The morning was thickly misted, very cold and still as death, and at Whitney Court the silence serves to amplify one’s sense of isolation. The most experienced of anglers would – if honest – admit to a certain anxiety on venturing alone alongside a high and roiling winter river in these conditions: to slip in would mean serious trouble in most places, and with no one around it would almost certainly be curtains for all but the youngest and fittest.
Armed with a 4-piece, 12lb line and a rubber shad, I was forced to consider very carefully where I would cast from; it would have been so easy to find a gap in the bushes and bash out the lure but what if I hooked a fish? Very possibly a big one? Would I be able to land it? Invariably, the answer was no: the banks were simply too slippery to seriously contemplate getting down with the net.
And so I made my way downstream frustrated at having to forego the lure of so many likely pike-haunts. Now and then I’d find a relatively safe spot where flood detritus had accumulated to afford a degree of grip for my boots but even here I had misgivings: beneath the natural mat of old reeds and driftwood was that same black, greasy mud, ready to ease my passage into the icy folds of the river.
Within half an hour I wised-up and called it a morning. I’d imagined myself up to my neck in thorax-freezing water, breathless, and grasping at frosted tufts as my legs whirled in the current. I’d pictured cursing myself for being so stupid, alone and unseen at the base of a high, unscalable bank…so I went home.
I urge Fishing Magicians not to take chances.
