news/editorial

11 May 2014 News/Editorial

Whilst none of us is perfect, and whereas I want to write about there being few worse ways of holding a fish, which you intend to return, than the magnificent 33lber caught at Hendersyde last week and photographed (under proud copyright by Fishtweed, so I cannot show it here)…..maybe we all understand that in the heat of an extraordinary triumph, we can all lose sight of best practice.

So, instead, some thoughts…. on lunch.

Fishing is usually amongst friends, we go as a party of mates, of family, or as a member of a club or syndicate. Of course we meet strangers along the way, on the riverbank, but by and large we occupy a little world, a bubble all of our own, when fishing….it is part of the attraction to relax, to lose yourself in the act of fishing, in beautiful surroundings, and with those you know well.

It does not always work out like that………..

“Ave, piscator” said the ageing Oxford don, distractedly wandering along the banks of the Test, trout rod in hand, waiting for the mayfly to hatch and the trout to have their lunch.

He could not have known that his proposed interlocutor, also strolling, coming the other way, if not quite so distractedly, in search of the same feeding trout, was by origin Glaswegian, admittedly made good, but, as Pete and Dud used to put it, he “did not have the Latin”.

Long experience had taught said Glaswegian that any word with “pis” anywhere near it required an immediate, robust response, and before he could factor in the unlikelihood of being abused by an elderly, kindly looking fellow angler, his riposte, knee jerk ,a rapier thrust, was:

“And f..k off yourself too, Jimmy”, much to the ageing don’s consternation and surprise, as they both continued serenely on their opposite paths.

Or even worse……...

Chris Tarrant, prompted by one of the Junction boatmen, told the true story of the well heeled fisherman, corpulent, red faced, plutocratic and, worst of all, English, in the boat just above the new Kelso by pass bridge, fishing Hempsford.

Above them, on the bridge, there appeared a youth pushing an empty supermarket shopping trolley.

What was going to happen next was plain for all to see, and, against the advice of the boatman who knew it was a lost cause, the fisherman laid aside his rod, stood up in the boat and started to reason with the youth, above him on the bridge.

“My dear young man, I beg you not to do it; think of the environmental consequences, the cost to the supermarket, the need for someone downstream to collect and remove it, depending where it ends up after the next flood, the chances of an angler losing his lure or fly, worse still a salmon, on the submerged obstruction…….. and then there’s the senselessness of it all, it serves no purpose, what’s the point….. please, please don’t, I beseech you, not to do it”.

He resumed his seat in the boat, pleased with the force of his argument, sure he had converted the unconvertible…. while the boatman, sitting behind him, shook his head forlornly.

The youth was motionless, while he considered his response, the scene below and the impassioned plea from the large, red faced fisherman.

The tension was palpable, but it did not take long.

The youth leant forwards over the bridge, the better to project his voice to the boat below.

“You’re a big, fat, ugly English c..t” he said, before bending backwards, scooping up the supermarket trolley with both hands…… and dropping it into the river below.

But such things are rare……..

A day on the river is usually one of harmony, of good humour in joyful places…… and, just occasionally, triumph against a largely unseen foe.

Some say it is all about the lunch, the vital punctuation mark in the day’s sport. I think I might be one of them.

Lunch here, half way through the fishing day, was always a time for congregation and reflection, for recounting the adventures of the morning, which pools were fishing best, where were the most fish seen, what flies did the business, the fly size, what sort of fish were caught, big, small, sea liced, how did they play, the stories told by the boatmen, the weather, the wind behind or in your face….. and so on, all to the accompaniment of a gin & tonic, a beer, a warming amontillado, followed by a cheeky little sauvignon blanc or something robustly red and soothing from Berry Bros, then sloe gin…..and so the conversation flowed long into, and beyond, lunch until those fishing in the afternoon were forced back onto the river at 2.30pm, 30 minutes late, still gulping coffee and chocolates.

My father, long after he had given up fishing, loved coming over here to meet my friends for these lunches and subject them to an inquisition in his most benign, giggly, yet distinctly mischievous way. “Tell me, Mark (Clarfelt, the most charming man you could ever meet and a very good fisherman), what went wrong this morning, why did you catch nothing when everyone else did?” or “I hear you lost 3 this morning, Simon (Wood, loves his fishing, has caught 100s of fish here and is an old friend of my father), and landed nothing, you are obviously no good”…in short, any piscatorial shortcoming was pounced on by the amiable patriarch, largely for his own benefit and amusement.

There is an (annoying) Assyrian proverb about “days spent fishing” and “not being deducted from man’s allotted span”, and then there is Thoreau who, almost equally annoyingly, wrote that “men do not know that when they go fishing, it is not the fish they are after”.

If he had said “it is not only the fish they are after”, he would have been close; for there have to be some fish, there has to be a chance, however slim. Or maybe Thoreau is too deep for my feeble brain.

For me, it is the whole package, the river, the boatmen, the fishing kit, the weather, the peace, the beauty, the mental and physical challenge, the occasional triumph, the anticipation and excitement of actually catching something.

Even…. just every now and then…. a boy on a bridge with a supermarket trolley.

All this, with good friends, and, of course…..

Always lunch.