An angler's seasons

As I huddled into my warm, padded ski jacket and felt the cold penetrating my jeans on this morning's dog walk it seemed hard to believe that just 11 days ago I was perch fishing in shirt sleeves with the sun beating down. If it wasn't for the glorious russets and browns of the leaves and the conkers on the ground I'd have concluded that we'd jumped straight from summer to winter, missing out Autumn altogether.

 

The angler is aware of the seasons more than most.
 Not only are there the changes in the fish's feeding habits, and the traditional switching of species to target, but the angler is there in the middle of the seasonal changes, his or her senses assaulted by the visual and physical effects of the yearly calendar. From temperature discomfort (too hot or too cold, but rarely "just right!") to the smell of blossoms or wet grass or farmer's "muck spreading", to the changing visual backdrop that we insert ourselves into when we fish.

 

 

The lazy, balmy Summer days of surface caught carp,  3/4 length shorts and green, verdant bankside vegetation give way to Winter lure fishing sessions, with frozen fingers and the angler wrapped up in hats, scarves and ridiculous looking thermal suits and boots against a bleak backdrop of bare trees and icy margins.

I love the changing of the seasons, the familiar and comforting cyclical pattern of "summer and winter, seedtime and harvest", but being outside through the year's changing seasonal tapestry also points me towards bigger and greater truths; moves my attention from the beauty of what I can see, smell, feel and touch, to the logical deduction that behind this irreducibly complex natural order and awe inspiring beauty there must be the ultimate Designer and Artist.
Sometimes fishing is a sacrament.

Fishing all over the world

I love travelling almost as much as I love fishing, and to combine the two is to double the pleasure of either. In recent years the growth of adventure angling, as pioneered by John Wilson and John Bailey and popularised by Henry Gilby, the "love him or loathe him "Robson Green and the intrepid Jeremy Wade (himself a Vicar's son),  has become an exciting new feature of the modern angling scene.

 

My forays into the arena of adventure angling have been limited, but I have caught fish in America, Canada and Tanzania, and these are among my fondest angling memories.

 

My Tanzanian adventures (I've visited the country three times, and fished - albeit casually- on all three) have all been undertaken when accompanied by locals in their simple (flimsy?) wooden dugout canoes with catamaran floats in the Indian Ocean. Usually these have had an outboard motor fitted, although on one occasion, off Zanzibar we were entirely reliant on the power of wind filled sails. I've also visited Ruaha National park three times (where fishing isn't allowed) and gazed longingly at this intimidating sand river, full of maleovolent looking crocodiles and longed to fish it.

 

 

One African adventure, off the coast of Bagamoyo, saw us set out (I was accompanied by my father-in-law, wife and two children in addition to the African "crew") in a sunny flat calm, and come bouncing back (quite literally) into land through a decidedly stormy sea. My terror was accentuated by the fact that my children were in the boat with no mobile phones, no GPS and no-one even knowing that we were out at sea. "Never again" I vowed, but I think if given the chance I probably would.

The other great thing about catching fish from the sea is eating them, and on several occasions we've brought our catch home and asked the chef at our African lodgings to cook what we'd caught.

 

 

 

The first fish I ever caught from the American continent was in Canada in 2007. It wasn't a fishing holiday, but while staying in a log cabin by Clear Lake (once the home of the legendary "Indian" Grey Owl- google him to see why I've used inverted comma's) I met a fishing mad Canadian called Werner. The inevitable happened and we arranged to go fishing early one morning. After a slightly un-nerving walk through the woods in the lifting early morning gloom (this is bear country, after all) we had a quick coffee and then drove to a harbour (Canadian freshwater lakes are the size of English counties and feel more like sea fishing than coarse fishing), where we threw soft plastic worms on baitcaster rigs. I managed the only fish of the day, my first ever walleye, which was only marginally larger than the plastic worm I caught it on.

 

 

This year was the year of my American adventure, and three fishing trips in the USA. I fished off a dock at Charleston, the most idyllic town I've ever visited, with Susan Dalton, who runs her own fishing education and guiding business, where I caught skate and flounder on small livebaits. The skate was returned, but the flounder was eaten within an hour of its capture.

 

 

I also fished twice with my friend Dave Lignger in Missouri, where we fished from a shiny bass boat on Bullshoals Lake where I caught my first ever bass (one on a crankbait, one on a surface popper), and also this cheeky little bluegill that took an ambitious liking to a medium sized alphabet style crankbait.

 

 

On that same session Dave caught a three foot long primeval looking gar fish that jumped spectacularly and snapped aggressively before we unhooked it in the water and released it to cause further mayhem elsewhere.

 

 

Africa, Canada, the United States.....

The world is definitely shrinking, but there are still so many places I want to fish. I've only scratched the surface of the countries I have fished, let alone those that I haven't yet visited. I dream of returning to America, of pushing further into Africa and sharing the water with crocodiles and hippo's while targeting tiger fish in the Zambezi, and of a trip deep into the Amazon to fish for piranha and peacock bass .

So many fish, so many places, so little time ......