Paradise regained ...... and lost again. (with apologies to John Milton)

If it were not for the fact that angling's central skill is that of deception there would be something almost pre-lapsarian about fishing. We venture into places that often exude an almost Edenic beauty and insert ourselves into our own private paradise in pursuit of fish. Time slows and we exist in a strange tension between relaxation and intense concentration and for a while the world ceases to be a place of toil and trouble and we rediscover the innocence of humanity's infancy. 

I had barely fished during the Autumn and Winter of last year, a combination of work responsibilites and consequent tiredness resulting in me failing to summon the energy to make more than just one solitary trip to the bank betwen the beginning of September and the ending of the year. However, as 2024 dawned, bringing with it the annual triumph of optimism over experience, I refound my enthusiasm and determined to set out once again  with a spring in my step and perch on my mind. 

In the event my return to angling was not only uneventful but also had to wait until February of the new year, as a planned January trip had to be aborted due to the lake's completely frozen state. I set up in a swim that seemed to offer promise, with reeds on both of its sides, and didn't have long to wait for my first bite. It appeared that the lay off from angling hadn't dulled my speed of response (you can't lose what you never had!) and I promptly missed my first couple of bites as is my usual custom. However, on the third occasion of the float's  submergion I made no such mistake but my delight proved to be short lived as the culprit turned out to be an angry and unwelcome American Signal Crayfish.

I was shortly joined by Dave, one of my frequent fishing partners, but after an hour of patiently feeding our respective swims with a trickle of red maggots both of our floatfished prawn hookbaits remained untouched. I briefly flirted with a smaller hook and double maggot, but this only produced a couple of bites and a small roach that momentarily glinted and glistened in the morning sun before being returned to the lake.

The lake continued to portray a disinterested and sullen air, with no visible signs of fish movement and only very occasional movement on our floats. The "Perch Pond", which for me and a select group of friends has been our own private paradise in recent years, had swapped its usual benificence for a miserly  surliness. ( a typical example of its previous generosity is shown below) 

As the nearby village clock struck midday, it was time to depart and rejoin the real world of toil and chores. Our tally of fish was a desultry three roach and one solitary perch for me and two roach and a perch for Dave, all of them small and each of them the result of changing from prawns to maggots as bait. If their total weight was aggregated we may just have scraped a pound, and to add injury to insult the bailiff politely enquired as to whether I required "a senior citizen's ticket, sir?" I suspect our next session may see us regaining our angling self-belief by visiting a different iteration of paradise!