| KEVIN PERKINS | |
Never mind smelling the flowers, don’t forget to take time out to see the satirical side of fishing life and grab a laugh along the way as well. So here’s a regular column from Kevin Perkins to remind us that life is for laughing at, or taking the p*** out of, whenever we can. |
OLD ALT’S ALMANAC A New Year is approaching fast, so it seems timely to offer up a few ever so slightly tongue in cheek predictions: The success of camouflage clothing will be even more marked in the New Year. The versions used by stillwater anglers will continue relatively unchanged, but the type used by river fishermen works so well that pretty soon you won’t be able to see them on the banks at all….. A cleaner finally discovers the missing three paperclips behind the filing cabinets at the offices of a well-known conservation society. Investigations into the anomalies in the stationery cupboard stock take are brought to a close, with no further action being deemed necessary. In a shock move, commercial carp fisheries will have to be emptied in order to feed the massive increase in immigrants from the former Eastern Bloc. Allowing them into the country and not being able to feed them their staple diet of carp is seen as a gross violation of their basic human rights, apparently. The good news is that the now empty commercial fisheries will be stocked with the new must-have fish of the moment, barbel. This will then save thousands of anglers from having to trek down to rivers to catch them. All that walking to search out a good swim, and then finding that the water is actually moving in front of you, might even find yourself having trouble with leaves on your line, etc. etc. Could well do without all that bother. Another blow comes in the shape of the Food Standards Agency which announces that along with the ban introduced from January 1st on things like jam and cakes prepared by members of Women’s Institutes, home made baits will not be allowed to be offered to fish unless you possess a Basic Food Hygiene Certificate. As well as that, your bait-making premises have to be Inspected and Certified. As a fast track solution a certain Mr. G Ramsey is offering an intensive two-week session of Cordon Bleu boilie making. Anyone who actually survives the course gets a Competence Certificate (and a counselling session). Angling Times will become Masters of All They Survey, with a weekly series of questionnaires, designed to pinpoint exactly what it is us anglers want. Following on the theme of the first survey in November, the questions are made simpler to answer by leaving out half the possible answers. This is all going fine until they manage to miss themselves off the list in the week sixteen edition, which asked ‘Which of these weekly angling papers do you prefer?’ AT doesn’t appear from week seventeen onwards as a result of the answers to their own survey…. In a boost to raise the profile of angling, it is proposed that several fishing pursuits are included in the Olympics, with an eye to increasing our chances of winning a medal or two if we do get to stage the games in 2012. Events are still in the early planning stages, but among the contenders are: Pole Fault – Competitors start by holding a 16m pole horizontally out in front of them. Additional 1.2m sections are added until they can no longer keep the tip off the ground, or the weight pulls them over. Swimchase – a bit like a steeplechase, but with some real bite. To begin with, footwear will be waders instead of running spikes. Barbed wire fences will replace wooden hurdles. Stinging nettle beds to wade through, of course, and the water jump (ditch) will be a lot deeper than it looks, full of stinking ooze, and the sides will be too slippery to climb out of. Finally, a jog through a field of bullocks, with rucksack and holdall strapped to your back, all against the clock. Swing the Lead – An obvious casting competition in two parts where the athletes all have to use exactly the same gear on an unmarked field. Part one is a round based on giving points to the one who casts furthest, of course. In part two of the competition, the contestants have to try and guess how far they actually did cast, with the winner being the one with the highest aggregate score over the two rounds. In an exciting kick off to the New Year, Matt Hayes sets off, Michael Palin style, to fish the entire length of the Orinoco. This three-year trip was very well supported by members of the angling fraternity, whose outstanding generosity raised far more than was required for the originally planned three-month trip. In fact so much money has come in that it will be possible for him to stay out there even longer, and with just a few more donations he will be able to take Rex Hunt with him for company. The only downside is that due to communications problems, there won’t be any reports or articles sent back for the whole time they are there – shame! There, that little lot is bound to happen, isn’t it? |
