I think like most anglers, my earliest close encounters of a fishy kind involved a small net and a jam jar but, being a stickler for the naked truth, I can recall a time even before that when my fascination with fish was to play an infectious part of my life.
It began in West Sussex where my father, being a tractor driver on a large farm estate, we lived in a tied cottage. One day I was deemed old enough to accompany him to work where it was his task for that day to operate a J.C.B dredging a small stream/tributary of the River Arun that meandered through the estate. This was long before any governing agricultural laws and Health and Safety requirements but I think more a way I could be kept an eye on lest trouble found me like it invariably did, a hidden magnetism throughout my youth, not dissimilar to my clothes and the soil.
I recall sitting beside him in the cab that day marvelling at the many levers and fascinated by his ability to control the machine like an extension of his own limbs to the task in hand. I did venture outside the cab within my father’s watchful eye to explore the insects, larvae, frogs, newts and inch-long elvers which had been removed from the stream. I would, with the aid of the bucket, rescue them returning them once more to whence they came but only after I had loomed over the bucket like a giant aqueous deity for long enough to satisfy my curiosity.
It was to be not just a one off experience but somewhat of a regular occurrence during weekends or school holidays, either in a tractor cab or beside him walking across fields whilst he tended irrigation pipes or mended fences.
It was however, despite being out of school term or at a weekend, an opportunity for my father to pass on lessons in rural knowledge, an education that would hold my attention unlike history or algebra for instance.
At my father’s side, I would learn names of trees, recognise their unique silhouettes, leaf patterns and bark, distinguish cowslips from primroses and foxgloves from bluebells. Discover things I could feast upon and plants to refrain from touching like nightshade and fungi and spotting wild animals and birds and learning their tracks and trails.
Added to his, and a myriad of surrogate teacher’s evening classes, the likes of Jack Hargreaves, David Attenborough and John Wilson, I would ingest information whilst warming for bed in front of a log fire before making the sleepy journey upstairs.
This extra-curricular activity would etch on my soul and be the very basis and foundation to which I would distinguish peace and harmony in comparison to the hustle and trauma of growing up pains and everyday life. As someone once famously penned “Give me a child until he is 5, and I will give you the Man”.
I think my first fishing rod came from Woolworths. It was white telescopic made of a plastic and fibreglass composite and measured five feet fully extended. What was appealing to me was the fact it came with a plastic reel, a float, some split shot, some spade end hooks to nylon and a spinner but above all else, with the money I had saved from pocket money and various menial tasks I had endured in order to obtain my set up, I still had enough left over to buy my weekly copy of the ‘Beano’ and a sherbet fountain with the change. The time elapsed since that purchase ensures the price eludes me now but I remember the comic cost six pence and the sherbet treat only four.
I lived at this time in a small village in East Sussex which had a convent / all girls’ school run by nuns and within its grounds it sported two small lakes. In able to fish these lakes one had to write attaining special permission from the Mother Superior. I dread to think how my letters were worded but I suspect I painted a very ‘rose tinted’ picture of an angelic choirboy who hoped to fish only after attending Sunday School and my chores and homework were completed! Whatever treacherous lies I penned seemed to work and a week later the postman was greeted by me at the gate where I sped from my stake out position by the stair window from where I got a good view of his bike wobbling up the hill en route.
Upon tearing the letter open and acknowledging granted permission with a grin I would waste no time in dashing to the kitchen cupboards and grabbing a bowl, a bag of flour and a tablespoon and fork to make up my paste bait: a formula of three spoons of flour to one of water.
Having made a jam sandwich and a bottle of squash I would put the bait and the rest of my tackle, all of which fitted snugly in an old tobacco tin, inside a carrier bag and hang it from the handlebars of my bike. The rod I lashed to my crossbar with a bungee cord and off I’d go. I don’t ever remember taking a coat as I am sure anybody over forty would agree that in those ‘wonder years’ every day was sunny and warm.
The first of the two lakes was just inside the entrance and I had been informed that it contained the bigger fish but this was of no interest to me. I fished it a couple of times to no avail; the fish, being bigger, were wiser and far too smart to be outwitted by a dumb Tom Sawyer-like waif with no decorum, grace or finesse. Besides, on my last try there I was greeted by a two-foot long grass snake that appeared to swim straight at me. I used to give the lake a wide berth after that.
The second lake was quarter of a mile across the grounds and hidden amongst some mature trees where I, on occasion, collected hazelnuts, sweet chestnuts and beech nuts to eat as well as a handful of conkers for my pockets.
I am not sure what fish dwelt in this lake as my targeted prey were beautiful golden crucian carp no more than two or three inches long. I would set up my rod at the bank and clamber down onto a tiny island which was only a foot and half across, just big enough to stand or squat on and catch literally thirty or forty of them at a rod length out. After admiring each one I would release it back into the depths of the lake. I would continue to fish until either my bait had run out or I had no more hooks to fish with, I even remember trying to fashion a hook from a safety pin in order to carry on and piercing my gum trying to bend a shank into it with my teeth!
I have since re-visited my childhood Mecca and, as with the Wagon Wheels and the Curly Wurlies of our youth, they appeared somewhat smaller, resembling mere ponds instead of lakes…
