Memoirs of an Angler of No Importance Part 4

I would like to say that as a youngster my fishing was inspired by the great writers like Richard Walker and Bernard Venables, however it would be a lie. This wasn’t a conscious snub, it was simply due to having no angling heritage, I simply didn’t know they existed. Books were bought on the subject of course, but in a very random fashion so much so I can’t really remember any of them, save one. Ironically this was a Crabtree-esque cartoon strip book, and it was by far my favourite, even if it didn’t have the enduring charm of its illustrious predecessor. Unfortunately it wasn’t built to last, being long and thin with pulp pages and a soft cover it was doomed to disintegration. I suppose cartoons are appealing to the young, they were to me at any rate, normally in the ‘Wizzer & Chips’ or ‘Beano’ but a fishing cartoon was even better. While it lasted that book was my escape to another idealised world, a world where success was guaranteed, and usually in less than three frames.

THE JUNIOR FISHING SET

For my first year or so all my fishing had been of the saltwater variety. This wasn’t because I had a burning ambition to be solely a sea angler; it was just convenient living not too far from the coast, and for the most part sea fishing is free. In fact I was blissfully ignorant that any demarcation existed.

My horizons, which were always bound to widen, got the push they needed during the Easter school holidays on a trip to Aysgarth Falls. Instead of being absorbed by the Yorkshire Dales, and the River Ure in its early spring splendour, I was much more interested in what was going on in the River Ure. A man in waders was casting and retrieving a small blue Devon minnow, and at that point I knew I had to have a go. Something had bitten me, but my 8ft pier rod obviously didn’t fit the bill, so some tackle had to be bought, and quick.

It is said that a fool and his money are soon parted, but a lad hell bent on a fishing rod can see it disappear even quicker. My moneybox was ransacked, and I went and bought – and I know you’re going to cringe – a Junior Fishing Set.

This consisted of a six-foot rod, made of shocking turquoise fibreglass, and a small brown fixed spool reel. There were a couple of spinners, some very big hooks, and two plastic floats which looked as if they’d come out of a Christmas cracker – a very cheap Christmas cracker. At least the rod had a real cork handle, so perhaps as these things go it wasn’t that bad.

The strange thing was, I couldn’t remember any protests from my dad about this purchase – I wondered why. The answer came when he kitted himself out with a 12′ float rod, and reel. The thing was, while we’d been groping around in the dark sea fishing, at work dad had two mates who were very accomplished coarse fishermen. Actually one was more than accomplished, he was already a local match star, and would go on to be individual champion in the 1978 1st Division National. I know he found out quite a bit from these two, not least where to fish and preferably for nowt.

Our very first freshwater trip was on a Friday evening. With no work or school the next day the Friday evening fishing trip became a standard for us, well in the summer when it was light enough. Knowing I was going fishing after school had me looking at my watch and praying for 4 o’clock to come round. No change from any other day really, only the urge to try and mentally push the pointers round fast and faster became harder to resist. There was also no dawdling with my mates on the way home on a fishing night.

When dad arrived home on the afternoon of our first venture, he’d stopped off to buy the last odds and ends we needed. Most importantly he had with him a green bait tin with a white lid, inside a pint of mixed coloured maggots. There is nothing in my mind more reminiscent of innocent boyhood fishing days than mixed maggots. There they were writhing about, looking for all the world like animated rainbow drop sweets. I don’t know if I’m just becoming an old git, but the colours of maggots don’t seem as bright these days, or perhaps the dyes are not so carcinogenic.

This was the first time I’d seen maggots, well in the flesh anyway. It was also of course the first time I’d smelt them. Our sense of smell is much under rated, but it can be so evocative. The smell of maggots is so common to an angler, but still unique and unmistakable.

My eyes lit up when I saw he also had a new float, bought under the premise of being a roach float. A very strange thing it was, built along the lines of a standard Avon float, but very small. Its body instead of being rugby ball shaped was like a barrel flattened at top and bottom. The sight colour was bright pink, which extended halfway down the body. Like most old floats it had black rings of various thickness painted around the top. I didn’t care what it looked like; I was going to use it.

Along with many anglers I’ve got a thing about floats, even though nowadays I don’t use them quite as much as perhaps I should. I’ve also got a thing about old floats, or should I say old fashioned floats. I love to rummage through the boxes of miss-matches, and miss-shapes you sometimes find on a tackle shop counter. There have been times when I’ve had strange looks, and, “what the bloody hell do you want that for?” from the shop owner. The looks get even stranger when I tell them I’ve no intention of using the float, it’s just a nice thing to have. The attraction is the echo of a more unsullied, and carefree time.

The venue for our first unsullied and carefree trip was Bowsfield pond, better known, and better described as Stockton Bricky. Just from the name you can guess it’s not the most picturesque fishing hole in the world. The banks are made up of black cinder, and in places there are great broken concrete slabs, tangible reminders of its industrial past. Heavy goods trains intermittently break the peace as they rumble along the track beside the pond. On the plus side it does have trees, some of which hang over nicely, and there are thick weed beds to fish up to. All in all, it is the embodiment of a great angling myth. The place where a baggy-panted lad with scuffed knees would catch his first fish, and of course to fit the myth it would have to be a perch. Well he might have done, but I didn’t. I spent most of my time trying to cast a stupid little float that was far too light, with a rod that was far too short, and not getting more than five yards.

Amazingly in between my frantic swishing, and having to unpick my tangles, dad managed to catch a roach. Just a shade over palm size and scale perfect, it was a flash of natural silver beauty in an industrial setting. It was also possibly the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen, a great improvement from the black and white line drawings in my book.

Fortunately I didn’t have to struggle on with that little rod for too long. On my 10th birthday, apart from getting not one but two copies of the “Ladybird Guide To Coarse Fishing” I was kitted out with a new ten-foot rod, and an Intrepid Black Prince reel. I’ve recently found and retrieved that reel from some large and fearsome spiders in the nether regions of my mothers’ garage. I can now fully appreciate how lucky we are that good tackle is so relatively cheap these days. I look awe as I turn the handle of the old Black Prince and remember that the bale-arm closes by slamming into the reel seat stem.

Another notable thing happened on that 10th birthday. Previous to that all my birthday cards had always had the usual boys pictures on them, racing cars, footballers. Now they all had fishermen on, recognition from my relatives that I was now an angler. With my new rod and reel I did feel like a proper angler, and on the evening of my birthday they were christened at the Bricky. I soon learned that feeling the part is different to being the part, as another fishless trip passed. There was a distraction however, on the far bank sat a real angler, and he was catching fish after fish, or so it seemed to me. Each one of his fish being accompanied by a loud cry of “Look dad, he’s got another one!” Surely this man must possess some supernatural power. I would like to say there and then I vowed to be like him, a real angler, but there was nothing so dramatic.

In later years I was to find out the Bricky held some good fish, but for then that was it for us. Dad’s work place mates had talked him into joining Middlesbrough Angling Club, and what a good decision it was. At the time they didn’t own that much water, but one of the places they owned was Hutton Rudby Ponds, and two real anglers lives were about to start there.