Perching in memorium

The actual catching of fish is often incidental to the act of angling.

Sometimes behind the presenting reason for being there lies a bigger reality and a greater truth. Such was the case today, when nine anglers from various parts of the Country gathered ostensibly for a perch match, but really to celebrate the life of a friend, to raise money in his memory, and to concur with St Paul who declared with confidence that "neither life nor death .... nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord."

John was a big man in every sense of the word. Hewn out of the tough stuff that seems to characterise South Africans, he said things as he saw them, had a laugh and voice that carried across a lake, was straightforward and entirely lacking in guile and was able to suck far more pleasure out of every fishing session than anyone else I've known; it wasn't that he was a naive optimist or one who, in denial, fooled himself that he was having fun when he wasn't, John genuinely didn't know how to fish and not have fun. It mattered not if he was freezing cold and blanking, his laugh would still echo in the chill air, along with words of encouragement.

My favourite experience of John's eccentricity came on the Christian Anglers Retreat in the summer of 2018. A dozen or so of us were camped alongside the banks of the River Trent, fast asleep in our tents in preparation for a dawn assault on the river's resident barbel. At around 3am I was awoken by the noise of someone shuffling about the campsite and a  car door slamming. I peered out of the tent and in the shadows saw a figure trying a car door. The inescapable conclusion was that a random ne'er do well was breaking into cars. By this time, Pete also had been awakened by the presence in the camp and, with heart pounding, went to investigate. To his relief, after bracing himself for a conflict situation, the sight that greeted him was that of John sitting in his car, door open, and munching his way through an entire family "bargain bucket" from the local 24 hour Kentucky Fried Chicken, following the consumption of which John ambled down to the river and "touch-legered" through the night until morning.

I think I can, without fear of contradiction, state that John pushed uniqueness to its outermost limits, and all of us in the Christian Anglers club loved him for it.

And so it was that we gathered on a wild and wet November's day, to fish in his memory, raise money for Cancer Research and the developing world charity Tear Fund, enjoy each other's company and award a prize for the biggest perch caught.

The day had an extra piquancy for me, as my son James was fishing with Christian Anglers for the first time in over a year, and he and I sacrificed angling efficiency for sociability and elected to share a swim to best enjoy one of our nowadays rare joint bank-side expeditions.

Around the lake a variety of float fishing methods were employed, with worms, red maggots and prawns being variously tried as hookbaits. I chose to fish a large worm underneath a favourite perch bob, impaled on a size 12 hook.  James opted for double red maggot under a waggler, and was soon catching roach, ide and bream, while my perch bob stubbornly refused to bob and disappear.

For the first couple of hours the rain was incessant and fell with the kind of intensity that in the days of primeval history had sent Noah scurrying for the ark. The fishing, in keeping with the weather, was challenging, and around the lake the nine of us were all finding bites and fish hard to come by.

The first angler to connect with a sizeable fish was Roger, with a brief and spirited struggle resulting in him bringing a perch of exactly a pound and a half over the net.

Roger's lead in the biggest perch stakes was short-lived, with Pete soon upping the ante with a fine fish that tipped the scales at 2lb 3oz. Both Roger and Pete's perch fell to float-fished red maggot.

Pete's fish was admired, weighed, photographed and returned, following which the lake fell into a state of stupour, with only the occasional (mostly small) fish being swung to the bank to break the soporific spell. John MacAngus briefly raised our hopes, managing a couple of nuisance carp as well as a perch of just over a pound on float-fished worm, but by and large the fishing remained slow..

I stubbornly persisted with lobworm, despite the fact that most of the larger perch had fallen to red maggot, a bait which was also (predictably) accounting for a greater number of small perch and silverfish. A couple of small roach and bream with eyes bigger than their bellies chose to attempt to drag my lobworm to their lairs and consequently suffered the indignity of a visit to the bank, but the perch remained resolutely oblivious to the attraction of my worm presented over a bed of chopped worms and accompanied by a "little and often" trickle of red maggots. The lake, which in the past has been kind to me ( four 2 pounders to 2lb 15oz from just four sessions before today) was today showing me its malevolent rather than benevolent face.

