For most of this past month I’ve been laid up with what I first thought was the Aussie version of ‘man flu’, and it has certainly taken its toll. I didn’t have a flu jab before leaving the UK in the belief that, as it would be summer for most of my time down under, I wouldn’t need it – a big mistake as it has, without doubt, been my worst experience with this type of bug ever!
Three weeks of aches, pains, hardly any proper sleep, coughing and spluttering, conjunctivitis, a head constantly full of catarrh…the works! Sorry to be so graphic but I have to get it over that this is no everyday cold. After eventually going to the doctor I was diagnosed with a bacterial infection, almost certainly picked up from my grandson, and I’m now on antibiotics; hopefully soon to be fully recovered enough to allow space for a rather more pleasant ailment – ‘Boss Fever’ which will be all consuming for a week in March!
Apart from keeping in touch with a few fishing friends via email and Facebook my only other fishing occurrence this past month came via a Q and A session on a Facebook site, and most enjoyable it was too.
The lads who run the Barbel Fishing – The Prince of the River FB site kindly asked me to take part in the session for their members. I had to get up pretty early and was sat at the laptop around 7am ready and waiting for the fun to start. The questions were very good indeed and I have checked with Gary and Drew who run the site and they are ok for me to use the copy I have for a feature on here. The session lasted almost three hours and there was no hint of trouble, it went very well and may well have been a first what with me being in Oz, the wonders of our digital age!
Be in no doubt that Facebook has made a huge impact on the fishing scene, it is certainly my preferred line of communication with fellow anglers who I don’t know, simply because it is friendly, there are no silly arguments or snide comments and no point scoring, long may it continue.
I did say that my diary this month would be my response to Ian’s recent I Hate Fishing feature and indeed it is, so let’s get started…
I don’t like fishing, oh no, I love it!
Apologies to 10CC but if you follow my monthly diary that sentence ought to be pretty obvious, in fact I would go as far as to say that I enjoy it more now than I’ve ever done and by that I mean the actual act of getting down to the river and actually fishing.
The one thing that is missing, and which has left an irreplaceable void, is the fun and huge enjoyment I used to get when fishing regularly with Fred Crouch; those were special times indeed. You can’t replace mates like that: the chat, the jokes, the car journeys all over the country the bond, as I say, is irreplaceable. I will expand on that very topic in a future diary where I want to talk about Angling Mentors – and in my case Fred would certainly be the number one – but far more than that, he is a very close personal friend and I count myself very fortunate indeed that he has, and still does, play a major role in my life.
So this piece is my take on Ian’s excellent heart on sleeve editorial, I Hate Angling!
I will include some of the highs and lows that have punctuated and defined what I suppose I would call my fishing life and explain how I’ve managed to maintain great enthusiasm, not just for angling but pretty much for one species – and that isn’t easy.
I could probably write a book, probably will, so I will have to work hard to keep this piece down to a comfortable level. I’ve decided to go way back so that a full picture can emerge and it allows me to bare my soul just as Ian did, I hope it works!
From about the age of three my home was in North London, Tottenham to be exact, and my childhood years were spent happily near to the home of the mighty Spurs. My earliest recollection of fishing was watching with envy as my dad set off very early for a few hours on a Sunday morning to fish the Lea or the pits at Cheshunt. As my birthday falls on the sixteenth of June I can recall, when I was probably about eight, sitting on the banks of the gravel pit watching while my dad caught tench and lovely perch. I can also remember as though it was yesterday, but it was certainly in the fifties, when my aunt came along with her boyfriend who also was a keen fisherman and he proceeded to catch one chub after another from the backstream alongside the lock, my abiding memory is that he was using elderberries.
Anyway, eventually my dad realised that I too wanted to fish and I certainly remember my first rod, a green tank aerial, and I just loved it! I lost count of the number of times I rewhipped the rings just for the fun of it.
