When something's repeated often enough it becomes a tradition ... blanking on my first session of a new year seems to pretty much fit that category! This morning, accompanied by my son, I managed to steal a quick spinning session to the Grand Union. The day was cold (as January day's should be), and we knew that there was every chance that we would fail to catch, but for as long as you have a lure in the water "hope springs eternal" and there's always the possibility. We concentrated on a couple of bridges and a few areas where the tangled tree roots provided what looked like good ambush points for perch in need of a snack, but to no avail.
The highlight of the day was quite possibly "borrowing" one of the tables at a canal-side pub to stop and enjoy a hot drink and a chat, before rejoining the increasingly unequal battle between us and the fish who were either too cold to feed or not hanging around in the areas we were targetting. Several spinners and lures were used, including all the usually reliable ones, but after an hour and a half of "character building" it was time to return home and join the girls.
A day fishing is never a day wasted, however, and on the way home I realised that my son, who has been fishing for 8 years has only blanked four times, which shows the value of (a) having a fishing parent to provide (often unheeded!) guidance, and (b) the difference being able to access Commercial Fisheries has made to a generation of young anglers - it wasn't that easy when my brothers and I were teaching ourselves to fish in 1981!
So, we still await our first fish of 2013, but as the saying goes; "Piscatur non solum piscator", which roughly translates: "There's more to fishing than catching fish."
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