Fishing in a time of pestilence

As a fishing mad teenager my obsession knew no bounds and on discovery that it held a reasonably sized angling section even extended to me taking out membership of the local library (these were the heady, now long since gone, days of the early 1980's when local councils still thought it a worthy enterprise to fund public reading), and so it was that one day I marched euphorically out of the municipal doors with a copy of Dick Walker's "Stillwater Angling" tucked under my arm, mine to have and to hold for a fortnight. At the time Dick had a weekly column in the Angling Times, and even as a youngster I was savvy enough to know that the book I was clutching was viewed as something of a "classic."

However, Dick Walker, onetime carp record holder and pioneer of modern specimen hunting, was wrong on one count: water never is still. Not really still. I'm aware that he was only borrowing a well used phrase intended to distinguish the bodies of water found in lakes, ponds and pits from the flowing water of rivers, but stand by a lake and you'll see that it is never entirely devoid of movement, always exhibiting (however slight) a mesmeric pattern of fluctuating ripples that disrupt the reflections peering back at the observer.

After the enforced break of a few weeks it was good to be back. I stood for a moment and paused, deliberately savouring the sight, enjoying watching the ripples disturbing the water's surface, before setting about the serious business of tackling up. It wasn't long before my float was being flicked into the water with a satisfying "plop", itself momentarily setting off a ripple pattern of its own, before settling to perform the more serious task of bite indication.

From time to time my attention drifted from the float to take in the bigger picture, a cornucopia of delights: clouds scudding across a bright blue sky, the dancing reflections, and the incessantly busy birds, always on the move, never still. Coronavirus may have shaken the world and for a season changed it, but it was powerless to destroy the beauty and majesty of nature.

As my angling fast was being broken only by a brief session ( I had spent the morning working from home, a practice  which now seems to be ubiquitously described as "the new normal"), I brought with me only the bare minimum of tackle: my venerable and lovingly restored Allcocks Wizard, vintage Mitchell 304 reel, a net, and a satchel containing just the absolute essentials.

The afternoon passed slowly. Not in a bad way, but in the happy languorous manner that time moves in when diaries, meetings, schedules and timescales no longer apply. Despite the pleasing way that time seemed not so much to pass, but rather to collect, the fishing activity itself was brisk. Fishing in the margins, the float was continuously dancing, dipping, and disappearing and a steady stream of fish of no great size but  all possessing admirable looks was soon being brought to the bank to be unhooked, admired and returned. The majority of bankside visitors were plump, buttery coloured crucians, although in all I garnered half a dozen species, with the crucians being augmented by the mildly exotic ide, the flamboyantly exotic golden orfe, a handful of gloriously silky small tench, a couple of perch and a solitary bream.

Dave, a frequent fishing partner of mine, was ensconced in the next door swim, and also catching with regularity, similarly bringing a catholic selection of species to the bank, including a lively fully scaled mirror carp which stretched the elastic in his pole admirably and gave a good account of itself before succumbing to the folds of the net.

Among my (if my wife is to be believed, many!) faults, is that I count the fish I catch. I dislike myself for it, because I appreciate each fish for its own merits, and the number of fish caught (or not) is always incidental to my enjoyment of the day, but it's a habit I acquired as a child and have never been able to shake off. This irritating compulsion is compounded by my always trying to end the day with a number divisible by five, not for reasons of superstition but because there seems to my mind something neat about a total ending in ether a zero or a five, and so it was that after four hours of fishing, upon reaching the total of 45 (the largest of which was this bream of only very modest proportions) I "drew stumps", gave the lake another admiring look and packed my tackle back into the car.

It had been a wonderful afternoon, and for now, my need to fish is sated, but not, I suspect for long. The call of the lake is as irresistible as the song of the Sirens, and like  the poet I am duty bound to heed it.

Come when the leaf comes, angle with me,
Come when the bee hums over the lea,
Come with the wild flowers,
Come with the wild showers,
Come when the singing bird calleth for thee.

I'll be back.

Bob, bob, bobbing along ...

My favourite fish are perch.

My favourite style of fishing is float fishing.

My favourite float for fishing for perch is a brightly coloured perch bob.

To me the perch is a totemic fish, and the perch bob an iconic float. It's a float which, when tucked in close to an overhanging tree or tight to reeds or vertical structure (such as the "camp sheathing" beloved of Mr Crabtree) screams imminent promise, but even as the angler's intense concentration is focused on a future disappearance, the presence in the water of a perch bob also spirits the fisherman back in time to his boyhood and to the age of his angling innocence. Every schoolboy had a few perch bobs in his tackle box, as do today those adult anglers for whom the romance of the perch has not diminished or been replaced by the hunt for gargantuan, fat bellied, boilie-guzzling beasts of the deep.

I have more perch bobs than I could reasonably justify the need for, but less than I would like. All of mine are handmade, crafted for me either by professional floatmakers Ian Lewis or Paul Duffield, or by my good friend Roy, a true gentleman and former Yorkshire miner with whom I've shared many a pleasant bankside moment.

I have a range that encompasses large (and rarely used) ones that take a couple of swan shot, all the way down to the small ones I most frequently deploy which take just one or two BB. All are made from natural materials, balsa, cork and even oak galls, some are painted to replicate the Harcork classics of yore, others feature spiral whipping, and each is a thing of beauty in its own right.

If using maggots (red, of course) to pursue my beloved stripy quarry I favour the use of a simple waggler of either Norfolk or Sarkandas reed, as the increased buoyancy of the perch bob runs the risk of decreasing sensitivity and alerting the perch to my deceptive intent, but whenever a lobworm or prawn (and very occasionally a minnow) is employed, it will be to the perch bob that I turn as a matter of course.

Recently, I put a few of my perch bob collection in a dedicated float box (handy to chuck in a satchel for impromptu last minute trips), and even, rather indulgently,  took delivery from the United States of a brightly coloured decal featuring a shoal of perch to decorate the box's lid.

It may be a while before we fish again in this year disrupted by pandemic, but I hope that by the time we reach Keats's "season of mists and mellow fruitfulness" a time when the angler's mind naturally turns to thoughts of perch, that I will be found, crouched by a pond, cane rod in hand, finger on the spool of the centre pin, poised to strike at the disappearance  of a brightly tipped, bulbous bodied perch bob. In its simplicity and serenity, my happiness, consists of such moments.