Ice and a Slice

Dawn was sullen. Cold and unmoving in the crystalline shroud

Fingers burnt to metal, numbness pervading. Conductivity seeking to turn flesh to ice. Hard pellets of snow blistering the complexion like a hundred wind-driven air guns

The cocoon would stretch to its limit by both the day's acts of God and chronic Festive fall-out. The nylon mushroom, stout as a defence, would only offset so much bitterness

Gulls cackled in a rural melee as wild duck took flight and out of the fear a solitary brown, beautifully tortoisehell-marked, downy feather braked from a burst of turbulence and floated to earth, landing suspended by its quill, from least year's dock. A reminder of a fragility we oft-times lose sight of

There was tingling water; there were clouds indistinct from the frozen pearls that swept in arcs towards the pitch and there were open fields; ridge and furrow magnified by a coat of pristine perfection but, sub-surface, who could predict? Any attempt would be decorated with more pessimism than encouragement but the pitch was free and, with an unstinting confidence in the outcome, we embarked on this foreseen 'one bite, one fish' morning with, at times, as many as three hands tied behind our back; the first by winter

A guru, once deposed, but an oracle nevertheless, advised that if anything would be sufficiently enticing in a challenge such as this it would be a caster. We had bread and lamprey; the latter in preparation for an inaccessible location this easily avoidable invisible sunrise

Two hands tied

Knowledge though was on our side we thought. Banking on success in bad days on the bank, seek out the banker location. The outcome would never be in doubt. The inevitable speck dispatched into the margin swayed and drifted down so slowly that it seemed never likely to disappear from view, but it did, captured by the brown hand of the depths and dragged into the dark. The top quarter of the mirror visible to the straining eye

Pre-planning had been absolute, nothing forgotten yet nothing unnecessary

Some overspill attractant flicked along the path of geological soup for those more in need would be consumed by a bouncing female bomb of that contradiction, a brown blackbird, followed by the red of breast in waiting for the red of fin

Flow

Week in. Week out. The Captains were afloat, nothing contains a percentage. Not even this most miserable of days.

Within a hour three had slipped past with the barest hint of commotion but we knew that, on days such as this, when tranquillity would deliver the prize, this would clamp our third hand, shackled and useless...and so it continued

Once the hour-glass was spent the sand settled the account at zero, the motions to be repeated. An uninviting yet disarmingly productive desperation spot took the imagination and soon the cast was made into the by now enlarged stars of ice that floated toward the face like perforated marshmallows, iced and sliced

That thing that is always against us would soon bring itself to bear. The cocoon at thermal breaking point, the ice water trickling down to the boots of mud-pie. It would not be long before a line had to be drawn and tidied away

Endurance is one thing, stupidity another. The latter was on the white horizon

The lamprey rod broken-down and all peripheral paraphernalia packed; a quick glance, a twitch, a lift and that confirmatory delay. A strike, a curve, a whispered, "Yes!"

"It's a roach", the fight said

"Now don't come off"

"Ooh, a nice one too"

The obligatory, "C'mon you beauty", over the net and lifted clear without so much as a splash

"Not quite a pound, I'm giving it 0.14.8", was the internal reaction to this lifesaving chill pill

The scales suggested 0.15.10 over three measurements but never has a fish been so beautiful, so pleasing

So huge