With bites at a premium, there were still two last twists to be had before "stumps were drawn" at the prearranged hour of 3 o'clock.
Roy, who like all of us had struggled for bites throughout the day, landed a nice perch of around a pound and a half, which pleased all of us, as he had made the longest journey, travelling from Yorkshire to join us and pay his respects to John.

The best, however, was saved until last. Pete, already in pole position as a result of his earlier fish, hooked into something which fought with determined tenacity, and once on the bank tipped the scales to 2lb 9oz. Better still, not only was the fish large in stature it was equally stunning in appearance, pugnacious, plump and with bold stripes and wonderfully vivid red fins. A worthy fish to win the inaugural John Rellie Memorial trophy.

We gathered at the car park, and presented the trophy to Pete, after which we joined in saying a prayer thanking God for John's life and faith, and praying for the wife of another of our members, John's best friend, Keith, who couldn't be with us as he was accompanying her to hospital in Oxford where she was due an operation on her recently broken wrist.
Despite the difficulties of the fishing itself and the inclement weather, it had been a wonderful day, graced by the landing of the occasional stunning stripey, and had provided a fitting tribute to John.
For us, future fishing adventures await, but John- even now- has embarked on an altogether different and eternal adventure in the immediate presence of the God in whom he trusted, and those of us who knew him and enjoyed fishing with him will continue to treasure his memory, and to seek to understand the present moment in the light of the eternal promise that is now John's reality.

Three men and a bait- "50 not out"

The float shuddered and moved from left to right across the water's surface before submerging with purpose. A firm flick of the wrist and the vintage glass float rod bucked, kicked and took on its fighting curve. It had been a long time. Too long.

My younger brother Andy's impending 50th birthday provided the ostensible reason (for "reason" read "excuse") to reunite the three Barrett brothers for a weekend of angling activity. Friday afternoon saw my (even) younger brother Tim travel from Wales to Andy's Hertfordshire home, while I made the journey from the East Midlands. 

The fish that had caused my float to bury, the first of the day, fought with dogged determination before succumbing to the folds of the net. Twenty minutes later, and one of the the initial fish's smaller cousins was also being unhooked, float-fished sweetcorn proving its undoing, as it had for the larger fish. With the clock not yet registering 8:00am, things were looking good.

However, my brisk start gave way to a couple of bite-less hours in which my float remained untroubled, during which time Andy, fishing just yards down the bank from me in the next swim, started to catch carp with almost monotonous and mechanical regularity on the method, fishing his hair rigged plastic sweetcorn bait just a foot or two short of a central island.

By this stage Tim, fishing boilies in the margins, was also off the mark with a rapid-fire brace, but despite my constant loosefeeding of sweetcorn and hemp, accompanied by small balls of groundbait, my hookbait was failing to elicit any attention from the lake's resident carp.
With the early mild chill giving way to a warm and sunny morning, I sought solace in an example of Cuba's major export product, a fine cigar that had been an unnecessary but very welcome "thank you" from my friend Roger to whom I had recently gifted a retro rod from my collection. The aromatic plumes of smoke hung in the mid-morning air as my float remained motionless and Andy continued to catch a rapid succession of modestly proportioned carp.

The sun rose high in the sky, layers of clothing were divested, and as Andy continued to draw a procession of carp to the bank my purist tendencies temporarily wavered, and I set up a 2lb tc barbel rod teamed with a baitrunner, and flicked a method feeder into the carpy looking corner to my left, which I had been priming with bait ever since arriving.

Within minutes an eager carp had hooked itself against the weight of the feeder, and my third carp of the day was wallowing in the waiting net. My need for a fish assuaged, I returned to the float, feeling only marginally "corrupted" by my foray into the world of contemporary carp fishing techniques.

By this stage Tim, like me, had landed three carp but Andy had taken a convincing lead with ten carp falling prey to his method feeder. With the sun beating down the stage was set for Andy to give a debut to the birthday present Tim and I had bought him, a specialist floater rod. For half an hour Andy catapulted pouch-fulls of floaters close to the island and once the carp were consuming them with confidence he made his first cast. It was clearly Andy's day, and it wasn't long before the first of six surface caught carp was being played to the waiting net.

