Fishers On The Green Roads – ‘Mac’

IF ANY ONE individual was responsible for Baz taking what might be termed a serious interest in fishing it was Mac. Of Irish extraction, with a bland, flat face, scattered patches of freckles and curly reddish hair, Mac was a powerful youth. No boy in his year at school would meddle with him, and he excelled at all physical sports, as well as being far from a dullard academically. He was the son of a shopkeeping family, the shop itself in a long narrow lane not far from school. When Baz had visited after school he realised that there were older brothers, even more powerful than Mac, although he had difficulty working out where they all lived in a building that seemed all shop or storage for the same. But Mac’s greatest asset was a moped. It is doubtful if he was legally old enough to ride it, but it took him quickly to the lakes and ponds that Baz took hours to reach on his mother’s bike. And his seeming wealth, as befitted a shopkeeper’s son, did mean that he had all manner of tackle’ and equipment that other boys envied.

Illustration by Rebecca Freear

On one after-school visit he was admiring Mac’s new Omnia threadline reel, all sleek, dove-grey metal and a shiny wire bale arm, when he was asked if he knew of Saltmarshe Lake. He’d never heard of it; and he was surprised then to learn that it was located only a mile from his home at Hook – but on the opposite bank of the mighty Humber. The bike ride was all of eight miles and complicated.

“I’m going ont’ moped. Does tha want ter come?” said Mac.

Baz was staggered. He’d never heard of Mac going off fishing with anyone but his immediate family, or on his own: but at this age Baz failed to recognise that the hulky youth had an affectionate and brotherly feeling towards him, a relatively skinny and small individual.

“I’m not sure I can find it,” said Baz, after quite a long pause, “but I’ll ‘ave a go.”

“No. Yet c’n come wi’ me. I’ll tow yet ont’ moped. It dun’t take long ter get ‘ang of it. All yer do is ‘old on ter saddle and keep yer ‘andle bars straight.”

Baz was almost shaking with excitement. “‘Ow fast does it go?” “Twenty miles an hour flat out,” said Mac nonchalantly, “but wi’ you ‘anging on it might onny do fifteen. It’s agenst the law, but int’ early morning there’s no one around, and yer can cycle back on yer own.”

Baz didn’t hesitate further about deciding. All that worried him was the tackle needed.

“What’s in Saltmarshe Lake?” he said.

“Bloody great pike,” said Mac, his conveyed awe and depth of feeling transmitting itself to Baz.

“I an’t gorrany pike tackle,” muttered Baz, beginning to lose heart a little as Mac pulled out his box of spinners, and wire, and Jardine Snap tackles, and big, glossy, Fishing Gazette bungs each with a longitudinal slit in the cork, a peg, and a brilliant red top.

“Yer can come an’ watch me, and if yer like it yer can get some gear together and go back on yer own.”

It was clear that Mac was trying to be helpful and continued to encourage him with the result that Baz held back no longer, and they agreed to go on the following Saturday, Mac to detour via Hook and take Baz in tow just before dawn. The thought of their speeding through the countryside, then to pursue giant pike which he knew had powerful jaws and a ferocious set of teeth, was almost too much for Baz and he spent the remainder of the week daydreaming to an even greater degree than usual, to the consternation of his mother and teachers. He escaped a Saturday morning detention by the skin of his teeth, after being caught once again staring out of the classroom window. “What is so very captivating about the bicycle sheds this week?” his French teacher wanted to know, when he was caught for the second time staring fixedly at the less than salubrious scene outside. It was his inevitable and inane response of “Nothing, miss” which nearly resulted in a detention.

That Saturday morning saw Mac as good as his word, and with Baz unencumbered by anything other than a pop bottle and sandwiches, they fair flew along the Westfield Banks road alongside the Humber towards Boothferry Bridge. Baz’s sit-up-and-beg had never travelled so fast in all its days, and he genuinely feared for its safety: thoughts for his own safety never entered his head for one moment, and the towing was quite easy to get used to, the occasional shouted instruction from Mac averting any serious errors of judgement.

