It was a left-field, and slightly macabre, question that led to the penny dropping. I was talking with an angling friend and in the course of the conversation he asked: "if you only had months to live, where would you fish?", and I suddenly realised that I wouldn't. That I fish as much to make memories as I do to catch fish. That angling, for me, is about an ongoing stream of consciousness in which there's as much pleasure to be had in the recollection as in the doing, and there's not much point in making memories that will hardly be harboured. My angling is propelled as much by downstream memories as it is by upstream hopes.
There are no photographic records of my earliest forays into angling, back in 1981. Sure, we took photo's (although not as many as today), but in a pre Computer era few have survived, the majority lost in the countless moving of house and rationalising of belongings that is a part of the emergence from adolescence into established adulthood. This picture of a teenage me with a pike being one of the few, grainy, pictorial records that remain extant from those carefree days. However, while the photo's may have gone, the memories stay, indelibly etched into my mind in pictures and sounds that carry the illusion of movement and seem almost audible. While the injuries inflicted through playing football or by girlfriends who realised their mistake and dropped me for their own "better catches" have long since worn away, the ache of a fish lost at the net over thirty years ago still retains the ability to evoke a pang of regret.
The photographic record re-emerges towards the back end of the 20th Century, as I, then still with a full head of not yet grey hair, and sporting a gold ear ring, grin at the camera. I was working through an almost exclusive lure fishing obsession at that stage, and the fish being held is invariably a playful jack, in this case one that had been hit by a much larger pike at some time in its past, prior to its own decision to hit my Arbogast surface lure.
As the 20th Century gave way to the 21st, the T shirts in primary colours gave way to Realtree, the ear ring was retired, a few lines were added to the face, a few hairs lost around the temples, carp for a while replaced pike as the quarry of choice, and the stream flowed on. Before long a new element enriched the memory collecting, the pleasure of passing on to my children the thrill of plucking a beautiful wriggling thing from its environment, lovingly admiring it and then gently returning it to its familiar watery habitat.
And so the stream runs on, a current that collects not flotsam, jetsam and debris, but that draws together disparate recollections and makes a unified linear story of them, Some things have remained constant- my angling companionship with my brothers, Andy and Tim, a companionship now fuelled mostly by telephone, text and social media, but from time to time enriched by joining up for fraternal fishing sessions. The last such occasion when all three of us fished together proved to be another "red letter day" in the "bright stream", a Fenland piking expedition that saw us land 8 pike (4 of which were doubles, 1 a near twenty) and 2 zander on a sunny November day.
Over the last few years my fishing has become an increasingly social affair. I rarely fish alone these days, and the company of other like minded anglers, the conversations, the escapades, adventures and misadventures become a part of the story. A story that when retold contains farce (no-one who was there will ever forget "Ginger's" lavatorial mishap while nightfishing back in the mid 80's), adventure (my angling exploits have taken me to Canadian Wilderness, American lakes and into Tanzania), near tragedy ( an ill advised trip in a small boat in the Indian Ocean nearly ended very badly) and the usual mixture of achievements and failures that any angler will recognise. Perhaps it's the fact that I now realise that I chase memories with as much purpose as I do fish, that accounts for why I tend to be fairly sanguine in the face of a blank- even a fishless day begets memories. The stream has at times, as all streams are prone to do, been diverted into little eddies- periods when a certain fish or style of fishing have predominated, has seen a number of personal bests upped over the last few years, has seen crucian carp and perch become my new favourite fish, and now has the Thurnby Church Fishing Club, the UK Christian Anglers setup, and the blossoming ability and enthusiasm of my son for fishing as central elements in its main flow.
To the extent that any of us knows what the future holds, I'm now in my middle years (or, unless I live to be 96, slightly beyond my middle years!), which hopefully means a few years yet to add more memories to the bright stream. Here's to memory making, and within it all, to a few more fish!
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