There are those times in life when events exceed any prior hope. That are planned to be good but conclude in the exceptional, beyond words.
'Problem is, I'm now committed to put into words an explanation!
The emotions of angling. Those occasional heart-stopping moments when you are so perfectly aligned with the instincts of the quarry that you KNOW the indication you're about to get will result in the target being hooked; the immediate regret at grabbing a handful of spicy nettles in extracting oneself from a risky lie or perhaps that inescapable sinking in the stomach at the knowledge of a certain blank.
There are sounds too that evoke such knowing responses in us as anglers. The heavy spatter of improbably large raindrops signalling the end of a shower; the crash of a leaping and falling carp; the piping of the two-tone flashing cobalt and fire Kingfisher tying-in the visual along with the lazy drift of scentless dawn mist, pouring from the surface and running like ephemeral semi-transparent white horses in one direction or another.
From that distinct sweet smell of roach slime to the truly repulsive stench of a bream-slimed keepnet in a hot and returned-to car. Both as much an assault on the olfactory system as the baking of bread or muck-spreading and by similar extremes.
So today was The Old Duffer’s first angling trip of 2018. A perfect day, after the seemingly interminable hot summer expired to reveal comfortable days of around twenty modern degrees and, with cloud cover but a negligible chance of rain.
Now in his day, as the long-term reader may recall, TOD was an accomplished match angler. First on rivers and then on canals. Recalling those days, a 3m whip was set-up with a thickish cane-tipped waggler and a few strung no.8’s, shirt button style.
The youngest generation present, represented by The Boy Wonder, would be deploying waggler tactics too but on a light specialist rod and antique centrepin.
I would be stalking carp and also laying a bed of bait down in another area for later.
It had been a while and TBW and I did wonder the extent to which TOD would remain capable of undertaking this, after all, highly technical task. A little help with plumbing seemed to bring the feel of things back to a degree. The thick tip of the float to aid reluctant eyes; a tub of maggots raised to hand level seemed sensible; a comfortable, very unmatchman-like, padded chair to support the occasionally creaking limbs and all was ready to go. I gave a trial cast to check the shotting and had a knock on a bare hook, so, happy with how things looked, I fed a few maggots and sat back to rig a couple of rods for myself.
The venue was a pool new to small syndicate formed during the close season and it seemed, after a few recce visits, largely a case of carp and hoards of smallish rudd and roach with a smattering of perch. I had never ardently tested the small fish potential as, these days, I find it tedious and would usually prefer to wait for a bite from something that has a chance of getting away but I hoped TOD might muster a few ‘bits’ to get him back in the swing of the pastime he has not forgotten and never ceases to mention whenever we meet, even though he might struggle with the names of the prey and had certainly very much considered partaking to be in the past.
I glanced away, looked back and, “Blimey, ‘you got one already?”, and so proceeded a steady run of fish in the two to three ounce bracket that would have been the stuff of wild dreams back in the days of draw bag and frame.
TBW was set-in and, on my first visit, had a handful of tiddlers too.
I checked out some bank clearance we had been doing and all was well so I return to the baited swim next to TOD to try to get through the rudd with double corn hookbait.
“How many you got now then?”.
“12”.
“TWELVE?! I’ve only been gone five minutes!”.
Pleased as bread punch for the old fella, and with a knowing smirk on the opposite side of my face, I got my head down to overtake him with a decent bream or carp. Or so I planned but I couldn’t settle partly out of wanting to ensure he was okay and enjoying it, the latter I assumed confirmed by the silence apart from the thrashing as he drew them to hand, the plop of fish into the net and gentle rasping of maggots hitting the water every minute or two, and partly as I wanted to see what big fish were showing elsewhere.
Riding a bike. Swimming. Tying a hook. All things you never forget how to do even though the body might try to hinder and then prevent it in older age.
Well it seems that the cast, feed, strike, unhook re-bait/cast, feed, strike, unhook, re-bait/cast...process is also an indelible process in the human mind. Okay, in full flow in his prime maybe he would have fed before casting to make the hook bait fall through the fed area but we can make allowances when we consider that the last match this octogenarian gent fished was probably fifteen years ago and recent practice had been thin to the point of non-existence for at least three years, if not longer.
TBW came along, struggling a bit in his swim, “How you doin’ Grandad?”
“Twenty-one...hold-on...twenty-two with this one”, as another roach swung to hand.
“Christ, we’re not bringing you again, are we Dad?!”
And so it continued.
Somewhat irritated by being pestered by the fish TOD was targeting I took off around the pool, travelling light to seek-out some visible carp to stalk, and there they were a number around the double figure mark and on returning to the first swim I found a bigger, long common of at least fifteen pounds mooching mid-pool and midwater. I flicked a bait to him and he drifted away, unhurried, and out of sight.
A pair of doubles were next, one of them circling, sensing the plop a metre or so to its right and approaching to a few millimetres before pulling its head way and in one sub-urgent movement projecting the body past, and out of sight.
I called across the lake to the old offender.
He’d got fifty when I left him.
“Eighty”.
Matter of fact, well it was a fact.
Numbers were not an issue. The name for the stripey fish may have been but numbers, oh no, no problem at all with those. Let’s face it, if you can count and weigh your fish and put the your bets on who needs words. No, numbers’ll do just fine.
“Eighty”, and I think to myself, “He must have about five pounds of fish. I’d never have believed that possible”.
The stalking continues and TBW calls across to ask me to check-out some yellow things on the surface that the rudd are pecking at. Leaves.
I find a catchable double in murky water and flick a floating crust to it. Like its predecessor it circles, inquisitively.
“Eighty”, I chuckle, “Crazy”.
I glance at the time and, as raise my eyes to the crust again ,a white mouth appears to engulf it and I strike.
“Ha!”
A split seconds’ realisation.
“SHIT!”
The rig flies back faster than it left the bank, the quarry sinks back into the old routine and a further bird’s nest is added to those in the trees now deserted by fledged and flown young, and their exhausted parents alike.
I return and meet TOD on the path back. “Oh! How many now then?”
“How many do you think?”
“Ninety”, I offer, certain.
“A hundred and one”.
He goes for a wander round the pools and we start to pack away - during which time he adds another thirteen.
Back in his match fishing days he would have been very pleased with a catch of a hundred or more fish, in fact, often on the canal, a hundred would be the target to do reasonably well but there is one thing that sets a catch apart from the also rans and that is the distinctive thrashing sound of over five pounds of small fish being lifted from the water. Like a hundred taps being turned at once, and then off again within a couple of seconds. It’s a sound that an angler neither forgets nor tires of, and it says, “That’s a good net of fish“, to anyone in earshot at the same time as giving a boost to the captor, for it is at that point that he knows. He just, knows.
So, yes, we were treated to that sound and immediately I’d got seven pounds imprinted in my mind. TOD struggled to lift them out, and more so to get them into the weighing sling, but we got there collectively and the sparkling silver and gold of roach and rudd punctuated by the odd jet-striped emerald perch abounded.
“Ten pounds, twelve ounces”, we concluded at once.
Who’d have thought it possible?
I didn’t think it possible.
I still don’t think it possible, but it happened. Cast after cast, feed after feed, fish after fish.
It damned well happened
