Fishers On The Green Roads

Illustration by Rebecca Freear

DURING the next week school matters took a low priority, to put it mildly. Instead of the cotton line that Mac used, he managed to get a spool of the latest nylon. Fifteen pounds breaking strain Racine Torture (from France, he told his mother) and dark, translucent green in colour. It was stiff until you had fished with it for some time, so said the shopkeeper, but being thinner than cotton, flax or silk lines, it would cast a long way and would be nearly invisible to the fish in the water. He didn’t believe the last claim: it looked just as conspicuous in water as out of it! He wound the new line on to his Triplex reel with care, then adding a backing of soft string until the whole came up to the spool lip. Then the laborious process of reversing it all was carried out impatiently. But the completed job looked right with a full spool of pristine, shiny line. He could use his ordinary rod, so Mac had said, as long as he was careful not to overstress it. This he would be loath to do, because he’d purchased a brand new rod, for nineteen shillings, from Tom Watson’s of Nottingham. And mackerel spinners were relatively cheaper and he had several. However, all this expenditure left him completely out of spending money and the wire that he used for a trace wasn’t proper wire at all, but a length of rather thick material culled from his father’s workshop. Later, he was to abandon wire altogether but at this point had not made such foolhardy decisions!

So a few weeks after his trip to Saltmarshe Lake with Mac saw him peddling the long road again, more slowly this time. But he had enough food and drink for a long visit and enough of other fishing tackle so that if the pike wouldn’t bite he could revert to normal angling practice. One other question he had put to Mac, and it concerned permission. On all the other waters he fished it was necessary to pay a shilling a day to fish, or, at least, to have permission. Was it necessary on Saltmarshe Lake?

“Naw,” said Mac. The very brevity of his reply should have warned Baz. But any such worries had gone from his mind as he achieved the transformation of cycling through under the railway bridge. Prior to that act the countryside had been pretty, and interesting too with diversions of pheasants and hares on the early morning road. But the railway bridge marked the frontier to a new heaven, with its glistening pool, its shadowy oaks; and all manner of other diversions, he discovered, such as trees full of jackdaws’ nests, and squirrels. Today, however, it was the mighty pike he was interested in. Only when he had tip-toed to the bankside, fully armed with rod and lure, and home-made gaff, did he fully realise that this time he faced the ferocity of the pike on his own. And he did hesitate a while before making that first cast.

As the minutes went by, however, he got into the swing of what was for him a new technique, and he enjoyed the long casts he could make and the increasing control of accuracy. Where the line entered the water below the rod tip, little drops of water ran upwards as though on a conveyor belt, but dropped off, spattering the lake surface like rain long before they reached the tip ring. Nevertheless, the line came through the rings damply and further droplets were spun on to his fingers by the rotating flyer of the reel. It felt cold in the early morning and at intervals he wiped his hands on his trousers. With Sharkbait’s old reel he had found it much easier to hang the line on a crook of his index finger for casting, rather than grip it to the rod handle as he saw most anglers do. His way got extra yards and better precision. Moreover, he failed completely to understand those anglers who held off a loop of line from the reel in one hand whilst casting with the other: it seemed almost to completely negate the value of the fixed-spool reel. He assumed that it was a direct evolutionary development from the days when only centrepin or traditional reels were used, and those used by most anglers did need loops pulling off the reel before casting. The clumsiness of the method always made him giggle, most especially if he saw an adult performing.

