Pilgrim’s Progress – read it every Thursday!‘I Get By With A Little Help From My Friends….Part 2’
‘I want to devote the last two Pilgrim’s Progress articles of 2000 to some of my own fishing friends… If they are still my friends after some of the things I write about them, then I know they are friends for life!’
July saw our third fish-in of the year, this time on the River Severn near Atcham, courtesy of Lymm Anglers (Their Chairman Rick Filipowski is also a member of the mailing list). After many fishing trips with Wurzel, I finally managed to get a photograph of him. I don’t know whether he has ‘ants in his pants’ but he never stays still when he’s fishing. Or maybe he’s on a wanted list so doesn’t like to have his photo taken. Who knows !! But I do know, if there are 10 meadows, Wurzel will fish every one of them. In fact, I fished with him once near Worcester and he wandered so far downstream he got thrown off the Tewkesbury stretch. Ok, so I do stretch the truth a little, but you get my point.
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| Graham & Eddie at the trough |
At Atcham we all met up on the car park for a barbecue. It was a real friendly ‘bring and eat’ affair. Everybody brought and Graham Marsden ate. He even had an armchair, talk about home from home. All he lacked was his slippers. Come to think of it, what were those fluffy pink things on his feet? It was while we were on the car park I realised where Graham keeps his money. On top of Eddie Bibby’s car. Eddie has one of those big plastic roof cases on top of his car. Only, on closer inspection, it’s not a roof case at all, but Graham’s wallet.
The summer well and truly here, I connected with another of the guys from the mailing list, Paul Fletcher. Paul (better known as Fletch), although an expert carp angler had never caught a barbel much over 5lb. So, to make his dream come true, we had a number of sessions on the River Dove. Well, he almost doubled his previous best, with a super looking fish of 9 lb. I was really chuffed for Fletch.
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| Paul Fletcher (Fletch) |
The next best thing to catching a nice fish yourself, is if your mate catches one. We also had an overnighter on a syndicate lake that Fletch is a member of. It contains some really nice fish. We both caught two tench about 2lb each, but the time together was great. As Fletch is a real carp angler he has a cooker that he takes fishing with him, so there we were eating chilli-con-carne under the stars in Leicestershire.Late summer saw regular trips to the lower Severn. They became almost mini-fish ins with half a dozen or so of us in attendance each time. Graham brought his help meet Dave Colclough. If you read December’s edition of Coarse Fisherman you’ll see what I mean. That’s Dave making Graham’s boilies for him. Graham has that way of getting people to do things for him, I don’t know how he does it. By the way I haven’t forgot Graham, I’m coming to decorate your house soon. Don’t know why I said that….
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| Dave Colclough |
The trips to the lower Severn proved very beneficial in terms of fish caught. There were a number of 9’s, 10’s and the best fish of all, a super 12 taken by Rik Belenger, or Carp Angler, as he is known in the internet fishing community. Rik travels up from Southampton and has become a fishing buddy over the last six months. He sometimes signs himself as ‘Big Rik’, which is OK by me, because he’s bigger than I am.
Also on the lower Severn trips was Paul Williams. Paul lives about one mile from me and grew up in the street where I now live. Without the mailing list we would never have met…so it’s your fault Mr Marsden. Paul needs me as his translator, due to his strong Black Country accent.
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Rik Belenger, Carp Angler,
Big Rik and a barbel |
No-one can understand him. Mind, I was born in Dudley and I can’t understand him most of the time.Our regular sorties on the lower Severn were brought to an abrupt end by the floods that started in October and never seemed to stop. The blame for the devastation has been attributed to several sources : the EA, the Government, builders, local planners, even an act of God. However, I have my own theory. On our last trip to the river Severn, we met up as usual for our pre-fishing lunch. Just as we were about to leave the restaurant, sited by the river itself, Graham opened his wallet to pay. As his wallet had not been opened for some considerable time, there had been a build up of gases. The resultant release of these gases set off the sprinklers, which had to work overtime to deal with such a situation. The rest, as they say, is history…….
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| Brummie Williams |
So there you have it. My humorous, light hearted and very ‘tongue in cheek-ish’ look at some of the stories of the last twelve months involving my fishing friends. Why not join the mailing list and take part in the forum discussions. You won’t be disappointed.
By the way, I was right about the turkey and mince pies wasn’t I? Have a great New Year…..
The Reverend Stewart R Bloor
Sedgley International Christian Ministries
PO Box 1216, Dudley. DY3 1GW.
Telephone : 01384 – 828033
Web site : www.sicm.org
e-mail : missionscentre@sicm.org
