What makes a chap spring from a warm bed at four in the morning and hop around getting dressed like a demented morris dancer before rushing into a frosty side-street to squirt de-icer over himself while loading a car with enough equipment for a two month expedition up the Zambezi?
Could he be a member of the British Secret Service on a mission to save everyone from the gleaming white choppers of Simon Cowell, or is he just a council bin-man going the extra mile for some double-overtime?
The answer my friend, is blowing behind the billowing net curtains of nearly two million British households. He is an angler of course, no doubt with a well formed plan to capture the red-finned creature currently treading water in the morning half-light ten miles away, below a floating raft of river debris.
At the time of writing I am two weeks from collecting my first government pension, which should open a few doors – mostly Aldi’s and Poundstretcher.
If you don’t count a brief liaison with a magnetic fishing game in 1962, my angling journey began around when the Beatles played on the Apple rooftop. Which means I have spent nearly sixty years thinking about, reading about and mashing bread for my most favourite of hobbies. Or should we call it OUR hobby, because if you’ve read this far it’s unlikely you were expecting an article on ‘Knitting Patterns of the Second World War’.
So how do we recognise the burgeoning signs of an angling obsession?
Firstly, you will notice a significant influx of ‘camo’ clothing, unless you happen to be at a wedding reception, where they tend to congregate by the Fire Exit wearing olive green corduroy. Hidden in their vehicles will be an emergency tin of luncheon meat and at least one dozy bluebottle from last year’s Great Escape. When walking the dog, keep your eyes peeled for anyone wearing a jungle hat festooned with enamel fishing badges, and rest assured there will be at least one old Brigadier dangling over a private stretch of chalk stream trying to retrieve a home-made fly (recently valued in auction at 20p).
Not forgetting the salty sea-dog lowering a paternoster loaded with a tenner’s worth of lugworm amongst the rusty steel stanchions of Walton Pier, to tempt a small flounder (recently valued at auction at 20p).
Yep. All peas from the same pod, each with their own unique clarion call guaranteed to tempt them from a delicious home-made casserole, to sit contentedly by some waters edge in the thundering rain.
But, assuming we’re not all completely crackers, exactly what is it that can stop a gentleman pondering philosophical questions about Britney Spears in a Barbour jacket, to start crawling around his lawn collecting worms?
It could be the excitement of a forthcoming trip to the Royalty, or the opportunity to stand around a bonfire learning off-colour jokes at his biennial attendance to a club working party. There’s pitting oneself against fellow anglers during the annual Fur and Feather, or the opportunity to relive that moment when a giant skate grabbed your baited crab line and spent forty minutes dragging the family pedalo around a sea-side boating lake! There’s falling asleep between clumps of Norfolk reeds and waking up to the smell of burnt sausages. There’s the steady tick, tick, tick of the check on an antique reel as unseen rubbery lips mouth a par-boiled potato. There’s counting shooting stars that chase across a waxing moon, or sitting motionless for so long that local wildlife start sending you birthday cards. Seriously though, has Pep Guardiola ever experienced the cobalt blue flash of a kingfisher, or bared his soul to a robin more intent on his tub of red maggots? I would also be very surprised if any Olympic downhill skier ever had a swan break their arm when they refused to hand over some sweetcorn!
Fishing is also a great leveller. How many golfers get to lose the housekeeping playing against Rory Mcllroy, yet each time an angler threads line through an agate ring he can go toe-to-toe with Clive Gammon or Peter Stone and is only ever one free-lined lobworm away from tea and cake with Chris Yates. And name another pursuit where an octogenarian can compete at the highest level apart from Nintendo Mariokart or a heart stopping game of topless Mousetrap!
Fishing is medically proven to reduce blood pressure, and offers a decent aerobic workout whenever you rub down your tackle with a rough towel. It is consistently voted the number one excuse for leaving the marital bedchamber to listen to the FA Cup, and I have it on good authority that when carrying a fishing rod it is completely legal to urinate in public. Fishing also satisfies one of man’s biggest compulsions; namely to collect and catalogue every item from a tackle industry intent on making them swap the family dog for something called a helicopter rig.
