A good ending

 

 

Novels, films, sermons and lives are all in want of a good ending. So too, fishing seasons. For those of us who fish ponds, lakes and canals as well as rivers, seasons these days are defined by calendar years, not by the once glorious 16th of June. When I was a teenager the countdown to "Opening Day" caused me more excitement than the countdown to Christmas, but as LP Hartley observed "the past is a foreign country; they do things differently there", and times have changed.

 

After an indifferent last couple of month's fishing, and knowing that this would be my final chance to wet a line before church life goes into Christmas overdrive, I was desperate for a good ending to my season, and- despite the absence of monsters landed- this morning's session gave me the good ending I desired.

 

 

It had been hoped that Greg would join us on the canal for our "last hurrah", but unfortunately work commitments prevented him from doing what he would rather have done, and so it was just Pete and I who braved the early morning chill. We headed for a spot that we thought had the potential to be good for perch and set about mixing some groundbait laced with chopped worms and prawns. We started off on float-fished maggots, which saw me catch three micro-roach within 5 minutes of commencing to fish, but it was only after switching to worms that the perch really started to turn on. Initially we fished tight to the spots we had baited, feeding and casting accurately in true "textbook style", but it turns out that perch don't read text books, and more speculative casting around the swim and "chasing bites" proved to be far more effective.

 

 

Any session should be about more than just the fish, and this is particularly so of a "last session", and so a bankside cooked breakfast to celebrate the end of a highly enjoyable season was in order. The sun occasionally broke through, but the weather was mostly cold, although mercifully dry. Pete was using a pole float on running line using a 14 foot match rod and his "pride and joy" small Greys fixed spool reel, I opted for a shorter, 10 foot, match rod, and used one of Ian Lewis' handmade "crucian mini dart" floats. We also picked up the odd fish on the quivertip, with a worm presented on a running ledger with a 3/8 ounce bomb.

 

By the time we packed up at lunchtime a goodly number of perch had made their way to the keepnet, and in the lulls between perch catching activity (which tended to come in short, sharp bursts of several fish), the conversation was varied and convivial. In honour of the season, we changed hats for some final photographs, and ended the season resplendent in headgear that might have been borrowed from Santa.

Another season now consigned to the "drawer" in my head labelled "happy memories", and new adventures to look forward to in 2016. I can't see me ever getting bored of this game .........