I carried on fishing with my dad through my early teens and with new friends at school who also enjoyed the adventure of boarding the train, walking the canal bank for what seemed like forever and then sharing the sheer joy of catching roach, dace and gudgeon – and anything else that came along.
But I have to say that although I was a keen angler I had plenty of other hobbies too, not least of which was getting to White Hart Lane as often as I could. All this needed money and I had plenty of different part time jobs so I could afford to do the sorts of things we did back in those days.
I read everything I possibly could about fishing, always books borrowed from the local library, and there wasn’t much written by Walker, Taylor or Stone that I didn’t catch back then.
By 1960 days out with my dad became less frequent as my brother arrived on the scene when I was ten and the added financial pressures meant that he was working more. Through my late teens and into my early twenties I still fished though, but only on the odd occasion, the desire to go was then overshadowed by other priorities.
I did have a good friend at college though, who was into his barbel fishing, and at this time we did get down to the Royalty and Throop on a few occasions. It was on one of those visits to the Avon that I first used a centrepin for barbel, and I have stayed with them ever since!
And so the picture starts to unfold, fishing was always there even though at this point – the early seventies – it was not at the front of my mind. Married now and with a mortgage – it’s what we did in those days – a decision was taken that would pretty much determine my life, it certainly shaped my innermost thoughts and so therefore defined me.
I had a nice job with a company car but I decided to pack it all in to join my dad who had already taken the decision to have a go working for himself just a few months before, a massive gamble for sure!
The next fifteen or so years unfolded and were a brilliant time although I only managed the odd day at Walthamstow. I wish I had spent more time there because we, that’s my dad and I, had located some decent roach in the Lower Maynard and had quite a few up to and over the two pound mark. But fishing was definitely way down the list of priorities at that time; I had a big house, flash cars, kids – three by then and at private school – I was living the dream at the time and I was barely thirty years old. I even excavated a huge pond in my garden a good few thousand feet in surface area and stocked it with fish, no barbel I might add, it was a big garden!
I thought I had made it, but when you’re young the future is a long way off and looking back if I’m honest I messed up in some ways, but there are no real regrets. The very fact that I was able to point my kids in the right direction from an education perspective was more than worth it and now that I’m past sixty I’m enjoying the benefits from my children. Life works in strange ways and we never know what happens when a door closes other than another opens and you have to go through it and move on. At the time I certainly thought that was it, as good as it gets, but life always has a nasty way of knocking you down…
Out of the blue my dad was diagnosed with terminal cancer, he had just turned 59 and within three months he was gone and my world was shattered. When something traumatic happens to you it can define you, destroy you, or strengthen you and I think losing my old man did all of those. You have to bear in mind that we had spent every working day together for the best part of fifteen years, which can sour a father son relationship because business gets in the way, but it can never destroy it and our bond was strong through everything. But the deepest pain can empower you to move forward, the only other choice is to give up.
If I’m totally honest I probably had a minor breakdown, I remember the doctor telling me at the time that I could have the pills, sign up for therapy or go smell the flowers, I decided the latter option would be best and it was my brother in law who then came up with the real solution – fishing.
Now Roger was another north London lad and we got on well, unbeknown to me he had taken up fishing once again and had joined the Waverley Club and that had led him to the Old River Lea at Fishers Green, pretty much the same place where I had enjoyed great days some twenty years earlier.
We went fishing and I caught some barbel and it all felt very exciting once again but something very strange happened on that first visit, there in the swim where I decided to fish, tucked away amongst the bankside vegetation, was a green packet that once would have held cigarette papers. My first thought wasn’t anger at someone leaving litter, to me it was a sign. You see throughout my childhood I would often get sent out to the shop to buy half of Old Holborn and a packet of greens for my dad and a bar of chocolate for myself, my dad was there and I knew it and from that point fishing really came back into my life with a bang! Daft I know, but when you’re in no man’s land and very vulnerable you will clutch at anything.
