"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.