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.
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.
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.
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