When I made a return visit to Walthamstow I was amazed, everything had changed, no one was interested in the big roach; they were all fishing for carp. Any work ambitions had gone, it had all seemed so unfair and this feeling stayed with me for a long time so I started to put a huge amount of energy into fishing, I even had a dalliance with the carp but only for a short time, barbel were what did it for me and I couldn’t get enough of them.
My huge enthusiasm got me into the Barbel Catchers Club where I found myself rubbing shoulders with the real top boys, and that’s where I cemented my friendship with Fred Crouch which, within a few years, led to the formation of the Barbel Society.
Fishing had taken over completely and I have to admit here and now that I became obsessed and that is a really bad thing. I was putting my family at risk and was in danger of losing everything after I had fought back from during the dark days of a few years before; I took stock and approached my fishing from a far less manic state.
Being so heavily involved meant that I was dealing with people as much as I was actually fishing and while in the main that in itself is a satisfying experience you quickly learn that you cannot please everyone. I’ve met all sorts, some fantastic people who are friends for life, lots more from all walks of life that I would happily spend a day or two with on the river…and then there are the others!
Now you may struggle with this but I promise you it is true: pathological liars, Walter Mitty’s, nosey types who want to know everyone’s business who make Ena and Minnie seem like saints, downright nasty types who make the worst football hooligan seem sane, those who would think nothing of writing in an abusive way about family and friends, stalkers who let their personal grievances literally take them over, and then there are those who are just plain idiots, just think back to the school playground – the barbel world has them all, fortunately they are a very tiny minority.
I’m not going to dwell on it here but my experience over many years is that people are just not interested and that old adage about ‘saying nothing if you have nothing nice to say’ is a sound one; one day it may come out in my book…….we’ll see. Over the years it has hardened me, I have a rhino’s skin, and you certainly need it in the fishing game!
So that involvement in itself keeps the interest at the maximum level and I’ve always believed that if you are involved, as I have been for the past twenty years, you have to be out there doing it; a responsibility if you like but a hugely enjoyable one as well. I will say this though; there is no brotherhood of the angle – that is pure fairy tale, it’s among our friends where we are at ease and happy that we all find our own particular brotherhood.
Having been involved for a long time, you make many friends and a handful of foes, it’s the name of the game and it’s ok as long as the figures stack up and for me they always have. And of course as I’ve said I’ve come into contact with so many who are an absolute pleasure, that’s what really keeps you going and safe in the knowledge that you’re not doing too much wrong. And then of course there is the responsibility that comes with being involved to your colleagues, to your members, to your friends, that keeps the angling fire burning. Then there are the responsibilities you bring on yourself, to sponsors, to editors, the list goes on…
You will hopefully have seen how meeting Fred came at just the right time in my life, for both of us in fact, starting the Barbel Society also came at exactly the right moment as both filled gaping voids, and I will be eternally grateful for both.
But that’s all about today and yesterday, what about the future? Well without giving too much away my life has changed irrevocably.
My life today is perfect for me, half the year spent in Australia escaping the ever lengthening British winter and enjoying the wonderful life style on offer the other side of the world, quality time with my grandson, summer and autumn river fishing and more family time with another grandchild on the way and involvement via the BS etc, it’s all good.
My life is in balance, so this is not really like Ian’s piece, mine shows how fishing has helped me in different ways at certain seminal moments in my life, filled all sorts of gaps and I would be truly lost without it, but I am in no way obsessed about any part of it, I’ve found my contented place.
I’m sure I’ll keep enjoying fishing until I draw my last breath but only because it is now part of my life rather than all of my life. If I carried on the same as say ten years ago I would have certainly fallen out of love with it but taking on new challenges, such as guiding, and with large chunks of my life lived on the other side of the world the balance is good and I’ll be singing that song: I’m a little down under but I’m feeling ok, got a little lost along the way, just around the corner found the light of day.
I really hope the awful UK weather improved enough for there to be some great end of season catches and that you managed to get out and catch one or two, I’ll see you next month!