These and other thoughts went through his mind that morning as he worked himself up into an efficient hunting machine, waiting for the strike of the pike. And part of him remained fearful: in the event of a successful strike, how on earth would he manage? However, none of these considerations or worries detracted from his appreciation of the day itself. Without Mac, and their combined chatter, it was quiet. The water was still calm. The sun hadn’t risen but it was warm. And the only sounds in addition to his nearly silent reel were those of multitudes of birds in dawn chorus. A jenny wren sang only a few yards away, its powerful song out of all proportion to its body, so much so that Baz wondered whether its body vibrated all over. Perhaps it’s a form of early morning massage! And, remembering that the birds sang most lustily for about half an hour after dawn – a few early starters and some laggards – did this mean that a band of song travelled the Earth from China to England? He was pleased at the thought. Could such a band of song cross the North Sea or the Atlantic? Was it the birdy equivalent of newspapers, radio or the telephone? Fish couldn’t communicate from one pond to another, could they? Except eels, of course! Perhaps eels were the messengers of the fishy world.

An enduring problem that Baz had was in understanding what went on beneath the surface of the water, away from the clear shallows where aquatic life could be observed. So his imagination ran riot at times. What he did know for certain was that fish behaved in a totally different and much more complicated way than fish in a goldfish bowl or the garden pond: the latter were the equivalent of caged tigers in the zoos. Behaviour was conditioned by the environment and the more complicated the latter, the more varied the former. Bream in some of the waters he fished, fed in a different manner and at different times than they did in other waters quite close by. But he was increasingly aware that some factors such as food supply, oxygen content, protective cover and, at certain times of the year, the demands of spawning, meant that overall patterns could be worked out. Yet maverick factors were common enough! Surely pike would be just as variable: he was expecting to find that whilst mackerel spinners succeeded on Saltmarshe Lake, they might well fail elsewhere.

Still no takes. He’d been spinning now for an hour or so, and moved, again, to the next swim. Now, however, he was hungry even if the pike were not, so he sat down facing the lake and delved into his ex-army rucksack for pop and jam sandwiches. The sun was just beginning to light the surface of the open water; wraiths of mist still rose, but thinly now; and the clacking coots moved gradually offshore, as he knew they would when they perceived the greater dangers of full daylight. They’d start fighting, soon, he thought, and he was pleased that their squabbling would be in the middle of the lake where the thick silkweed growth surfaced, buoyed up by the gas bubbles like small buoys. The swim in front of him was shallow, for he could see a shady bottom showing through the carpet of silkweed in some places, and deeper holes in others. To his left was a large common reed bed leading out some twenty yards into the lake, indicating shallows as surely as the sandy patches. And in front of him was a very short jetty, some six feet long, on poles, which he assumed someone used to tie up a boat against. Beneath the jetty he could see quite large perch, the diffraction making them look as if they swam half on their sides. But what held his attention more closely were the stripes on their bodies: the fish saw him before he saw them, he knew that from the way they huddled beneath the jetty, and they were a little disturbed. True, the jetty gave them cover, but why hadn’t they swum out into the lake, to take themselves well away from him, and to safety?

Before commencing spinning again he lay down on the jetty and peered at the perch shoal through cracks in the planks. Still they didn’t leave their temporary shelter. His energy returned, he stood quietly on the jetty, a small figure with a long rod, and he made his first cast, long and true down the centre of the swim and directly at right angles to the bank – a luxury of a cast, for he knew he should be searching the edges of the reeds to increase his chances. That’s where the camouflaged hunter would lurk, surely? As the mackerel spinner hit the water, his left hand closed the pick up manually (the automatic mechanism in the reel had proved irreparable) and he picked up the line to the lure very smoothly, becoming more accomplished by the minute. He could see the lure, even at that range, because it was homing in at about three or four inches below the surface – he could even see the alternate flashes off each wing as the early morning sun picked them out.

And as he scanned the water behind the lure, he saw the bow wave. It began at the reed bed, moved quickly across the swim and turned in behind his lure, taking only a second or two to do so. His whole body tensed, slightly bent forward, but his hands continued to work smoothly and steadily. His breath started to ease out when he saw the bow wave subside, a yard beyond the lure. For a fraction of a second disappointment began to build in him, but was cut short by the rod tip whipping savagely round in a frightening arc.

Part Four of ‘MAC’ next week