“If yer lose control; let go a’ me,” roared Mac above the din and clatter of the engine. “We don’t want both of us injured.”

The moped gave rise to clouds of exhaust smoke, but it wafted away behind them; and Baz remained in a state of exhilaration for the whole journey, his left hand skilfully steering the speeding push bike. The only near-calamity happened when Baz assumed they were taking a right hand fork, whereas Mac took the left hand one! True to his brief, Baz let go the moped saddle and the two steeds went their separate roads, Baz eventually slowing to a halt amid a cloud of dust, his toe acting as a brake on the rim of the wheel.

When he returned to Mac, a sheepish grin on his face, he also paused for the first time to notice the countryside through which they passed. Steeply banked, deep ditches ran along both sides of the roads, and beyond them, often, were copses of hawthorn and blackthorn from which flocks of wood pigeons clattered. This was different to the fields around Hook. The route he would remember easily enough, even though he’d been concentrating too closely to appreciate the scenery: on the return journey he’d take all that in unconsciously, and would become tired only on approaching his home again.

“We could do wi’ a gun fer all those stoggies,” he said, watching a wood pigeon, quite close, doing its climb and swoop routine. “Never mind the stoggies. Let’s get back on the road, as it’s still a mile or two yet.”

For some while they’d been travelling along the north bank of the Humber, huge common reed beds showing above the grassy flood bank. But now they turned away from the river towards more wooded country, and a few minutes later passed beneath a railway bridge beyond which was a vista of oak trees and water. The silence when the moped engine was switched off was broken only by birdsong: by blackbirds in the oaks and by disturbed peewits in a large field opposite the lake.

The lake took Baz’s breath away. At this early hour it was calm and wreathed in slowly shifting patches of mist. The far bank was greyly visible in consequence and, seemingly, a long way off. On the near bank the spreading branches of the oaks reached out, shading the water. He could see no sign of fish anywhere. And whilst Mac fumbled with his tackle bags, Baz continued to take in the scene. The peewits wheeled and cried over a large grass field in which cart horses grazed. A black, tarred shed stood in the field, but near the gate, and Baz marked it down as a place of shelter, for it was fully open on one side and had cribs for horse food on the other. “There’ll be swallows’ nests in there,” he thought. And as he thought the thought, a pair of swallows sped into the open building heading for the rafters.

It was the noise of Mac’s tackle box which brought him back to reality.

“What yet going ter use for bait, Mac?”

“These little mackerel spinners,” was the reply, Mac’s hand holding up a one-inch long, shining blade adorned with a treble hook. “There can’t be mackerel in ‘ere. You onny get them int’ sea.”

“I know that dozy. But mackerel spinners are good for pike too.” Baz was quiet for a while digesting the knowledge, but then:

“I thought pike were big? That spinner’s very small.”

“Meks no difference. They still attack it because they eat little fish as well. Anyway, there’s so much weed in ‘ere that you ‘ave ter fish right up close ter surface, and yer can do that with this spinner.”

“Where’s the rest of yer rod? ‘Ave yet forgotten it?” said Baz, inspecting the four-foot wand, the only sign of a rod that he could see.

“This is it, yer daft bugger,” sneered Mac. “It’s me best spinning rod, made out of split cane.”

Baz had never seen such a short, thin rod. Surely this couldn’t pull out mighty pike? But he didn’t voice the question, electing instead to keep quiet and watch. Mac fitted the Omnia fixed-spool reel to the tiny handle with insulating tape, threading the line through the half dozen rod rings. Baz knew that the length of wire which was then tied to the end of the reel line was to prevent the pike’s sharp teeth severing the line itself. That much he knew, as he’d read it in his copy of Bernard Venables’ picture book of angling. And it was from the same source that he’d learned his awe and respect of the pike. Often he had inspected that baleful eye staring from the page, so his pent up emotions can be imagined as Mac began to cast his mackerel spinner. Baz carried the gaff and tackle bag. All their food and other bits of equipment lay scattered on the grass adjacent to the bikes which, at least, had the dignity of being propped against a tree.

Part Two of ‘Mac’ next week