Bites on my float rig had become increasingly tentative, and so I decided to change from the 2BB Norfolk reed waggler I had been employing to a tiny porcupine quill which required just three number 6 shot to dot it down. Several more bites were missed before moving the tell tale shot to a foot above the hook (something of a gamble when fishing in just three feet of water!) resulted in me once more connecting with fish.

Tim, meanwhile, was preparing to attend to a fish that he'd just netted when his other bite alarm screamed in indignant warning, the result being the opportunity for a pleasing brace shot of two double figure carp as the sun continued to beat down and while the lake, in generous mood, continued to beneficently give up its treasures to us.

Two more carp followed for me (including my only mirror of the session), and when stumps were drawn at around 5 oclock both Tim and I had six carp apiece, while Andy had forged ahead with an impressive haul of seventeen.

The day had been a wonderful antidote to the busyness of the last few months which had unprecedentedly seen three months elapse without me wetting a line. In the manner of the modern primary school sports day it was an occasion in which we could all claim ourselves to be "winners": Andy had caught the most fish, Tim the biggest (all but one of his had been doubles), and I had eschewed the prosaic efficiency of the method to catch all but one of my carp on my own terms, fishing with vintage tackle and handmade floats.

As the day drew to a close and the van was stacked with rods, reels and the varied paraphernalia that is deemed necessary for a fishing trip, we prepared to depart the lake in the very highest of spirits. And why not? There was still a curry at a local Indian restaurant to look forward to, and the anticipation of the following morning which would be spent spinning for pike on the local river.
Sometimes the simple blessings that I too often fail to count, assail me with an overwhelming intensity: along with the priest-poet Gerard Manley Hopkins I choose to thank God for "dappled things", and also for family, fish and near perfect Saturdays.
Today in ways simple yet real, I was truly blessed.

The "why" of fishing- or being the "poor man's Thoreau"

"How" questions are generally easier to answer than "why" questions, which probably explains the preponderance of books that seek to instruct the angler, replete with photos of rigs and knots and diagrams of shotting patterns, but also why so few are written that delve into the existential mystery of what it is that propels us to the water's edge with angling intent.

Recent circumstances (busyness at work and the impending wedding of my daughter) have conspired to keep me away from the lakes, canals and rivers for a number of weeks, and afforded me the opportunity to ponder the seemingly inexorable pull that the river bank or lakeside exerts over me.

Much has been made by some of the proposition that the angling urge is inherent, an ingrained memory deep in the (usually male) psyche passed down through the generations from the days when our ancestors were hunter-gatherers, a kind of evolutionary replicator that our DNA has never quite been able to shake off despite the comfort of our modern, first-world sanitised lives. Others theorise that it's precisely because our lives are so sanitised and domesticated now, that we need to create spaces for adventure and excuses for a return to the wild, and that angling is one such form of retreat from the madness of the modern world.

I suspect a modicum of truth in the former, and much in the latter.

For me, it's an impossibility to reduce my love of angling to a single factor, or an overarching premise. Even when I'm unable to actually fish (as in recent weeks), I find myself engaging with angling related activity in a variety of ways: I read, write and dream about fishing. I have just placed an order for some more handmade floats and another bamboo float tube, last week I rewarded myself after mowing the lawn by sorting through my tackle and tidying it (an unnecessary task as I am, by nature,  a "neat freak" and it was already comprehensively sorted, pedantically neat and very tidy, none of which prevented the process from taking a thoroughly enjoyable hour).

I also suffer from the twin urges to hoard and to collect, followed periodically by the expiation of guilt offered by a "clear out", when the number of rods and reels begins to exceed the allotted spaces in garage and house that exist as the result of protracted matrimonial negotiations. Several friends have been glad of these purges, and now posses rods, reels and sundry angling ephemera as a result. The collecting bug has worsened since I fell in love with the aesthetic pleasures offered by using vintage and antique tackle, and plans for further purchases are never far from my mind.

