But enough of monsters’ this is a tale of much laughter – well it was on my part.
I was fishing a steeply-sided fenland drain with my long time fishing partner, Alan. He and I have fished together for 30 odd years and have shared some remarkable catches over this time. On one particular day I had picked Alan up from his just-in-Norfolk home and headed off to the aforementioned drain.
Parking up beside some farm buildings out of sight of the nearby road, the idea was to have a quick sprint across a couple of fields and drop into the drain without attracting any suspicion from any passing anglers.
This was the start of our problem as the fields had just been ploughed – so deeply that some mega-sticky clay from way down towards Australia had been exposed. After staggering across the quagmire we finally made it to the drain and slid into it. Normal practice was to slide down on your backside and dig your heels in as you got down to water level; it was then just a case of slowly edging along and casting around with various lures.
This method had in the past produced fish of 21 and 25 pounds to us. Spinner-baits were pretty good but I found a completely white alphabet lure was the bollocks. If you didn’t always catch, it did attract loads of follows in the crystal clear water, producing much swearing and excitement.
It was while I was getting a few follows that I heard splashing from Alan’s direction and it was obvious he was into a small fish. I, in the meantime, had managed to get into a right old tangle when some loose line fell off my spool. As I tried to unravel everything Alan called out and asked if would I go and help him.
