Some time ago I had rather a heated discussion with an angler I met whilst out fishing. It never got to the really argumentative stage but it was interesting enough to cause me to give it some thought for a while afterwards while I had nothing else to do but wait for a bite.
Earlier on we had both sat for several hours without a bite and I’d said to him, “I’m beginning to wish I’d gone bowling.” (Short mat bowling is one of my other hobbies).
He replied, “I don’t care what anybody says about smelling the flowers and all the rest of the rubbish you read now and again, fishing is all about catching fish, and as far as I’m concerned, and I reckon most other anglers, the more fish I catch the more pleasure I get.”
That was when we got into the heated discussion, for although what he said about the more fish you catch the more pleasure you get, fishing is not just about catching fish. Nor is it all to do with appreciating the flowers and all the rest of the nice things the countryside offers.
Fishing can be a pleasure for its own sake; you can derive a great deal of pleasure simply from the act of fishing. But yes, catching fish makes it a greater pleasure, and it generally follows that bigger catches spell extra pleasure. It is true, too, that successful fishing results in that warm feeling of satisfaction because you have achieved something. But to make a bald statement that fishing is only about catching fish is way off beam.
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“The set-up is usually a simple link leger, |
Perhaps a good instance of what I mean are some of the trips I make to my local river Dane, when I pack both a leger rod and a float rod. What usually happens is that I begin the day with the leger rod, wandering the river, trying different swims, and on those days when the conditions are right, catch a chub or two in most of the swims I try. The set-up is usually a simple link leger, with a 6’s hook to 5lb line. Baits range through bread, lobworm, cheese, luncheon meat and any slugs I come across.
After about two or three hours of this I find I’m thinking about my match rod fitted with my closed-face or centrepin reel and 1 1/2lb line tied to a 20’s hook baited with maggot or caster. I’m thinking about choosing a nice smooth glide and getting that vital rhythm of feeding-casting-retrieving going as I send a stick float through to see how many chub I can pull out of the one swim.
I know before I start that I’m not going to catch as many chub as wandering the river from swim to swim with leger tackle, not on a little river like the Dane and some parts of the Dove anyhow, where no individual swim on the stretches I fish hold a big head of chub. I know I’m unlikely to catch chub as big on float as I can on leger. But it doesn’t make any difference, for I know I’m ready for the change of method, that it is the method that is going to give me increased pleasure. That the fish I catch are only part of the pleasure waiting to be enjoyed.
A great deal of the pleasure I derive from fishing is solving the problems that catching fish sets us. It can be something like how to present a bait in a weedbed so that the fish can still see it or sniff it out. Or something more complex, like how to catch fish that are preoccupied with a natural food item: is it possible to present that actual bait on a hook, no matter how small the food, ie, bloodworm, or a bait that resembles it; or do I try to feed the fish with something else, a mass-baiting exercise, with a bait that can be used on a decent sized hook?
My passion for problem solving is the reason why, when I used to go to Ireland regularly and fish for bream, I could stand only a couple of sessions of bream bashing. After several hundred pounds of bream I can’t take any more for a while, so I’m off pike or rudd fishing or, if that is not on for one reason or another, I make the bream fishing more difficult by float fishing when legering is by far the most efficient catching method.
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| Irish bream fishing – sometimes you can catch too many |
On an Irish holiday a few years ago we unfortunately chose a week of gale force winds and heavy rain, and although it was a grueller we clocked up about 1,000lb of mainly bream in one day between five of us. After the first few hundred pounds I just had to float fish, and the conditions were so bad it meant I had to use a big sliding waggler that took seven SSG just to cast in! I caught fewer fish than I had on the heavy swimfeeder I’d been using previously, but what the hell, it was more fun! Surely, if fishing was only about catching fish, I would have persisted with the feeder?
How many of us, even when compiling a nice net of fish, change baits for no other reason than we want to see if we can catch fish on the particular bait we have changed to? Not because we want to see if the change bait will catch more or bigger fish, but simply because it throws another interesting little piece into the fishing jigsaw.
If fishing were only about catching fish there would be no fly-only waters; there would be no restrictions on any of the baits and methods we use, for there would be no point in restricting anything at all if all that mattered was what we caught.
