maceo
Well-known member
Just back from an abortive fishing trip - I haven't been out for ages and was looking forward to my first trip fishing this season. I only really like fishing rivers, so I've been waiting impatiently for the season to come around and looking wistfully at how beautiful the river bank looked through April and May.
With the hot weather this week, I looked at the forecast and thought today would be ideal. Took a day from my precious annual leave from work, spent my last tenner on some hemp and a pint of casters - what could go wrong?
Fortunately I went early, early and was down there by about 5:30am. Got settled in on the deserted bank and started enjoying the peace and quiet and wildlife. There was a pair of red kites in the next field and a massive school of about 50 ducks went by. Caught one or two half-decent roach, a few dace and some chublets.
Then at around 9am a car (white Range Rover Deluxe Sport - personalised plate) roars across the field and smokes up to where I'm fishing, billowing out clouds of noxious diesel particulates and scaring every fish and animal for miles around.
Posho leans out of the window (I wasn't worthy of him even deigning to dismount) and tells me in short order to pack up my stuff and clear orf! They've got a match on. What can I say? I asked what time it starts and he says they're drawing pegs at 10. Oh, I say, then maybe I could have 30 mins more until 09:30? Just use up the last of my bait. But no. Nothing doing.
I must clear orf and I must clear orf immediately he brayed. I have been economically outmuscled and he's not shy about letting me know about it. Can't pay? Then go away.
I wondered briefly about telling the little twerp to stick a feather in his hat. I'm half a foot taller and 15 years younger than him, so there's not much he can do if I refuse to jump to his orders. I expect the cops have better things to than come down the river bank to sort me out. But you know how those types are about causing a fuss and anyway, the good mellow at-one-with-nature humour that I had built up during the early morning has been smashed along with the peace and tranquility and the chances of getting anything to bite in the next hour or so. So with bad grace and a grunted surliness, I complied and he was able to roar away in another big cloud of belching pollution - job done and another serf put straight.
I get so fed up of this. They wonder how to encourage people to go fishing and then come along and chuck them off when they try to go! Fishing used to be a poor people's hobby, but now it seems that like most other things, it's becoming a rich man's preserve. I was talking to a fellow oik the other day and telling him I was thinking of going fishing and he was laughing because he said he'd seen these people fishing with special clothes and boots and a fancy chair that was better than the armchair he was sitting in! Things didn't used to be like that. It used to be a box to sit on, half a pint of maggots and free fishing - nobody bothered you.
Fishing now reminds me of playing tennis when I was a teenager. I used to play all the time with my mates, in jeans and plimsolls and with one bald tennis ball. I got pretty good at it and won some u16 county cup. They said I was "a natural" at it. But I eventually gave it up in disgust because every summer as soon as the sun came out and Wimbledon was on the telly, all the rich old ladies and gentlemen in all the proper white gear and with super-expensive racquets would show up and the words were the same. "You boys! Clear orf the courts! Now!" and then they'd play foolish pat-a-cake over the net between themselves. They had to have all the courts. There were none they could even share with us.
Fed up with it and honestly wondering whether to even bother carrying on fishing.
With the hot weather this week, I looked at the forecast and thought today would be ideal. Took a day from my precious annual leave from work, spent my last tenner on some hemp and a pint of casters - what could go wrong?
Fortunately I went early, early and was down there by about 5:30am. Got settled in on the deserted bank and started enjoying the peace and quiet and wildlife. There was a pair of red kites in the next field and a massive school of about 50 ducks went by. Caught one or two half-decent roach, a few dace and some chublets.
Then at around 9am a car (white Range Rover Deluxe Sport - personalised plate) roars across the field and smokes up to where I'm fishing, billowing out clouds of noxious diesel particulates and scaring every fish and animal for miles around.
Posho leans out of the window (I wasn't worthy of him even deigning to dismount) and tells me in short order to pack up my stuff and clear orf! They've got a match on. What can I say? I asked what time it starts and he says they're drawing pegs at 10. Oh, I say, then maybe I could have 30 mins more until 09:30? Just use up the last of my bait. But no. Nothing doing.
I must clear orf and I must clear orf immediately he brayed. I have been economically outmuscled and he's not shy about letting me know about it. Can't pay? Then go away.
I wondered briefly about telling the little twerp to stick a feather in his hat. I'm half a foot taller and 15 years younger than him, so there's not much he can do if I refuse to jump to his orders. I expect the cops have better things to than come down the river bank to sort me out. But you know how those types are about causing a fuss and anyway, the good mellow at-one-with-nature humour that I had built up during the early morning has been smashed along with the peace and tranquility and the chances of getting anything to bite in the next hour or so. So with bad grace and a grunted surliness, I complied and he was able to roar away in another big cloud of belching pollution - job done and another serf put straight.
I get so fed up of this. They wonder how to encourage people to go fishing and then come along and chuck them off when they try to go! Fishing used to be a poor people's hobby, but now it seems that like most other things, it's becoming a rich man's preserve. I was talking to a fellow oik the other day and telling him I was thinking of going fishing and he was laughing because he said he'd seen these people fishing with special clothes and boots and a fancy chair that was better than the armchair he was sitting in! Things didn't used to be like that. It used to be a box to sit on, half a pint of maggots and free fishing - nobody bothered you.
Fishing now reminds me of playing tennis when I was a teenager. I used to play all the time with my mates, in jeans and plimsolls and with one bald tennis ball. I got pretty good at it and won some u16 county cup. They said I was "a natural" at it. But I eventually gave it up in disgust because every summer as soon as the sun came out and Wimbledon was on the telly, all the rich old ladies and gentlemen in all the proper white gear and with super-expensive racquets would show up and the words were the same. "You boys! Clear orf the courts! Now!" and then they'd play foolish pat-a-cake over the net between themselves. They had to have all the courts. There were none they could even share with us.
Fed up with it and honestly wondering whether to even bother carrying on fishing.