Angling literature, art, history and lore also play a part in my enchantment with pleasures piscatorial, but in my attempts to understand my hopeless addiction (for which I believe there to be no cure, the only available relief being that of a temporary nature brought about by actually fishing) I am drawn back to the fact that I am an incurable romantic, with an idealised view of the countryside and of nature and a desire to constantly insert myself into the drama of the unfolding seasons and natural world through the enchanting medium of fishing.
In this respect I am, of course, a dilettante, labouring under a similar delusion and self deception as Henry David Thoreau, the 19th Century author and faux outdoorsman who created for himself a wilderness experience on the edge of civilisation and made a living (and his name) by writing about it as if it were the real thing.
There is no real wilderness in rural Leicestershire, but there is beauty and as I pull the brim of my Huckleberry Finn hat lower and reach in my creel for a cigar, eyes squinting at the protruding orange dot of my float I can pretend, in the knowledge that my passion harms no-one and- most of the time- leaves even the fish untroubled.

It's a wonderful (fishing) life

Maya Angelou, the American poet, once said "we need much less than we think we need." She was right. It doesn't take much to make me happy. Give me an afternoon on a pond with fish in it, the pleasure of using traditional and vintage tackle to angle for said fish, and some friends with whom to share the enjoyment and I'm content, and wanting for nothing. 

It was midday when I snapped the lid of my laptop shut and bade farewell to my colleagues in the Mission and Ministry Department of the Diocese of Leicester, walked out of the office, past the Cathedral and to my parked car. Next stop: the lake.

With a mild breeze dappling the water's surface, and to the musical accompaniment of a choir of chirping, whistling and singing birds, I swung the willow basket from my shoulder and began setting up the old glass avon rod, coupled with a Mitchell 304 of even greater antiquity, and faced the first puzzle of the day- which float to use.

I elected to employ the use of a handmade 3BB waggler style float with a sensitive bristle insert and once the preliminary necessities of depth plumbing had been completed dropped the float into the margins about a rod length out, with a grain of sweetcorn on the hook. Loose feed was applied on a frequent basis, in line with the old angling maxim of "little and often."

The lake was a "who's who" of my angling accomplices and friends. A number of us had co-ordinated escaping from our respective workplaces, and Roger, Pete and David were variously ensconced in pitches around the lake, with David in the swim next door, and Roger (pictured below), like me, choosing to employ a traditional approach with retro rod, vintage reel and  handmade floats.

A gentle rain began to fall, and the lake glimmered and steam rose from the water as the mid afternoon sunlight broke through the misty precipitation, and a handful of torpedo shaped carp languidly cruised the upper layers of the water column, very occasionally rolling or leaping clear of the water and slapping their tails on the surface. A scientific answer to the question of why carp choose to behave in this way doubtless exists, but I like to imagine that they do so merely from a sense of joy, if such an emotion can be properly ascribed to  fish. It was not carp, however,  but roach and rudd that were my target and soon the float was dancing and disappearing and both were being brought to hand or net with reasonable, although far from spectacular, regularity as I surveyed the scene from beneath the now erected umbrella.

All four of us were catching fish of similar size and stamp, with either sweetcorn, hookable pellets or maggot as bait. Pete, Roger and I all opted to float fish conventionally, with David preferring to use a pole. None of us fished particularly hard or with any intensity,  Pete left the lake at school picking up time and returned an hour later with his son Max, Roger was only able to escape for a couple of hours before taking his leave of the pond, and and it was one of those afternoons when simply "being there" was its own reward. David allowed himself to be  seduced for a couple of hours by the thought of a carp and switched to fishing floaters with a controller, but to no avail. I briefly changed from sweetcorn to maggot and promptly caught a gudgeon of gargantuan proportions, before returning to my favoured tinned "yellow peril." And so the afternoon continued, serene, unhurried and calm, rain and sunshine alternating, with the birds continuing to serenade us with their gentle avian symphony.

The rest of Britain might have been  getting high on rage, both manufactured and actual, at the visit of President Trump and our own protracted Brexit debacle (and, hey, "people in glass houses" and all that, I'm perfectly capable of getting angry about both), but this afternoon by the lake such things receded into the background, replaced by the healing balm of time spent in God's creation, friendships based on bonds that are deeper than political perspectives, and the absorbing pastime of deceiving not the electorate, but fish.
Sometimes beneath an umbrella is the best place to be.

"All by myself ..."

It's a rare thing these days for me to fish without company (I'm blessed with an excellent circle of fishing friends), a rarer thing still for me to make an impromptu and unplanned sortie to the water's edge, but this afternoon I did both.

