If your predilection, like that of The Kinks, is to laze on a sunny afternoon in the summertime, then there's no more pleasant way to satisfy the urge than while wielding a fishing rod, and so it was that I finished work early and made for the lake where I was to meet my friend and often fishing partner, Roger and his son Ben. It's rare that the choice of fishing venue is a response to the question "how small are the fish there?", but such was the case in this instance. A while ago a friend had gifted me a sweet little 10 foot split cane float rod, a delicate tool which I instantly fell in love with, but owing its existence to an era when fish were, on average, far smaller than today, care would need to be taken when working out where to give it its maiden outing in my ownership. I opted for a diminutive commercial pond liberally stocked with small fish of a myriad of species, and chose to match the rod with a Mitchell 304, which struck me as exactly the kind of combination that Peter Crabtree might have elected to employ, resplendent in short trousers, sports jacket and school cap while accompanying his pipe smoking father on one of their angling adventures.
The burnished bronze afternoon sun enveloped me in its embrace, its warmth on my skin transporting me back to the long summer holidays of my own boyhood, much of which were also spent engaged in piscatorial pursuits. Summer angling is not only for me a casually indulged in compensatory reward for the serious and dogged pursuit of specimen perch that marks my Autumn and Winter activity, but also serves as a portal to the 1980's and an adolescent version of me, then as now leant forward with eyes squinting and concentrating on the small orange dot protruding the water's surface, and filled with the "any minute now" hope and optimism that is angling's gift to those who fall under its spell.
Roger, Ben, and I set up in adjacent swims, and dropped our floats into the margins with a gentle pendulum type swing, and waited for them to submerge at the pull of a fish. The wait was not demanding of much patience and before long we were each bringing our first fish of the afternoon to the bank. Loose-feeding maggots and fishing close in, soon saw us amassing a good number of fish, but more pleasing than the growing total was the catholic variety of species that were being drawn over the net or swung to hand. F1's (my least favourite of all fish) predominated, but roach, rudd, bream, ide, mirror carp, crucians, gudgeon and perch also took it in turns to delight, each exquisite in its unique beauty.
The light cane rod performed admirably, with any fish in excess of a quarter of a pound being netted as a precaution to preserve its delicate tip, and as is so often the case when fishing, the afternoon proved to be the antidote to the stresses, strains and busyness of 21st Century life. A combine harvester in the field behind the lake moved up and down in ponderous straight lines, and the gentle sound of cattle lowing carried on the breeze.
My fishing began in the springtime of my life as a 13 year old at a time when I had not yet quite been disavowed of the child's ability to wonder, and now in the early autumn of my years, a summer's day spent chasing fish in pleasant surroundings can once again instill in me (if only temporarily) the ability to find myself lost in wonder, awed at the beauty of creation, and stilled by the sights and sounds of the English countryside. While the steady procession of F1's would have been an alien sight to the Crabtrees, our tackle and methods would have been familiar and I rather hope they would have approved of the leisurely way we set about our business. There are few better feelings than that of "being Peter " at 53.
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