoping will bring me some degree of success when I go back to try my luck on the Norfolk Broads with my good friend Jason later in the year. We had our first taste of broads pike fishing last autumn with a couple of hard days fishing there, staying at a very convenient caravan site in nearby Caister. The accommodation was good, but the company provided by Jason was even better and it's a priceless art to go fishing with someone who is very knowledgeable in a specific area of fishing. One of the most interesting aspects of fishing is that if we want to, we never stop learning.
I started my fishing journey over 30 years ago as a young boy with a very cheap fishing rod spinning for mackerel in the few summer months we had in the North East. A 6 mile cycle to the fishing mark with a rod, reel and a few of those triangular mackerel spinners that you always seem to find in seaside tackle shops yielded very little reward for all my efforts, but I will never forget that first exciting take from a mackerel and from that moment onwards, I think I was 'hooked' on that art of spinning.
It's strange looking back 30 years and those years seem to have flown by. My friends have all got older but our friendship remains as strong now as it did all those years ago. The common bond we all share is fishing and we are passionate about that indeed. But as friends we have all had our ups and downs and we've always been there for each other.My first real taste of serious spinning was back in the mid eighties when my friend Steven & I spent a week in the Mull of Galloway. Since neither of us possessed a car & neither of us drove, I was fortunate enough to have an extremely good friend who was financially persuaded to take us to Mull, leave us & then return a week later to pick us back up again. Words cant describe friends who will go to those lengths and I will be forever grateful to my friend for making such a long drive twice within a week.
Having been dropped off on a remote headland (long before the days of mobile phones), Steven & I were left totally isolated, without any contact with the outside world. We camped on the beach and were totally self contained for that week in terms of food & water. The nearest village was 6 miles away or a good 90 minute walk. Being a virgin camper, my food supplies consisted of a weeks worth of pot noodles and crisps & biscuits. Steven on the other hand, had camped before & was much more sensible in his selection of non perishable foods-tinned raviolli & spaghetti were his food of choice. Luckily for us, the area is prolific in mackerel shoals so we were never that far away from a fishy meal if we wanted to.
We fished hard for that week-spinning every day for pollack and mackerel. Early mornings resulted in pollack up to 6lb which for us then, was a good result given the limited tackle choice we had. Pollack were more plentiful from Mull then, as they have since declined in numbers due largely we think, to over fishing in that area. Mackerel shoals were prolific in the bay area (luce bay) and we caught and returned dozens of pollack and mackerel that week. We targetted dogfish at night but they became quite a nuisance in numbers. But my spinning 'teeth' were cut during that week in Mull and we learned a considerable amount about deep spinning with redgills and toby lures. Working redgills just off the bottom was highly successful and when the pollack stopped feeding, we could target ballan wrasse just over the side using limpets as hookbait. We didn't need ragworm or peeler crab to enjoy great sport with hard fighting wrasse.
Some 10 years after that trip, I was fortunate enough to be successful in my application to join a local salmon club syndicate on the Tyne and all those years spinning for pollack on the west coast of Scotland would prove essential for my success with salmon fishing within the club.
My first outing for salmon was a harsh lesson in how not to translate sea fishing techniques to river fishing. My friend Richard was highly knowledgeable about the salmon beat and we spun on a fast stretch of water. I was insistent on 'working' the lure through the water and feeling proud of my sea fishing skills, fished the run right through without so much of a sniff. Richard followed in behind me and without 'working' exactly the same lure, hooked 3 sea trout from the same stretch I'd just fished! A harsh lesson indeed but one that I took away & learned from.
My next trip up the the same stretch of the Tyne meant I was better prepared & my second cast produced a fine 6lb sea trout. A gentleman not 30 yards away had been fishing that stretch of water all day without seeing a thing and commented on how we were so fortunate enough to land such a prized hard fighting fish. Local knowledge from Richard was the difference on that trip and I learned quickly from Richards vast knowledge of the river. My third trip (still with spinning rod) produced 2x 6lb salmon and a smaller sea trout but I was learning quickly the difference between spinning for sea fish and spinning for river species.
Having become a member of this syndicate, I spent my first year watching & learning from Richard and we caught salmon regularly and in that first year, had amassed quite a catch rate between us.To this day, I am still the only member of this syndicate who has received the '1st fish of the season' trophy 3 times. A record I am proud of but unable to now enhance on because I am not able to get up to the river as much as I did when I lived in the North East.
In my opinion, spinning remains one of those slightly scorned areas of fishing especially as far as salmon fishing goes, as there is without question, a much more skillfull way to catch salmon & that is on the fly. But do not under estimate the potential that spinning with lures has, especially on light tackle for hard fighting summer shore species. Take care to scale down the tackle accordingly and you can enjoy extreme fishing sessions with only a few lures & some local knowledge.