It was all courtesy of my wife's suggestion that I spend the afternoon fishing (she and our two grown up children were set on a trip to IKEA to feast their eyes on meatballs and gorge on flat-pack furniture ... or have I got that the wrong way round?). My wife's spontaneous offer was met by an equally unplanned gesture from our daughter- "hey, here's a tenner, have it as part of an early birthday present" (I turn 51 at the end of this week), and so in the time that it takes to pack a car, buy two tins of sweetcorn, and drive to the lake I found myself at one of my favourite fishing haunts.

The weather was pleasantly mild and warm without being unpleasantly hot, and as my eyes took in the prettiness of the lake and my ears were tunefully assaulted by the twittering of birds, I set about the first of the afternoon's puzzles: which float to use?

I elected for a 2BB Norfolk reed waggler, the work of floatmaker Ian Lewis, mixed some groundbait, plumbed the depth and dropped the aforementioned float, along with a size 18 hook baited with a grain of sweetcorn into the margins.

It wasn't long before the float was darting beneath the water's surface with pleasing regularity, but it took a while, and an adjustment of the single number 6 "telltale" shot, to get the timing of the strike right, and even then I probably only connected with one in every five, the culprits proving to be modestly sized, but stunningly  attractive roach, with a silvery sheen that would not have disgraced an upmarket jeweller's window display..

Despite the rapidity and regularity of bites, the afternoon passed in leisurely fashion, time seeming to collect, to the accompaniment of a symphony of birdsong, the procession of uniformly sized roach being punctuated by the occasional visit of an equally pristine but larger example of their kind.

The float dipped and submerged once more, but this time the strike met with an altogether more strident response, and for what must have been close to 10 minutes I engaged in a fraught game of tug o'war with what was clearly an indignant carp. After a couple of abortive attempts I successfully drew a long and lean ghost common over the rim of the net.

After admiring and returning the exotically hued carp, I fished on for another half an hour which produced 2 or 3 more roach, but a voice inside my head was telling me that "enough was enough", and I couldn't escape the suspicion that to linger would be to spoil the magical spell that the lake had cast over me. It had been a near perfect afternoon, and by my calculation "near perfect" is "good enough with interest."

I bade the lake farewell, and returned to a world no more real, but much fuller of responsibilities, knowing that it would not be long before the lake's siren voice drew me back, hopelessly yet happily enchanted as I am. Like someone else once confessed "I am haunted by water."

Angling as pleasure

Although, in common with most anglers,  I prefer to catch larger fish (particularly in Winter, when it's only the dream of an outsized perch or a gargantuan pike that enables me to sit with frozen fingers while "frosty wind makes moan") I have always described myself not as a "specimen hunter" but as a "pleasure angler". In recent years as my love for collecting and using vintage tackle has come to the fore I have also applied the nomenclature "traditional angler", but I am in essence, purely and simply a "pleasure angler", and the moment I stop taking pleasure in angling will be the day when I hang up my rod and consign my creel to a dusty corner of the garage. Today, along with friends from the Christian Anglers club, the only plan for the day was to immerse ourselves in the pleasures of angling. We knew that the fish would be beautiful, but not outsized, and that catching up with friends and taking time away from the rods to chat would be as much a part of the day as the catching of fish, and thankfully the day itself did not disappoint, although that had much less to do with the somewhat reluctant fish than the quality of the company and environs .

The venue was Ash Lake on the Homeclose Fishery complex in Rutland, a small pool containing tench, chubby little crucians, bream, roach, rudd and stunning orfe of both the golden and blue variety. I set up in a reed fringed corner swim, dotted with the first signs of emergent  lilly pads, and delicately plopped my handmade float next to the pads while trickling in a steady stream of loosefed maggots. I was giving my Allcocks Wizard its first outing of the calendar year, and had teamed it with a lovely little Mitchell 304 CAP reel, the first time I'd paired my favourite cane wand with a fixed spool reel rather than the more usual centre pin combination.

There were ten of us on the small pond, and on my second or third cast I plucked a small but perfectly formed crucian with buttery flanks and sulky mouth from the water. Despite the biting wind which was whipping accross the lake, the omens looked good.

