Ms Angry, Mr Nikon and Bleedin’ Bish

Ms Angry, Mr Nikon and Bleedin’ Bish

“I’d weigh that if I was you Bish – when you’ve finished bleeding all over the boat…”

One of the drawbacks to using barbed hooks is it hurts when you get one in your finger. They don’t hurt going in, but they don’t half hurt when you pull them out.

Holding what I thought was a mid double over the side, it looked an easy job to get the hooks out. Out comes one, then it kicks and it’s straight in my middle finger. Bi-a-a-a-tch.

Ms Angry, more than 19, less than 20

Cut the trace to unstaple myself from Ms Angry, pop the other hook once I’ve yanked the one in my hand out and she’s on Andy’s scales as I rummage in my box for the Dettol and a plaster.

Good news or bad news..? Just give it to me straight podna, we are both men of the world and I have a first aid crisis that would have Mother Theresa diving for the gin bottle going on at my end of the boat.

More than 19, less than 20. Talk about suffering for your art. Get some new scales, I tell Andy. Then I bleed some more.

Autumn’s descended on the Fens in a flurry of falling leaves and pink foot geese. And on a day like this, you’ve got to be out there giving it some.

A front’s blown in, hit the North Sea and thought better of it. We’re in a run of clear, sharp days that make you glad you’re on this earth.

The river doesn’t even feel cold when I put her back, after Andy’s given her a once-over with the help of Mr Nikon. She regains her composure, flares her fins and she’s gone.

We’ve caught a few and missed twice as many in a day that feels more September than November. Floats bob and slide away, you wind down and connect with fresh air more often than a pike.

I can’t quite get my head around this as I miss a text book take. Tiny pock marks in the bait suggest it probably wasn’t anything to write home about.

Andy misses three, one after another. I hook one and it’s another lean double.

Ms Angry going back

This time last season, they were starting to pack on weight as the first frosts sent the bait fish scurrying for what we’ll call a fairly obvious feature which is probably visible from the Space Shuttle.

This time around, they’re thin as rakes – which is odd to say the least when you look at the amount of trough they’ve got to choose from.

One of the things that’s always fascinated me about pike fishing is it never stands still.

Rule one, there are no rules. What holds good this season won’t matter a jot next year.

Spots I’d have bet my life on 12 months ago are devoid of pike. Last year’s bum swims are full of them.

I thought I’d sussed it a while back. Hardly caught a thing after lunchtime most of the season on that river. Hardly caught a thing full stop after Christmas either, but we won’t go there.

That river’s definitely a morning water, they don’t feed once the sun’s on it, I confided to a mate with slightly more than me between his ears over a liquid lunch.

Why’s that then four-eyes..? Um, because I catch until 11, maybe noon, then it just goes dead and I usually foxtrot oscar somewhere else for the afternoon.

I’m fishing a lot of waters at the moment, I say, draining the last dregs of my pint. Got my fingers in more pies than a leper on a cookery course.

Are you sure about that..? Um, fairly. Are you sure you’re not missing something..?

What’s that then..?

Well you obviously get on there first thing and head for one of your best spots, right..? When you’ve caned that, you go to your next best spot.

If you turned up at lunchtime, you’d do the same. You’d still be bald and wear glasses but you’d be sitting here telling me it was an afternoon water, waste of time fishing it in the morning. And it’s your round, by the way.

Andy’s gone and so’s a float. Maybe it’s a mid-afternoon elevenses before high tea on Fridays when there’s racing on at Fakenham kind of river after all.

It’s already had its tiffin, whatever it is. Probably three Shredded Wheat as well. It’s dragging me sideways, bubbles are coming up all around the boat as the mud weights shift.

42 inches long, I know, I measured it

Every time I gain line, it shakes its head like a Status Quo reunion. I can’t believe the hooks are holding but I can see the float now and a fish that seems to go on forever – well, for 42 inches give or take a bit – kites past the boat.

I say 42 inches because it looks the same fish I had a week or so back, a mile upriver. I know how long that one was because I measured it.

Huge head, serious laughing gear but Kate Moss when you get past its shoulders and just a scraper 20.

I pump it back towards the boat and reach behind me for the net. It’s caught on one of my rowlocks, if you’ll pardon the expression.

The pike’s wallowing under the rod top as I try and free the net. It is the same fish, I decide, as it surges away in a spectacular tailwalk, throwing bait and hooks as it takes off skywards.

I look down at my hand and it’s still bleeding. Where’s the bleeding justice, I ask myself.