The year marches on and, I’m glad to say, it has finally got around to ‘my’ time of year.
By that I don’t mean in some masochistic ‘I love being cold and miserable’ way, or that I am some ‘macho man’ hunter-gatherer type, but more to do with just enjoying the changing seasons. Maybe I’m alone in this, it might be something to do with being a December baby, and, curiously, my mother’s maiden name was Winter…
All of you with birthdays around this time will be familiar with relatives/friends trotting out that dreaded phrase ‘we just got you one big present for Xmas’ (That’s a lame cop-out, one present certainly does not equal two presents, and those of us with Dec/Jan birthdays should be treated like the Queen and get another ‘birthday’ around June so we don’t keep missing out) but anyhow…
It’s those little things, isn’t it? You know, one morning when you step out of the door and you feel that slight chill in the air. Then a few days later, perhaps an unexpectedly misty morning sees the hedgerows cloaked in cobwebs, all picked out with tiny pearls. Followed perhaps by one morning when you turn round and see your footprints have left a telltale trail in the dew-soaked grass.
You notice that the sun doesn’t get quite so high in the sky, and the shadows are longer and darker. Blood red sunrises and sunsets which echo the recent colours of the leaves on the trees. Those leaves, which had gone from green to yellow to gold, amber and vermilion and are almost all gone now. Suddenly you see the trees and bushes in stark relief, almost monochrome with only scarlet rosehips punctuating the scene.
I’ve been deadbaiting in late October in my shirtsleeves during what is known as an Indian summer, and it didn’t feel right at all. In fact I have to say it felt sneaky and underhand, almost as if I was cheating. It brought back schoolboy memories of taking a forbidden shortcut home through a field, which carried the dire warning that ‘Trespassers would be Prosecuted’. The fear as you clambered over the gate, the mad dash over the field and the hope that no-one, least of all the farmer or, heaven forbid, a policemen, was lying in wait to haul you off to be ‘prosecuted’, whatever that meant.
The water itself seems to change; no longer able to reflect the blue sky it looks leaden, with an inky blackness that makes it appear somehow deeper and more foreboding. Or maybe rushing past, pushing over the banks in places, the colour of cocoa, and containing so much debris it looks like brown minestrone soup. Dead and broken reed stems jutting through the surface, sometimes nodding wildly in the wind and the current, sometimes imprisoned by frost in the margins.
So this harsh scene paints an unappealing, almost grim, picture for those who go winter fishing; but wait, there are attractions here. Perhaps you may see a tiny flash of crimson in the grey landscape that is the robin – he will always pay you a visit, maybe even perch on your rod if there is the slightest chance of a piece of your sandwich. On frosty mornings, or if there is a dusting of snow, an angler making an early start may be the first to notice footprints left by the nocturnal goings on of the local wildlife, things you would never notice otherwise.
Other images, such as when you drive through sleepy villages on dark December mornings, the blackness only punctured by the twinkling of Christmas lights. Driving past brown field after brown field, you feel you are completely alone, then there is a cottage, smoke curling up from the chimney, someone else is awake but, unlike you, they’re not lucky enough to be going fishing
Of course, winter fishing is far more bearable now. The days of setting off with only a duffle coat, bobble hat and itchy jumper for protection against the elements are long gone. Woollen gloves were ok as long as you could keep your hands stuffed in your pockets – and egarding woolly hat/gloves/scarves/jumpers, see note above re: big presents…! Get a woollen glove wet in the winter and you are well on the way to frostbite and losing the ability to count up to ten. Even more so if you are wearing those pointless ‘fingerless’ gloves. Never was an article of clothing more aptly named, don them at your peril…
And before thermal boots, you could always encase your feet in ‘sea boot’ socks before donning your wellies. All I can say about that is that there must be hundreds of trawlermen hobbling about on stumps at the end of their shins if they had to rely on said socks as any form of protection for their feet and toes against the cold.
But, despite all the improvements in clothing to protect us against the elements, you still don’t see too many anglers about in the winter. As I write this, cold weather fronts are sweeping down the country, with the possibility of the snow on high ground, which means the molehill in my lawn will get a dusting as it’s probably the highest thing around here in Lincolnshire – still, it may make a change from the flooding…
Bring on the inclement weather I say, because as far as I am concerned, it’s my time…
