| 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. |
UNDERWORLD – THE FURTHER THOUGHTS OF GOBBY THE GUDGEON Oh well, apparently wintertime is nearly over down here and something called Spring is on its way. There are subtle signs, like the tench climbing out into the open again after burying themselves in the mud and those nobody’s friends the eels do it as well. Although why something that can walk through the sky, cross over land, whatever that is, chooses to wallow in mud is beyond me. If that was not enough, they tell us that they then go swimming in something called the sea, which is at least twice as big as our pond, what rubbish! Believe all that if you can, but don’t you think if you could allegedly do all manner of exciting things like that you would want to be doing something more interesting with your life than kipping in the slime for six months – exactly, walking without legs, ha, whatever next! Anyway, when they finally do wake up, the tench swim around with those piggy little red eyes looking for all the world like they need even more sleep, and then they offer to rub themselves up against you, as their slime is apparently a cure for everything. Yeah, right – just exactly when did being covered with snot fix anything, (apart from when you were last at a Sex Pistol’s concert) certainly not a cure for looking green around the gills (and everywhere else) all the time! The carp are still cruising around, although due to a distinct lack of food falling through the sky, anything and everything they think might be edible gets hoovered up immediately. Then they are all very concerned that they are not as quite as appealing as they could be. They keep asking each other questions like, “Do my flanks look big enough?” or “Is my belly dragging on the bottom?” This is in case they go jumping out of the sky to be photographed (again and again and again….). As you can imagine, they get completely neurotic when the sky gets really hard and no food falls through it and, worse still, nobody takes them out for photographs – really depressing that is. Some idiot also told them that the men through the sky don’t come and feed them for three months if they live in a river, and there was talk of it happening again on the lakes. The carp were horrified to hear this, and it took a great deal of tench slime rubbing to calm them down. Occasionally, during the winter, someone above the sky will try to tempt the carp with something called a brick attached to a long thin thing called rope. In the first instance, heaving this thing onto the hard sky makes enough noise to wake the dead, although it doesn’t seem to bother those fish that are upside down and appear to be examining the sky very, very closely. They are so intent on what they are doing that they don’t move at all, whatever happens. Anyway, after a few turns at this the brick thing comes crashing through the sky, and of course the carp rush over to see if it is edible, which it certainly isn’t. Then it gets whipped away and them ‘upstairs’ on the other side of the hard sky repeat the whole thing all over again. When the commotion stops the carp start slavering like Pavlov’s dogs expecting food to come pouring through the hole in the sky. This ravenous mob tend to be really upset when all they get through the hole in the sky is dead fish cut in half, which is exactly what they don’t want because they are not round and don’t smell of strawberries or halibut (whatever they are!). However, Mike the Pike and his mates (or should that be Michelle the Pikette and her mates!) get stuck in straight away, seeing how many they can pick up. And when that happens us little ‘uns, we keep well out of the way in case we get caught up in the ‘hide you in the mouth’ game. We also know it is Spring time when the trout start going mad and start rushing round and round chasing little balls of sparkly fluff, then they jump through the sky so fast that they never come back again and they don’t even stop to say goodbye. Just goes to show that there is absolutely no point in making friends with one of those snooty buggers then, even if they did talk to the rest of us, which they don’t. Ah well, seems the water is warming up a bit, all the other fish are milling around in groups, and I’ve got this strange feeling around my ventral fins…… |
