Memoirs of an Angler of No Importance Conclusion

MEMOIRS OF AN ANGLER OF NO IMPORTANCE – IN CONCLUSION

Writing these memoirs has been something of a journey for me, although they have appeared on this site for over a year now they have been highly abridged versions of much longer chapters I started about three years before. Then I had delusions of grandeur, I was supposedly writing a book. That idea was shot down when I approached a publisher with the idea, who quite politely, and probably quite rightly, told me not to give up my day job – if not in so many words. They also suggested that I did not give up writing, on the grounds that the finished article would be something for my family to look back on. I thought that was a touch patronising at the time, but again it was probably good advice. However when you write something you do like it to be read by a wider audience, and I’m grateful to Graham for putting them on FM.

Although these scribblings didn’t realise my ambition to be a published author they did bring me to realise something more important, something about my love for fishing when it was at its lowest ebb. I know that sounds a tad corny, and it never started out to be anything more that a pleasant trip down memory lane to overgrown steaming tench pools at dawn. I wanted to get across the pure infatuation I had as a kid, the special joy and the mystery. Also, living in something of an angling backwater I wanted to show that this is the same whether you’re fishing on the Hampshire Avon, or stuck in the mud at Yarm on the tidal Tees, Redmire Pool or a municipal park lake. What I didn’t realise was this joy and mystery was the very thing I was missing, and the childish infatuation had slipped away.

There are dangers in nostalgia. There’s the obvious one of the rose tinted glasses, when everything that happened years ago starts to look so much better. However, in this area it doesn’t really apply, not as far as the quality of fishing goes. I couldn’t help notice while writing this series how many times the words “back then” or “in those days” cropped up, and they were never used for the better. The fishing here has never been so good, not in my lifetime at any rate, and that’s without counting commercial waters. The Tees now produces catches unimaginable in my youth, 20lb pike, 4lb perch, and 50lb plus nets of bream, and some of them are real dustbin lids over 6lb. And the chub, well I’ve told you about the chub!

I have heard some anglers claim the Tees must be the best river in the country, perhaps this is going over the top, but it shows what high esteem the river is held. It also shows the parochial attitude that once dogged angling in this area has long since gone. Now we believe all things are possible on our own doorstep.

The kind of nostalgic danger I fell for was a little subtler, and a little less obvious it was happening, and why. In my twenties I finally came to realise match fishing was not for me, I’d like to say that decision was due to a blinding flash of inspiration, but the truth is it was more to do with the reality of getting married, buying a house and bringing up a young family, and quite rightly in such a situation fishing takes a back seat.

Trying to fit into the match scene had become a burden to me, and as much as I would have denied it my heart was no longer in it anyway. So when after something of a lay off I picked up my rods again I had no wish to return to that seemingly high tech and intense world that had done me no favours – actually that’s a lie, I learned quite a bit while match fishing, and made some good friends in the process – but at the time that’s how it felt. I wanted to turn the clock back to my youth, I wanted, or should I say needed, to rekindle that primeval drive that was sparked so many years before by Jack Hargreaves and huge rods in Woolworth’s. It should have been like the old saying about banging your head against a brick wall – it’s nice when it stops. It wasn’t. The trouble was I went from one wall straight to another. I was in essence chasing a myth, an image of Helicon days that existed nowhere else than in my selective memory.

It was also around that time I discovered those classic angling writers that either I was blissfully ignorant of, or plainly ignored. You would think such greats as Dick Walker, Peter Stone, Peter Wheat and Bernard Venables would be just the people to put me on the right track, needless to say it didn’t work, in fact it made it worse. The reason for this, I suppose, is that those greats are now almost iconic, so not only was I trying to live out a myth, I was trying to live up to icons, all in a couple of precious hours between school runs, and of course doomed to failure.

Then there was “A Passion for Angling”; here surely was the antithesis to the match world, and a gateway to my youth. Well maybe, but again as wonderful as it is “A Passion for Angling” is not a documentary, it’s six wonderful films. Even though I knew this I still bought into the myth again, not to mention a few of Chris Yates’ books. Now as far as I’m concerned Mr Yates is the greatest living Englishman, but he has this wonderful knack of putting himself down as an angler, he portrays something of a ‘haphazard’ approach that belies his obvious ability. I wanted to be like that, to chuck it and chance it like the good old days, just to be there, never mind if I caught or not.

Most of the time I did catch, but it wasn’t giving me the satisfaction I thought it should, where was the heart pounding wide-eyed euphoria I felt when stood side by side with my dad? Here was something else I hadn’t realised, I was also trying to raise a ghost, and without turning this into an episode of Jerry Springer I don’t think I was fishing for me, for here and now, I was attempting to put something back into my life that was lost.

It could quite easily have been the end for me as an angler, but it ultimately only took one line from a book to change things, the chapter Childhood Dreams in, ironically, the Passion for Angling book has a line about an old tench float surrounded by bubbles on a misty lake at dawn. This image was so evocative, so universal it inspired me to put pen to paper myself, and in doing so put many things into perspective.

If these writings go no further than these pages they have served their purpose of putting the past where it belongs, as cherished golden memories, and at the same time sharing them with a few other like minded people.

There are it would seem many people today who like to tell us what is wrong with our sport, and perhaps there are things that could be better, however I like to think there is so much more that is right with it, and in some small way I’d like to think I’ve shown some of this. And now I’m in my forties, perhaps for the first time in years I’ve re-discovered that simple joy, not by chasing impossible dreams, and trying to fit some make believe image, but by being me. To fish to the best of my ability in the time I have, and take pride in the results.

That’s enough of the past, what about the future? Well at the start of a new season I’ll say goodbye, I’m off to catch a few more memories.

Note from Graham
This series of memoirs from Davy North are the epitome of what FISHINGmagic is all about. Rejected by a book publisher and, I have no doubt, they would have been rejected by an angling magazine. Not because they’re not interesting or well written – they are, in spades, and I’ve felt privileged to publish them – but simply because they don’t fit into what angling book and journal publishers want. They’re not the usual dry and cold ‘how to do it’ recipe, or a story of how a monster was captured. They’re simple, heartfelt, heartwarming stories about the progress of a real, ‘ordinary’, angler. What he fished for, the people he met along the way, and how his family, particularly his beloved father, influenced his sport.

I reckon that’s where we score. As long as I’m editor there will always be space for articles such as Davy’s memoirs, for I’m convinced that there are many anglers who love to read nostalgia and well written words. Of course, the technical stuff has its place too, but there should always be space for nothing more than a damn good read. And that’s exactly what Davy’s memoirs were, a good read with a fishing theme. Sadly, there isn’t enough of it around these days.