The blurted awakening of the radio alarm clock is occasionally a welcome sound. The glowing red digits tell you that you’re already late, and the thought of slumber races from your mind in a second. Only a child on Christmas day could be so excited so fresh out of bed, only a child can find energy enough to discard his dreams so wantonly. That is, only a child – or a fisherman.
Already you’re sat dreaming about the magical possibilities that await you. It’s almost impossible to organise the tackle, bait and tea that you’ve already organised four times the previous night, and sandwiches take far too long to make, to even butter the bread could mean a whole valuable thirty seconds is lost. Anyway, you won’t have time to eat because today you can feel it in your fishbone. Today you’re going to be ‘baggin’ up!’.
As you glance out of the window and compare the rapidly lightning sky to how it looked ten minutes ago a touch of panic enters your giddy mind and you make the decision that if you’ve forgotten anything now, it’s staying at home. This is a brave decision for a fisherman to make as you probably know. You can be almost certain that if you have forgotten something it will be this bravely disregarded item’s absence that causes ‘the one that got away’, and one always gets away. So you expertly use the last remaining space in your box for a banana, “ample nourishment for a full day on the bank,” you say to yourself, “Man cannot live on angling alone!”
Thoughts of feeders and floats and baits and bent rods. You almost compose yourself as you try to think strategically, but composure is short-lived at five thirty in the morning when the fish are lying there, hungry for a lovely fat lobworm or a tasty chunk of luncheon meat.
“Oh yes, today it’ll be a big bait day.” It’s a sure thing as you heave what must be at least half the contents of the tackle shop onto your creaky morning back. It’s going to be big hooks with big baits, not to mention the big cannonballs of groundbait and handfuls of hempseed, casters, maggots and corn. There will be no call for caution today. Today it is going to be easy because…, no, fishing isn’t supposed to be easy, you would surely become bored if fishing was easy. The challenge will present itself as it always does but today you’re in tune, you can sense action and you’re at one with your sub-aqua-mojo, it’s a simple fact that today, you’ll do it right.
So today is not going to be ‘easy’ but you know that today you’re going to give everything, flexing your rod arm in anticipation of the day of heaving and hauling that lies ahead. Nothing could be more certain, its going to be bite after bite…..fish after glorious fish! So with the confidence of a war hero in a game of soldiers, you bang your way, starry eyed, out of the front doorway, getting slightly jammed just for a second, obliviously letting the whole family know you’re on your way.
The morning chill pulls you refreshingly into reality. The town is still and silent. You have the streets to yourself. You squeeze the scaled down tackle shop into your fishmobile with the mathematical precision only attainable through hours of practice. It is a skill that only anglers and un-signed rock groups ever fully master. Once you have cleared a peep hole in the mist on the windscreen you coax the battered old hatchback into life, whispering the odd Fawltyesque warning under your breath just to get her started. In a little over an hour’s time the roads, although bordering on the placid now, will be transformed into a matrix of,………. “I’m late for work!” -rage and, “Get the **** out of my way!” -rage.
Shuddering at the thought you quickly replace it with the thought of creaking rods and whistling lines, which is, I think we’re all agreed, a much nicer picture.
Remaining under the speed limit becomes even more difficult a task than usual, you have to keep restraining your right foot as the needle on the speedo sneaks passed the forty m.p.h. mark at every other lamp post. You become aware of your speed when you turn off the smooth black road surface and onto the rough terrain of the track that leads to your mystical destination. Not only do you become aware of your speed, your whole range of senses suddenly springs to attention. The car is slowed to almost reverse and you wind down the window. The secret music of the waking countryside rushes into the car and you make your first contact of the day with mother nature. There is nowhere you would rather be.
As you slowly roll to a stop the squeak of the brakes disturbs a pair of wood pigeons and they shout obscenities at you as they clatter out of the trees. Light is gradually filtering its way through the dawn mist, shrouding the morning in an aurora of fresh golden newness, and as you step out of the car you are once again filled with the excitement and anticipation that only anglers and children feel. Now you are thinking about which swim is going to look the most inviting, if it were possible you would probably fish them all at once. Fortunately it is not, although you have easily got enough tackle.
At this point your tackle feels lighter than at any other point in the day, in fact it’s hardly noticeable as you load yourself up and kick the car doors shut. Off you hike, itching for a glimpse of the water, like an apple-hungry child scrumping in a secret orchard, its as if you’re sneaking up on someone as you creep down the bank, and then, through the trees it’s there, the unbroken reflection of the sky, bathed in swirling mist, tinged with green, and it’s waiting for you to smash its own tranquillity with the eruption of an angry tench or the sheer explosion of a surprised carp as it sucks your bait from the surface.
You have the water to yourself and its like a treasure chest lying open, waiting, untouched for a hundred years. Now you have to select one piece of treasure, just one out of the whole chest, you have to decide which jewel in the chest will give you the most pleasure and, of course, the most reward.
There are bulrush patches, overhanging trees, deep holes, lily pads, shelves and drop-offs. There is even an old sluice gate, there are so many typical haunts, hiding places and holding features to fish and even though you know in the not so distant depths of your mind that you’ll probably catch anywhere, (and after all, if today was a match day you’d have to catch anywhere). All the same, you make the decision very carefully. ‘Reading the water’ is something like mastering a new language or mastering an art, except the art of watercraft, you can be fairly safe to assume, is not the type of skill that anybody can ever truly master.
To become a master of something implies that you cease to learn it and therefore can only become more practised in what you already know. I believe that even the oldest and wisest and most accomplished of anglers go to their death-beds a student, not a master.
So you scan the water’s surface for any tell-tale signs of fish moving, bubbles, fizzing, swirls and rolls and muddy clouds, any clue will suffice and yet if there are no definite signs then just a comfy spot with a nice view and half a chance of catching will do, but more often than not just a feeling in your gut will tell you ‘This is the place, there’s fish lurking in them thar’ depths.’
Invariably there will be more than one swim in which your little voice wants you to angle, and you sometimes sit for a full day and wonder if you should have chosen the other one – this is an impossible question to answer.
Nonetheless you torture yourself wondering. You settle down at the chosen hot spot tempted by the already fizzy surface created by the pools’ resident tench churning away hungrily in the silt bed, ‘a tench morning this certainly is’ you think to yourself as you hurriedly yet methodically unpack your arsenal.
As it turns out, and it is usually the case, you decide upon your favourite float rod, thirteen feet long and not without backbone it’s a perfect and well tested tool for the job. It will be fitted with your favourite reel and almost without thought your favourite piece of peacock quill will be selected from the myriad of mostly unused options before you. And why not, for this is your favourite and what’s more you’re pretty sure by now that it must also be the tench’s favourite, for they certainly always try to steal away with it!
A worm is read its last rites and you apologise as you impale it on a size twelve. With the float set an estimated foot or so overdepth the first cast of the morning is made. You sit back and watch as the shot eases the quill to attention leaving the orange tip an inch proud of the surface, just next to the agitated area of water that bubbles away enticingly.
At this point your world slows down to a serene flow, you bathe in the first rays of a brand new sun and smile to yourself, even laugh to yourself as you think for the second time today about all the commuters and the hustlers and bustlers who are about to awake into the daily, perpetual drudgery to which they appear so addicted. Today paradise is no longer lost. you know because your sitting right in the middle of it, in fact if there was not a single fish in the water before you it would still be paradise.
Fortunately there are fish and apparently there’s one trying to pull your float across to the far bank. With a quick, albeit belated strike you connect yourself to the would be float thief and as the line tightens and the rod bends over, you laugh again.
