Beyond The Wood

We’ve often discussed what’s missing in the fishing weekly’s and monthly magazines and it’s story telling. You never find a fishing related story but you do on this site and pretty good stories as well. There’s more to fishing then just catching fish, it’s also just being there and all that that involoves ghost and all?

I often go fishing very early in the morning, usually setting off at around 4am and have witnessed many strange things.

Once I was fishing on Boxing day at my local river, the Thame, and as you can imagine the bank was blanketed in snow. As I was fishing a Robin Red Breast appeared and came and sat on my maggot box right next to me.

I fed it some maggots by hand but this little bird wasn't frightened one bit. It sat with me for about 4-5 hours while I fished happily munching on my maggots every so often. Never before or since have I seen a wild bird come this close to anyone.

"while I fished happily munching on my maggots every so often" - I bet they didn't taste very nice Tom! Only kidding.....I know what you mean though re the early starts.

Scariest and ultimately, the funniest moment I've ever had was when a mate and myself fished a tiny, secluded drain in the middle of nowhere on an overnighter for the big eels it contained. Now this drain had a tiny road (or track!!!) running along the top of it's bank as most drains do around here. At some stage of the night I was awoken by a loud noise and looked up (couldn't find my torch)to see a ghostly figure crashing through the solitary bush on the bank that was about 10 yards away. I've got to admit, it was almost brown trouser time.

It turned out that it was an old boy cycling home from the pub after a rather late lock-in having had one too many and coming a cropper on his bike, down the steep bank and straight into the bush. I sorted him out and he set off up the road (where too - no idea because there wasn't a house within miles!!).

My mate - oh he slept through the whole episode.

I used to live in Perth Scotland and was an avid trout and salmon fisher before work brought me south of the border and I discovered course fishing.
In the centre of Perth's river tay lies an island called Moncrief Island, this is also a golf course and lies on the town beat of the river.
When I was younger we used to fish in a large pool for the many salmon that pass up the river to spawn, from august onwards the river is full of salmon, we used to sit out all night on this island fishing, even thought night fishing was banned, being young we saw no harm in it, the place was busier at night than it was during the day, there was always poachers jigging for salmon along side us who tried to catch them legally, many a night we spent hiding in wet grass or under bushes to avoid the high powered beams of the water bailiffs search lamps, we even spoke to the bailiffs, they wern't after the likes of us it was the organised gangs of salmon poachers they were after.
This island was meant to be haunted by a grey lady, naturly us being young men we wern't go to let any grey lady scare us, or so we thought until my friend and I saw it one night about 50 yards from where we were sitting on the wet grass, because it was pitch black we could only make out the chostly white outline of a body, it was enough for us to put one rod away and take turns of fishing while the other kept an eye out for her to return.
A few nights later we were there again when we saw her walking up the centre of the golf course again, we decided to stash our rods under a bush and follow the figure to see where it went, by the time we had hidden our gear so that nobody found it she was gone again, we could hear mens voices so thinking it was the bailiffs coming down we decided to leave our gear and take shelter under a bush, the voices were getting louder but it didn't sound like bailiffs so we thought it was maybe a gang of poachers, what we saw made us both bite our hands to stop us laughing out load, down through the golf course came three men, three naked men, walking beside them was our chost, naked as the day she was born, she had long red hair and as I remember a great body, I was young then and everything in a skirt looked good to me, in this case anything without a skirt looked better, we let them pass us then through our laughter we thought we had better follow them to see what was happening, they stopped at one of the bunkers and had an orgy together which put us right off our fishing, it was all over in about half an hour then they made their way back to where the golf club was, we followed at a safe distance but they went inside, then the lights in the bar came on, we sneaked up to the windows and had a look in, they were all getting dressed and one of the men was behind the bar pulling pints, our ghost was still naked and seemed quite happy to stay that way, we thought about knocking on the door to ask if we could have a beer but our courage didn't stretch that far.
A few years after that incident I was telling my older brother about it and he asked me if we had tried to join in, I said no chance, he just laughed and said he and his mates used to join in regularly, thats why she came out on to the golf course, the more men the merrier was her way of thinking, and her husband was always there with the camera.
I often wish I could find another ghost when I'm sat alone on a river bank somewhere now, especially one who ran a bar.

An orgy in a bunker???
Dread to think where the sand ended up!

Although I consider myself fairly supersticious, Im not what you could call a ghosthunter but a few years ago I noticed something a bit weird on the Middle Level in Norfolk.

As usual, my friend Nick and I raced to our swims and for once I lost. Nick said 'No worries have the swim next to me'. A steep bank with a cut out swim with a large bush on the right hand side of it. I noticed there were some rotting flowers at the foot of the bush.

I lost a big fish from the far bank just before dark, I was gutted and went to bed. I was woken up in the middle of the night, not by noise but rather by the lack of it! Mid September and you'd expect the usual amount of birds chirping away all over the place, not here though! When I awoke in the morning, I jumped out of my bivvy for the obligatory swamp and of all things noticed, there were birds in all of the other trees and bushes, millions of them in fact but none in the bush next to my bivvy. The hairs were now starting to stand on the back of my neck as I thought of the tales of places of tragedy deserted by nature, such as Belsen etc.

In the morning Nick told me a story, 'Sorry mate, I couldn't resist putting you in that swim'. Cheers mate, he recalled the tale of a drunken lad who was well out in the sticks a few years ago, struggling to walk home in the cold who'd decided upon a shortcut along the banks of the middle level. Apparently the story goes, he'd cut along the bank and come across the swim I was now fishing, he slipped on the mud, fell down the bank, broke his neck and rolled into the water to be found a few days later.

God knows what really happened to the poor fellow on that night when all must have seemed horrible to him but the birds dont perch in that big old bush anymore, they avoid it like the plague!!!

Regards,
Dave