Contact Lenses for Cool Anglers

Contact Lenses for Cool Anglers

Mark Williams watching his float before he realised he needed….

….Contact lenses

I was all right if I cast 15 metres, but beyond that everything was a blur. I could have bought my first pole at that stage, and thrown away the sections as my eyesight deteriorated further. But I took the advice of short-sighted Angling Times Editor Allan Haines.

He was well qualified to advise. When someone borrowed his glasses once, they commented: ‘You don’t need glasses, you need a dog.’ In fact, his own contact lenses were so thick he couldn’t close his eyelids. ‘Get your eyes tested,’ he told me sternly, looking me right in the neck.

This meant my first visit to the opticians. The Polish bloke in front of me was asked if he could read the bottom line of the chart. He said: ‘Read it? I know him!’ When it was my turn, I was asked what I could read. ‘F*ck all’ I said. On closer inspection it turned out to be ‘TVCXAZL’.

But there were some excellent looking birds at the opticians, and I made a date with the receptionist. In retrospect, I should have waited until my contact lenses were delivered.

In those days, wearing contact lenses was the equivalent of becoming Lee Majors, the bionic man. And being a flash sort of git, I didn’t do things by halves; I bought bright blue contact lenses.

Being a flash git I wore blue contact lenses

Glowing like a clip from Michael Jackson’s ‘Thriller’

Contact lenses, as Hainesy pointed out – to me, and to readers – are better than glasses for anglers because they don’t steam up. Being a lusty lad in those days, steamed-up glasses was an issue; I had sex very frequently, and sometimes I even had a girlfriend to share it with. This may have contributed to my failing eyesight, but clearly abstinence isn’t a feature of single life.

As Hainsey promised, the contact lenses were unsteamuppable. Another bonus was that I didn’t have to buy clip-on sunglasses. Flipped up, they make you look like Alastair Darling. But there were some downsides to contact lenses.

The first was that they are small and transparent, so that if you drop one, you need your contact lenses in to find it. Many’s the time since then I’ve struggled for minutes to put in a dropped contact lens only to discover I’ve been trying to put the pull tab off a polythene Tampax wrapper into my eye.

The second disadvantage when night fishing was that you have to take them out when you go to sleep. Putting them in with fingers steeped in chrysoidine, maggot juice and sawdust was impractical. I tried leaving them in, but as I slept, they glued my eyelids together, and I had to find my rods and strike by touch. I discovered a third error of judgement when I went to the disco.

I couldn’t understand why more girls than ever were screaming and running away when they saw me. Then I caught sight of myself in the mirrors behind the bar; in the fluorescent light, my bright blue lenses were glowing like a clip from Michael Jackson’s ‘Thriller’. The good news was that, wearing them, I could see where the girls had hidden.

Wearing glasses isn’t cool and can make you very sad

Take your cleaning gear with you when you go fishing and keep away from Tampax

As back-up, I bought some glasses. I went for the John Lennon, but I was too young. Wearing my summer shorts and carrying my canvas lure bag, I could be mistaken for an evacuee. But they did have the effect of making me more of a contact lenses devotee.

The first time I leant over the keepnet to pop a fat bream into it, my glasses fell off. When I got them out of the keepnet, they were covered in slime which adhered to my nose, making me look like I had a particularly virulent cold. They steamed up in the pub after piking. I sat on them.

So I’m a contact lens fan, but life’s a bitch. As I have become older, it’s not focussing at distance but close up which has become a problem. So now I have had to buy glasses to go with them; not just one pair, but two. One pair for tasks such as writing this nonsense, and another for really close work, like tying hooks.

I’m not going to lose them in the keepnet now, though. I have bought one of those strings which attach to them so they dangle round your neck, ready for use. I have the same for my sunglasses, ensuring that, at the end of each session, I have a load of plaited sunglasses string to untangle so I can take my jacket off without strangling myself.

Then again, they look so much cooler than flip-up sunglasses….