Remember when we lived without central heating, when a single room would be kept warm with a coal fire, and when you’d wake up with a sliver of ice on the bedroom windows? When the canal, or the pond, or wherever you fished, would be frozen months on end, sometimes winter through? When all you had to wear were thin, plastic wellies, an anorak that soaked sleet up like a sponge and, if you were lucky, a pair of jeans? When you cycled to your fishing, or queued for a bus, or simply walked?
Of course, a whole lifetime has passed since those childhood days on my Northern canals, but the memories flooded back this week as day on day, I checked forecasts, and early doors looked for the depth of ice on the car windscreens. Would my Norfolk pike water have a lid on it, or would the springs that feed it keep Jack Frost away?
Full moons and clear night skies become your enemy, low pressure and warm Westerlies your friend. Yesterday, I drove the two hundred and more miles West to East, my heart in my mouth, past endless frozen lakes and pits, and watched the full moon climb clear and bright above the Wensum flood plains.
And now, at just before 7.00am, Wednesday the 19th January, I still don’t quite know what I will find, and whether I’ll wet a bait today… I’ll drive there soon, eager as that Northern kid to see what my angling’s next chapter has in store.
