Let me introduce myself. Mark Davenport, 37, slightly overweight middle-aged commuter, married, and a father of two boys, one six months and one of five years. I would like to tell you about how I have been slowly but surely drawn into the heroin-like addiction that is known as ‘Fishing’. A year ago I did not know what a hair rig was, had no idea that commercial fisheries existed, and thought a pole was something a fireman slid down. That has all changed now and this is my story.

I had as a teenager, dabbled in the world of ‘fishing’. It mainly consisted of casting in a leger weight with one maggot on the end, and then snogging the girlfriend of the time for the next six hours. When it was time for tea, I would reel in to maybe find some unfortunate dead Gudgeon on the end. That brief introduction came to an end when I left home and went to Polytechnic. My parents sold all of my fishing kit at a Car Boot sale, for a sum of money that they claimed covered rent owed, and that was the end of that and it was all forgotten about.

‘My River’

A very enjoyable 20 years came and went. Then two years ago, my wife and I decided to save a bit of money and go on an ‘English’ holiday, to an ‘English’ holiday camp. The year will be remembered for record-breaking temperatures. However, the week that we went it rained solidly every single day. This is all an aside, as the holiday proved the starting point of my addiction.

Just like an addict could probably tell you when their slippery slide into heroin hell started with their first spliff at a friends party, I can tell you that my slide into my own personal hell started with the purchase of a ‘Junior Angling Kit’ from Argos, priced £ 19.99. I had heard that there was a small fishing pond at the camp that we were staying at and thought it would entertain my boy for a few hours during the holiday. My son was three at the time and anyone with kids of that age will know they need a lot of entertaining.

When we settled at the camp, and found some time to explore I realised that the description ‘small fishing pond’ was over-selling it slightly. The pond was about 10 foot round and crammed full of reeds, bulrushes and choked with surface weed. The thought of any fish surviving in the pond was unthinkable. The next day we returned to the pond armed with a loaf of Spar Medium Sliced and out came the Junior Angling Kit. I threaded the line up the flimsy looking five foot telescopic rod in the best way I remembered, attached the float, and set up with a rig and shotting pattern that would have made Bob Nudd laugh so hard his hat might have fallen off.

Two swan shot directly below the float and a size 6 hook that looked like it might be better suited for a Great White Shark, we lowered the bread carefully into a two inch gap between the reeds and a discarded lemonade bottle. Much to my amazement, the float buried minutes later and we were in. After a 10 second fight, the fish was on the bank. A lovely silver fish that was probably about half a pound (I now know that it was a dace, and I would be proud of the capture even now). I was amazed. I had caught something and my kid burst into tears. He had never seen a live fish close up.

We returned to the chalet where we gave my wife the whole story. She looked at me with an “of course you did” look when I told her we had caught a big fish, and when she asked the boy how big it was and he stretched his arms to signal a three foot monster, and the look from my wife grew even more suspicious. We had gone on holiday with another couple and their kids, and we all trooped down to the pond every day after that, in the rain, through the mud, to try to catch another fish, and of course every trip was a blank, and everyone started looking at me as though I had made the whole story up. When we got back from the holiday we immediately booked a trip to Lanzarote for some sunshine, and the fishing was gone, but not forgotten. Somewhere, deep in my brain, a little box had been opened, and ‘Fishing’ had started slowly but surely leaking into my brain.

It wasn’t for another year that the Junior Angling Kit box would be opened. As fishing started taking hold I had taken an unhealthy interest in watching Discovery Home and Leisure. A lot. Suddenly I would be getting up early to catch John Wilson or staying up late so that I could tune into Matt Hayes and Mick Brown. I would laugh at Jan Porter’s silly hair, and be amused by the way John Wilson chuckled every time he caught a fish, as if that was the last thing he was expecting. Then I had a thought. Stop watching it and go and do it.

I had a week off work to paint the house, and the weather, luckily, was gorgeous. For a break from the painting I decided to take the Junior Angling Kit down to my local river. Now, luckily, my local river is the Great Ouse in Bedfordshire. I now know the river for its spectacular reputation for big chub and barbel, but at the time I was oblivious. Again, cheap sliced bread was the preferred bait, and again I was very lucky, hooking into a large perch. While on my way home, I was stopped by another fisherman, who eyed my Junior Angling Kit with suspicion. He asked if I was a member of the local club, who owned the stretch where I was fishing. I hung my head and admitted I wasn’t and that I hadn’t even known that it was owned. The next day I became a member of the local angling club.

