Should swim bookings over the phone be allowed?

Question: Something else I’d be interested to hear about, and something that rarely gets discussed and is a bit of a white elephant of the circuit I suppose, and that is swim booking. It is probably something no one is going to admit to publicly so maybe not worth the punt, but personally, as an angler with very little, and precious time to go angling, one thing I just cannot tolerate in the modern scene is swim booking by phone. On the older school lakes I have fished over the years it would just never be tolerated and was always very simple: if you are on the pit, you can bucket a swim to follow someone in. Fair. You’ve made the effort, you’re there in physical form, you get the choice. Everybody abided by it and it gave anyone who could be bothered to make the effort a fair crack. The busyness and pressure on areas is not even a modern issue either, I remember wasting more than a few nights of my life on Redesmere in the late 90’s in crap swims nowhere near the carp just so I could get into good areas, sometimes not even casting out and just having the social. That was the point though, you had to wait if you wanted a chance at the cherry, and wait along with everyone else. ‘Waiting Man’s’ swims were called that for a reason.

There’s not that much in life that really narks me, and I stay as far away as physically possible from any politics as I can these days, but turning up to a lake to hear that someone has ‘got the drop’ who is still at home, or at work, or just still in bed just literally boils me. I know a fair few of my older mates who, if they ever encounter that, will just tell them to take a hike, and drop in there anyway, but in reality, who wants that kind of confrontation before moving into a swim for the weekend? Gaz Fareham

I’m not so keen on these sort of topics, they really aren’t what I want to be writing about. That’s not having a pop at anyone, Gareth is dead right in what he’s saying, it just that it kind of gets me down writing about the negative stuff in general. It’s not why I write. Still…

Swim booking by phone is a bit of a new one on me, but I can assure you that I wouldn’t put up with it. I’ve got to be honest and say that buckets are a pet hate of mine too, and I cringe whenever reading an article where the author mentions dropping a bucket or water butt in a swim as though it’s in some way cool and worthy of mention. It’s not, in fact it’s generally a good indication of somewhere I’d probably not want to fish, so I just turn the page.

The frosty stuff!

Fortunately I’m not into fishing anywhere where that sort of thing goes on, but if I was and someone had ‘bucketed’ a swim whilst their rods were still out in another, then I’d simply move it to one side and set up regardless. Get your kit in the swim or it’s still vacant, it’s as simple as that. If someone has arrived before me and they’re still walking round looking for a swim, then naturally I’d expect them to take first pick, but that’s a completely different thing.

A while back I was chatting to another angler, who rather worryingly felt that he’d been wronged. Basically, he’d gone for a walk around a lake and stumbled across a group of fish in the margins. He’d then rushed over to a friend who happened to be fishing another nearby venue and borrowed a bucket from him, before quickly heading back to the other lake and plonking the bucket down in the swim, presumably under the strange illusion that it was a suitable substitute for himself and his kit. He then drove home for his tackle – all of it. Upon his return some time later he was very, very cross to find that somebody else was already setting up in the swim and that the bucket he’d borrowed in order to ‘claim’ the swim was nowhere to be seen.

Returning a good fish from a swim I claimed with all my fishing kit and not just a bucket

To be honest, I didn’t have the heart to tell him that a bucket doesn’t claim a swim, not in the real world anyway. In the real world an abandoned bucket is called ‘lost property’. Fair play to the angler who set up there, that’s what I say. I suppose if every angler thought that bucketing was fine then it might just work, but we don’t you see, some of us really dislike the practice. Buckets and water butts don’t claim swims, in fact on at least a couple of waters I have tickets for, bucketing swims has already been banned because of the problems it causes. It’s barrow in swim or it’s vacant.