Many anglers feel a close attachment to nature and the countryside, and after a gruelling session behind the Optonics they like to spend the hour before bed scouring periodicals or websites for anything to scratch this itch, which is handy for winkles like me, who are politely tolerated whenever we feel obliged to lay down a few lines about bearing witness to a tug-of-war between a cormorant and a pack of frozen smelt.
On that point, since Izaak Walton picked up a goose quill and a bottle of Quink, why has the angling section of the British Library grown to the size of a small northern town? What compels fisherman to scribble notes and atmospheric conditions on the back of a Polaroid, then share it with the family GP during a routine prostate examination? Could it be the smouldering embers of a fishing childhood that turns men into gum-booted Crabtrees, who stride towards swollen rivers to make contemporaneous notes about fishing tight against a twelve berth caravan lodged in a sunken branch of a local Post Office? Whatever the reason, I suspect we will continue cutting notches into the tree of life to prove it wasn’t just a dream, and that we were all once kings for a day!
Which brings us to the glacé cherry on top of a bed of hemp, over a clear gravel run.
Classic Angling Literature
When not scrapping with a 5lb chub, what better than sitting beside a roaring wife and drifting towards evensong with Jack Hargreaves and a cup of Yorkshire? Any story you like as long as it includes a sun dappled farm pond or an icy adventure spent belly up in a Scottish river.
Unfortunately, whereas ordinary punters will only pay a few quid for a 1972 Topical Times Football Annual, anglers have to dig much deeper to get hold of any decent ‘under-the-counter’ stuff. So when the chance comes to unearth a classic at your local Sue Ryder, it’s like the anticipation of a day on the River Test!
You’ve got to put the hours in obviously – but eventually you’ll spot one basking in the sun beneath a crinoline lady toilet roll holder.
What ho! It’s a Denys Wakins-Pitchford, who came as close as anyone to capturing the joy of cradling a bar of gold in a damp tea cloth. But hold onto that 10p, because hiding behind the Prince Andrew egg cup is a rare volume of The Pit and the Pendulum Cast, where Edgar Allan Poe summoned the terror of spiralling down a muddy bank towards a monster pike waiting to slap you around the chops before relinquishing the contents of your keepnet. Not forgetting THE holy grail for all charity shop and boot sale hunters… Mr Crabtree Goes Fishing and Comes Home with The Solution to World Peace. Like record carp they wait to be wrestled from snaggy swims, and quite honestly when you land one, it’s like going home covered in bream slime.
So, in honour of this inaugural voyage of Piscator and with apologies to The Romford and District Rudyard Kipling Appreciation Society, I have tinkered with ‘El Kippo’s’ famous poem to capture the tutti-frutti essence of why anglers love getting up at four o’clock in the bloody morning! It goes something like this; (ahem)
‘IF’
If you can keep your head when all about you,
Are blaming it on the otters;
If you trust your honeyed bread flake, when all men doubt you,
And just ignore those faithless rotters;
If you boldly fish the car-park swim, because old knees are aching;
If you spend hard cash on expensive flies,
or succumb to boilie making;
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:
If your maggots turn to casters;
If you think—but not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster,
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear when Crabtree’s wisdom spoken,
Gets twisted by knaves to make traps for fools,
Or when your favourite trotting float lays broken,
And you breathe new life with worn-out tools:
If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And acquire a vintage Hardy rod;
Then leave it by a fence in Ipswich,
And never mention it to God.
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To use cheese that’s on the turn;
And continue wafting that old dry fly
when your heart cries out for worm:
If you can talk with larks and yet keep your virtue,
Or fish with wide-eyed children – nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count, but none too much;
If you can load a car-boot in under one minute
With supplies weighing close to a ton,
then yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And, which is more—you are probably an Angler, my son!
Magic. Romance.
Piscator 