Ichigaya Fishing Center (市ヶ谷 / いちがゃ)

 

For ‘match’ sized carp (~1kg) the number 1 venue is Ichigaya Fishing Center, conveiniently located next to Ichigaya Station on the Chou/Sobu line. It is about 10 minutes / Y150 from Shinjuku Station. Fishing is by the hour (~Y600) and you can hire a whip complete with rig and paste as well. There are 3 main pools, each about the size of a swimming pool, and 2 smaller pools.  The pool nearest the train line is pegged out for matches (26 pegs!!!) which take place on the second Sunday of every month.  All the pools are about 1.5m deep and the pegs are less than 2 meters apart! As the water is filtered until it is like tap water and because there is nowhere to hide, the fish are ultra cagey but the locals catch loads of carp using paste and soft whips. Ichigaya Fishing Center is fairly busy everyday but it is crazy at weekends and on public holidays.

 

 

2 things that I have never seen before in fishing are…..first when you finish fishing you take your fish to be weighed and you get a ‘point’ per Kg. 7 points = 1 hour FREE fishing to be redeemed the next time you visit! Secondly, after the fish have been weighed they are transferred to a separate oxygenated tank (no fishing) to recover. I guess the fish are then transferred from this tank back to the fishing pool although I have never seen them do this. I don’t understand how they can guarantee that the fish are spread evenly across the pools as fish from all three pools are transferred into the tank, with no consideration of where they were caught from. Potentially 1 pool could have very few fish in it and another have lots…. 

Because everybody travels on a packed commuter train to get to the venue nobody brings much tackle and nor do you need it. The 3m whips the locals use are made from traditional materials and are anything up to 6 pieces. A small box of rigs and paste is all that is needed as fishery provides a seat and nets. The locals tend to use bottom end only waggler style floats with very long thin bristles. Shotting is simply a piece of lead about 1 foot away from the hook. Often the main-line looks like that bright red or yellow line used by sea anglers! 

Everything about the local’s set-up looks wrong for carp and paste compared to what we do in the UK but it works! I’ve got a few elasticated top 4s of my Shimano pole (incidentally you can’t buy them here) and English paste rigs, Andy Findlay paste, VDE pellets etc that all work very well in the UK (and have even won me a few matches!) but the number of times that I have been hammered by an old guy sat less than 2 meters away from me is embarrassing. 

I’m convinced that my rigs are better than the local’s and I’m sure that I am hitting more bites using a short line they are using a long line but they just seem to get more bites than I do. As they don’t feed anything I assume it can only be down to the paste they are using. I’ve been using a UK style fishmeal based paste (Andy Findlay’s Fin Perfect) but all the locals seem to be using a sticky paste that looks a lot like jelly (its not jelly as I’ve tried it!). 

It is interesting that the lake next to Ichigaya Fishing Center is absolutely stuffed with carp much bigger that those in Ichigaya, the access is good, it is free (I guess?) and yet you hardly ever see anyone fishing there!

Last updated 21st August 2009