I will bore you by starting at the beginning, in saying that I first stumbled onto (or is that into?) FM a long time ago (a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away….) and soon felt that I was in a ‘club’ of knowledgeable, approachable and leg-pulling reprobates.
Now, I am the first to admit that my angling prowess is bordering on abysmal and this severely limits my ability to retell stirring battles with unseen leviathans, or to pass on any hitherto unknown secret baits and tactics, nor reveal covert venues stuffed full of potential record-breaking fish.
I somehow felt I wanted to contribute something to this online ‘club’ and cobbled – and I do mean cobbled together – a slightly biographical tale with a few, hopefully humorous asides thrown in. This was sent off to the then editor, Graham Marsden, expecting no more than a polite rejection to my submission.
To my utter shock and amazement the article appeared on the site in January 2002. Not only had my questionable grammar been cleaned up, but Graham had added some pictures which really lifted my piece. Even more shocks were to come in that members actually took the time to read the article and some even posted favourable comments. And on top of that, Graham must have had a moment of complete madness brought about by imbibing copious amounts of single malt the previous night (or inspired genius – you choose..) when he invited me to write a regular column which evolved into the Alternative Angler**
Given that my prior writing experience amounted to little more than a couple of Meldrew-esque rants to the local newspaper, this was an interesting challenge, to say the least. But the more I wrote, the easier it became mostly feeble attempts at humour, sometimes rants, and often just complete ramblings.
Now, the problem with trying to supply articles on a regular basis is avoidance of repetition. Of course, if you are a well-known angler, you make sure you include mention of your sponsors products and highlight the venues featured, you just have to write around six articles in total and the angling press will just massage the details and recycle these ad nauseam (Cynical? Moi…?)
In my case, I took the route of quantity over quality and just tried to attach a fishy angle to almost anything and everything. Subjects included Xmas panto specials involving FM members, horoscopes, Almanac-like predictions, poems (yes, really, poems…!) topical comments bordering on the political, gentle pi55 taking of just about every arm of our sport and then there were the left-field series which took on a life of their own, with the likes of:
Donald and Damien
Don’t know where these two came from, other than they are probably the antithesis of Mr Crabtree and Peter, in that there is certainly no love lost between them. The first ‘episode’ in their tales was supposed to be a one-off; cowardly written under a pseudonym for fear that it would not be acceptable. Around 20 tales later, the pair are still conniving to do each other down.
Amanda
Can you really make a story about a ménage a trois that has a fishy slant….? Why not, especially when it may or may not be based on real life events…..
The Silt – Walters Letters
A very tongue in cheek pastiche on the ‘Stone – Walker’ letters, but far from being correspondence between two giants of angling, they are the responses penned by a star struck, almost certainly sycophantic youngster to his fishing hero. Loosely based on a former FM member? I couldn’t possibly say….
TickleTackle
‘Tackle you didn’t know you wanted at prices to make you wince’ is probably the best way to describe FM’s very own hyper exclusive and totally imaginary tackle company. For years it has been creating niche markets for products. Once again an idea that just seemed to snowball after the first article was dreamed up, and still going strong.
Now, all of this is in no way meant to be a self-congratulatory piece. It is just to reiterate that because of my lack of angling skill or competence, my approach to writing has been to try and work a fishy angle into anything I can dream up. If I can adopt this to (hopefully) entertain the members of FM over the years then really anybody can, and almost certainly better than my own feeble efforts. It remains my proud claim that in all those articles over the years nobody, but nobody can ever say they learnt anything or fished any better as a result of reading my ramblings
Addendum…..
I will freely admit that my piscatorial PB would be considered laughable by ‘proper’ anglers. But for those who go down the route of making comparisons, let me say that my PB carp stands at 6lb. If I mention this to a room full of ‘real’ carp anglers I expect them to move to the far end of the room as if I had just announced I had some notifiable and highly contagious disease.
But, here’s the thing. My 6lb carp was caught from a small canal pound, with barely 100 yards between locks and was probably the biggest fish in that particular venue. So making comparisons with other peoples’ catches seems pointless unless the circumstances are identical or at least broadly similar. As far as I am concerned, yours and my PB are just that, they are yours, based on your skill and the venues that you have access to.
Alternative Angler
Given that I have churned out literally hundreds of mostly below average articles; I had toyed with the idea of gathering a select few into some form of compilation. Whilst it would be laughable to call this selection ‘The Best Of the Alternative Angler,’ maybe it would be better called ‘The Least Worse of the Alternative Angler’. I even thought about having the temerity to ask our esteemed new editor to do some thumbnail illustrations to highlight the start of each chapter. Hmmmm……….