The next few months saw me down the river catching bleak, dace and small chub by the bucket-load, but I yearned for something more, something a bit bigger, something that would put a real bend in the rod. And so it started, the accumulation of the tackle. I bought a Ron Thompson Feeder + Okuma reel combination deal from the web. At the time I thought that the reel had a funny Japanese name and was bound to fall apart on the first cast. I now know different.

I booked a day off work and with the understanding with the wife that I would do both school runs, and I packed off on my first real session. It was a glorious day, not a cloud in the sky. All I had was a pint of maggots, some groundbait, a rod and a reel and some hooks. I had little idea of what I was doing and sprayed the feeder all over the place, got stuck in the weeds, and spilled maggots all over the floor. Again though, luck was in my favour and I caught a few perch, and an unfortunate bream that was deep hooked.

Mark with an Ouse chub

When I tried to land it I suddenly realised the reason people had landing nets. While sitting in the reeds, getting my bum bitten by ants I also realised why people have chairs, and so off to the tackle shop again, to buy a net and a chair. I now look in my garage and am amazed at how much tackle I have acquired in such a short time. Three rods (including a gorgeous John Wilson Barbel Quiver System, although I have yet to catch a Barbel with it), two reels, chairs, nets, alarms, banksticks, catapults, and assorted amounts of groundbait, boilies, imitation corn, floats, weights, etc, etc. All in less than a year.

After a few successful trips to the river where I caught my first big fish (two 5 pound chub), winter set in with a vengeance, and I experienced the river in all of its guises. Rain, mud, snow, frost, freezing winds and lots and lots of floods. I tried to fish it when it was heavily flooded once, and wondered why no one else was. I had heard barbel loved flood conditions, and I plonked my gear into a river that would have carried a house away in seconds. After losing most of the leads and end tackle that I had in my box, I realised why no one else was fishing and trumped off home wet and disconsolate.

After a winter of blanks on the river, with Christmas over and summer seeming a lifetime away I started considering being unfaithful to my beloved river, and I started searching for local lakes that would help my catch rate. And so the year of ‘firsts’ began. First trip to a commercial (Castle Ashby), where my first carp was caught. Then two weeks later, Castle Ashby again, my first double figure carp. A fantastic day, that would have been even better if I had remembered to put film in the camera. Then my first pike (a jack that was very small), and then my crowning glory to date, my first tench, followed by four others to 8lb, all in the same day on a notoriously hard lake in Milton Keynes.

8lb tench for Mark from a hard Milton Keynes lake

I now consume every single piece of theory on fishing that I can possibly fit into an already hectic life. Magazines and newspapers that I didn’t even know existed are wrenched from the shelf almost as soon as they are delivered to the shop. Websites are scanned meticulously. People who I didn’t recognise a year ago write articles that I devour. Terry Hearn, Martin Bowler. If they told me that to catch a bigger fish I needed to tie a bit of string to a garden cane, and fashion a paperclip into a hook I would do it. Hang on, now there is an idea.

And now at last its summer. On my way to and from the train station every day I have to drive over a beautiful stone bridge that crosses the Ouse. Years ago I drove over the bridge and used to admire the pretty scenery. Now though, a totally different feeling overtakes me. The closest thing that I can relate it to is when you have given up smoking and someone sitting next to you lights up. You take a deep breath, inhaling the smoke and sigh and wish that you were doing it, but know that you can’t. It’s a very similar feeling.

“Every day I have to drive over a beautiful stone bridge that crosses the Ouse”

I look at the river and sigh heavily, wish I was fishing but know that I can’t and then carry on with my life. When I left the river in January, it was cold, grey, lifeless. It was a place where you didn’t want to stay too long. In early June, weeks before the season started, I decided to go for a walk with my son under the bridge and along the river where the weir cascades from under the bridge. When we reached the river, I stood open mouthed. In six months, the river had become a completely different place. Lush, green, inviting, magical. I suddenly realised that this was the kind of river that I had seen pictured in articles such as ‘Catch your first Barbel’ and ‘Barbel – The King of the River’. It was chock full of streamer weed. There were gravel patches all over the place and there under the trees I could see long dark shapes moving. Sure, I had heard rumours that there were barbel in this stretch of the Ouse, but I never believed for one minute that ‘my’ stretch of the river would house them.