The early promise, however, failed to find fulfilment, and around the lake the fish were feeding with no great appetite or enthusiasm. Most of the fish which graced the bank were small, with little roach, rudd and crucians being supplemented by the occasional better skimmer. Pete landed an early tench, while Roy caught the first golden orfe of the day, but around the lake, as bright sunny spells briefly punctuated the overcast conditions, our merry band of angling brothers corporately struggled to get amongst their finned protagonists with anything approaching regularity.

Around lunchtime, with my personal tally at somewhere around 6 or 7 crucians, my float submerged and the strike resulted in more spirited (albeit brief) resistance, the cause of which was a vividly coloured golden orfe, which was duly recorded photographically for posterity.

Roger, who had spent the morning in a corner swim rendered close to unfishable by the wind moved into my swim and we fished and chatted (mostly the latter) as the recalcitrant fish maintained their obdurate obstinacy.

About an hour before packing up I landed my tenth and final fish, my first tench of the year and only the second of my captures to require the use of my wooden framed, cane handled, landing net.

By the time we shook hands and bade our farewells, every angler had managed (some only by the narrowest of margins!) to avert the dreaded "blank", Pete had proved himself top rod with close to 20 fish, a catch which included a brace of tench and several net sized bream, and, despite the cold wind and challenging fishing, it was unanimously agreed that the day had been a good one.
There will in the future  doubtless be better days to be had from a fishing point of view, but few fishermen better than my peers among the Christian Anglers group with whom to share the day.
Once again, the designation "pleasure angling" had proved to be as true in nature as in name.

A farewell to stripes

"Old men", TS Eliot contended, "should be explorers."

While not yet quite an "old man", my years on earth to date would qualify me as one who inhabits that brief and necessarily temporary space in time best described as "too young to be old and too old to be young", and I am aware that with age and passing years I have gained a greater appreciation of the fact that every trip with a fishing rod is an adventure; an escape from the responsibilities that restrict and define modern life and a journey back into something altogether simpler, a now fast disappearing world that once existed. A world that takes me back to the earliest days of my angling journey, themselves explorations and adventures in which visits to an old-style tackle shop (sometimes just to stand and stare), evenings spent pouring over the same collection of fishing magazines and books, and the drawing of maps of lakes and keeping diaries were as much a part of the adventure as the plucking of modestly sized roach, rudd, perch and the occasional plump tench from the local club lake.

Perhaps my fishing is a returning to something I thought was lost. Perhaps that's why I choose to continue my adventures with vintage rods and reels. Perhaps that's why my favourite of all British fish is the first fish I ever caught: the perch.

With Spring almost upon us, and Autumn and Winter nearly spent I had opted for one last session in search of perch and returned to the "perch pond" that has accounted for some fine specimens for me, in the knowledge that soon the adventures will change shape to become forays after tench and crucians in keeping with the changing of the seasons.
Float fishing triple red maggot on a size 18, I was soon experiencing bites, which resulted in a succession of tiny perch and the occasional 3 or 4 ounce roach being swung in to join me on the bank. This is a pond where large perch lurk but, whether using worm or maggot, the voracious hordes of small fish have to be waded through before connection is made with the prize.

After about an hour and a half of striking and making contact with either "thin air" or a mini perch or small roach, I found myself attached to something much more substantial. The vintage glass fibre avon took the strain and after a tussle of two or three minutes a wonderful fat-bellied perch was being drawn over the waiting net. A glance at the fish in the folds of the net led to me wondering if I had, at last, fulfilled my ambition to land a three pounder. The fish was shaped like a football, and I knew it would be a close thing. In the event, it couldn't have been any closer: the digital scales, once the weight of the net had been subtracted indicated a perch of 2 pounds and 15 ounces.

I slipped my prize back into the water, and spent the next quarter of an hour sitting behind my fishing partner for the day, David, and chatting. It didn't feel right to dive back into the pursuit of perch without savouring the after-glow of a new personal best.
David was legering with pellets as bait, his intentions for the day revolving around carp and barbel. (yes, I know: always controversial when stocked into stillwater, but we don't own the lake, we just fish it, and in all fairness the barbel of this pond always fight with determination and look as fit as the proverbial fiddle.)

