Wintle’s World – Making a Connection

Making a Connection

Somewhere deep in our psyche is a primitive urge to hunt, to connect with the natural world around us. Angling provides an escape from the artificial world around us. Many sports display elements of the hunting urge; the co-ordination of eye and hand, to reach a target (substitute ‘kill’), or to act in a tribal fashion as a team but angling does this in a natural way without the artificiality of constructed sports. These hunting instincts go back for hundreds of thousands of years and are thought to pre-date our more recent instincts to gather food and to farm.

Making the connection

In this modern world, we are bombarded with information. We are subject to surveillance hundreds of times a day, in our cities at least. We find the pace of life ever more frantic. Modern workers are almost obliged to be contactable wherever they may be, whatever they may be doing, regardless of the stress-inducing consequence. How many people do you see wandering around clutching mobile phones in front of them, frantically texting? Try watching TV and it is often the case that the screen displays a rapid series of un-watchable very short shots that your eyes and brain simply don’t get chance to evaluate.

We can’t connect through just watching a screen though doing so may awaken that hunting urge, as may reading about it. And if we can remember a gentler age of TV not that many years ago, Jack Hargreaves’ ‘Out of Town’ allowed the viewer, especially on the fishing programmes, to absorb what was going on through quietly and patiently watching events unfold, even if the session that you watched was less than fifteen minutes long. Jack’s commentary was muted and sparse because he understood that the film would tell the story much better than constant chatter.

For many of us, we rarely stop to ponder why we go fishing, we just go. But there are times in our lives when although we recognise that we’d like to go fishing; we also acknowledge that if we did so we would only be going through the motions. There are several likely reasons why this could be; if we are too stressed out, too distracted by work, or knowing that other parts of our lives must take priority such as our partners, family, DIY or even gardening. Sometimes we are just fished out; we’ve had some outstanding angling success, or fished too much and need a break until our appetite returns. I know from experience that I can fish every day for a fortnight as long as there is some variety but beyond that, I need a break. When, many years ago, I used to take three weeks off in July to go fishing there would come a point where I’d start watching cricket or golf on the TV just for a complete break.

We can also get out of the habit of going fishing. In middle age and beyond, the creaking bones and aching muscles persuade us that having achieved many of our angling goals in the previous decades, the urge to fish has weakened. How many times do you hear someone say that having spent £ xxx on a permit the previous year that they never actually managed a single trip? Such armchair anglers remain connected to angling though the link becomes ever more tenuous.

As I see it, there are stages of connection. The first stage is that through angling we have some connection that remains with us even when we are not fishing. This develops to the next stage when we plan our fishing; we prepare tackle and bait, decide where we might fish, obtain our permits, join clubs and visualise our fishing.

Trying to read the water and make a connection

We reach the next stage when we actually go fishing, now we are on the bank. The river or lake is before us. We may explore at this stage – the hunting instinct is kicking in. we look for signs of fish activity; bubbles, rises, fish moving underwater. We try to ‘read’ the water, understanding its flows, currents and depths. We look for features such as weedbeds, drop-offs and overhanging trees. We are trying to connect. The more natural the water, the greater the connection will be.

Then we start to fish. The connections continue; we choose a rod, reel, line and rig, try to understand what bait or lure will do the trick, and how to bait up the swim to entice the fish to feed. We get a feel for how the tackle is working; is the float trotting how we’d like, or the leger holding bottom, or the fly presenting as we’d wish.

We start to connect in other ways too. We attune to the birds around us, rising fish, and perhaps if we are lucky, mammals such as mice, shrews, voles or even a rare sighting of an otter.

The main connection is with the fish; we get a bite, strike and play and land the fish. Briefly, we admire it, marvel at its beauty, perhaps weigh and photograph it before returning whence it came. The mysterious underwater world has yielded one of its treasures for a moment.

We have connected.