People pay good money to fish stretches like this, in fact not very far away they pay very large amounts of good money. Sure enough, as my son and me crept down the bank and peered out from behind a tree, I spotted, amongst the five or six large chub that were sitting happily wafting in the current, with most of their bodies under an overhanging tree, a large rounded pink tail that could only be one species, barbel. It was at that point that my son lost his footing and crashed head long into a big patch of nettles, screaming and almost falling into the river, spooking them all away. Seeing that barbel, it was like being a kid who had always had posters of Ferrari’s on his wall, only to be suddenly given one for his eighteenth birthday. Of course, now I want to catch one. My comical attempts so far have not resulted in anything. I learnt the hard way why you use a bait dropper. I made up a kilo of halibut pellet groundbait, mixed with hemp and corn, and watched it all sail miles down the river as the current washed it away as I balled it in. But that’s what I love about fishing and that is one of the components to the addiction. Constantly testing you, always learning, constantly nagging you to give it ‘just one more go’.

Its an addiction and I have it bad. I haven’t had to sell all my furniture and live in a squat without any carpets. I don’t have to rob people’s houses to fund the habit (although the thought has crossed my mind when I saw at some new Shimano Baitrunners the other day). However, the addiction is there and it is painful. It is there inside, waiting for the next fix, with the excitement mounting as the next trip draws closer and closer. Sitting at work or on the train, planning the next assault. What tactics to use, what bait, what rig. Then the time comes finally to go ‘Fishing’. The walk to the river, and there you are, at the bank. That’s all that is needed, being there.

I have come to realise that catching a fish is a secondary need that drives the compulsion. Sitting there waiting for the float to dip, or the tip to swing round, just being there. I remember hearing Jack Charlton talking about the best feeling in fishing is the millisecond that you realise the fish is hooked and the juddering of the rod as the fish starts fighting. After that, it’s all a bit of an anti-climax. Its hard to disagree with Jack. That is the best feeling in fishing, but that would be missing the point. I would like to point out to him (in the unlikely event that one day I am sitting in a pub with Jack Charlton) that what is also fantastic is the build up, the planning, the tactics. The visit to the angling shop to buy the bits of tackle and equipment that a week earlier I never even knew I needed. The selection of sandwiches and drinks to accompany the session. The walk to the river carrying all my kit. The setting up, the baiting, and then the wait, for the knock on the tip, the dip of the float. I have often felt like I am meditating when I watch my quivertip. You think of nothing, the mind is blank and you are at total peace with the world. There is no one trying to sell you double glazing, or a new type of air freshener that puffs out smoke. Its all quiet. You mould into the countryside. You become part of it, and it is much better than merely passing through it. Then maybe, only maybe (and there are definitely no guarantees) you might catch a fish.

Writing this now, I have realised that this piece is not about self-indulgence. It may be about trying to get other people to understand what this feeling is like, but above all it is about trying to understand how I got myself into this mess in the first place. And all of these feelings have to contend with leading a relatively normal life, providing for two kids and a house, commuting and trying to hold down a job. It all has to fit inside my smaller than average brain. I have only been fishing seriously for nine months.

I have already been called ‘sad’, though to me, being ‘sad’ is not having a passion in life and having dreams to fulfil. My dreams for the future? A barbel obviously. Double figure tench and bream. A monster pike. A carp that I can hardly lift off the unhooking mat for the photograph. And that is just catching fish. I dream of ‘bivvying up’ with my two lads for the weekend when they are old enough. Of fly fishing in Scotland, and of catching a massive catfish from the Ebro (wherever that is). A lot of people talk of goals. I think of goals as things that I have to achieve at work, goals are set by my boss. Dreams are what belong in fishing, because that’s exactly what they are. Every night I lay awake dreaming of my next fishing trip, the next new venue to visit, the tactics that I will use and the fish that I might catch. Surely everyone needs dreams to get through life ? Hopefully I will never stop dreaming.

And what happened to the Junior Angling Kit? The box was made of sturdy stuff, so once all of the insides had been discarded it is now the home of all my floats, weights, knives and disgorgers, and every now and again I think back to where it has taken me. £ 19.99 very well spent.

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