Sport had been slow for David, with just a few small roach and an F1 to show for his efforts, but eventually his quivertip swung round and a muscular fish powered towards the middle of the lake, leading a few minutes later to him admiring and holding aloft for the cameras a handsome barbel.

By lunchtime I was ready to pack up. In married life there is "no such thing as a free fishing session", and there were two lawns to be mown. The sun was high and hot, the perch had faded away into the shadows (although I did contrive to lose another perch, that looked to be about a pound and three quarters, a loss which disappointed me less than it might have done but probably more than it should have done, in the light of my earlier success.)

In conclusion, this morning's short adventure contained all that is best in fishing; beautiful scenery, good company, memories made and a fish glorious in both appearance and stature.
There are many worse ways to spend a morning, but few better.
And so, for this "old man explorer" the quest for a "three" (and thereby the adventure), for the sake of a mere ounce,  continues ...

Swapping stripes for teeth

It's been a long time since I fished for pike.
Too long.
I blame the perch.

My recent preoccupation with all things spined and stripy has meant that an entire Autumn and Winter has passed without me wetting a line in pursuit of pike, and with Spring, one hopes, just around the corner it was "now or never" if that state of affairs was to be altered. I rang Pete and we hastily convened a Saturday morning appointment with the Grand Union Canal with old esox as the intended quarry.

The early morning air was chill, although the forecast promised a morning that would get milder as it progressed, which thankfully turned out to be the case. We tackled up alongside each other in an area of the canal that has proved productive for us in the past, and set about the task of catching livebaits (itself a diverting and pleasant pastime) with which to tempt any marauding green and copper hued water wolves who might be lurking in the vicinity with hungry stomachs and malevolent intent.

Catching the livebait presented a greater challenge than is often the case, but without too much effort expended we had enough small roach, perch and bleak to begin the more earnest task of snaring a passing predator. Our pike floats bobbed pleasingly on the water's surface as the, doubtless, less than pleased baits performed their underwater task. I was giving a debut to a vintage glass fibre carp rod made 30 or 40 years ago by the no longer with us but (by me, at least) much lamented ET Barlow & Son, rodbuilders of Thames Ditton, whose signature Vortex range was adorned with a cartoon perch logo. The aforementioned fish-bothering stick was paired with an ancient but reliable Mitchell 300 which proudly wears the noble scars and paint chips earned through years of hard use.

Pete's livebait had barely entered the water before it was snaffled by a lively jack which was soon suffering the indignity of being held aloft to enable it to snarl for the camera before being returned to its everyday business of harassing fish smaller than itself.

Thereafter things took a more familiar turn, with watching and waiting the order of the day. The lack of activity was not to the detriment of enjoyment, and conversation and coffee flowed as the sun broke through the clouds, and the grey winter's sky took on an altogether more Spring-like aspect. Pete had appointed himself "cigar monitor" for the day, and two plumes of aromatic smoke were soon drifting towards the heavens as we willed our floats into disappearance.

In the event my float, livebait and a passing pike contrived to fulfil one of the classic cliches beloved of anglers: the last gasp, last cast "blank saver". With the morning almost up, and lists of chores awaiting each of us in our respective domestic lives the float bobbed, ducked, disappeared and pulled away with determination. I closed the bail arm of the Mitchell, wound down and struck and brought to the net a pike of extremely modest proportions. No matter that it was one of the smallest jacks I've had the fortune to make the acquaintance of, I was delighted not only to have plucked victory from the jaws of angling defeat, but also to have "christened" the rod with such a plucky pup of a pike.

I returned the pike carefully to the water, and we watched it lie up sulkily for a full minute or two, exuding surly indignation at  the insult to its pride caused by being briefly plucked from its aqueous home, the fish bringing to mind DH Lawrence's pike: 

"A slim pike with smart fins and grey striped suit,

 A young cub of a pike,

 Slouching along away below, half out of sight,

 Like a lout on an obscure pavement."

... and then, with a flick of her tail she was gone, frozen in time in my memory as a disgruntled embodiment of defiance and fragility, aggression and vulnerability.
Pike desire sated, I reckon I've got one more perch session in me before the cycle of the seasons turns my thoughts to olive flanked tench and chubby crucians.
Obsession ..... what obsession?