The Alternative Angler – The Club that Never Was

Kevin Perkins

Never mind smelling the flowers, don’t forget to take time out to see the satirical side of fishing life and grab a laugh along the way as well. So here’s a regular column from Kevin Perkins to remind us that life is for laughing at, or taking the p*** out of, whenever we can.

HP(S)S, the Club that Never Was

Some members were of the opinion that no publicity was bad publicity, others felt that the less than favourable reactions would put off prospective members, although as club membership was by invitation only, this wouldn’t necessarily be a problem, as there was possibly a long waiting list of possible applicants.

Well, there might well be a huge great list of anglers queuing up to join, except that the HP(S)S’s unwritten policy of not committing anything to paper meant that such a list didn’t exist.

Searching through the Society’s Rules and Regulations in an attempt to find a rule to amend in order to alleviate the situation wasn’t an option either, as again the rules were unwritten, although that wasn’t deemed to be a problem as they were passed on by word of mouth at the initiation ceremony (no details available, due to an unwritten rule about no publicity, although there are rumours of one-piece suits being worn back to front, cucumbers and copious quantities of pole elastic lubricant being involved, allegedly).

This lack of traceable communications is neatly overcome by using telepathy, and no new members can be accepted until they have been tested and shown to be telepathic (or maybe it was telepathetic). This attribute also comes in handy when finding your way to any the HP(S)S’s waters, as without any printed maps, the use of Ley Lines is considered the only acceptable way of finding your way to the venues

Back to the meeting, and mention was made of a couple of recent incidents, the first involving some ill-informed anglers deliberately fishing in an area of the HP(S)S’s waters, where they apparently shouldn’t have been. A small contingent of less than a dozen HP(S)S members were sent out on an errand of mercy to better advise these anglers of the error of their ways.

On finding them on the opposite bank of a body of moving water (can’t say river as it may give away the precise location, and we have to be mindful of the ‘no-publicity’ clause) they tried to hail their fellow anglers on the opposite side of the body of moving water. Unfortunately this proved unsuccessful, despite the HP(S)S members trying a number of different languages, including sign, a response was not forthcoming from the angling interlopers.

Being a long way from any means of crossing the body of moving water (can’t say bridge over the river, far too precise a location) and wishing to bring the matter to a speedy conclusion, the HP(S)S members felt they had no choice but to attract the errant anglers in the only way that they could, that being hand-written notes on HP(S)S’s unheaded notepaper. These were delivered to the bank side miscreants by the most direct and cost effective method, in which said notes are wrapped round half house-bricks and lobbed across the moving body of water.

As you might imagine, this never fails to get a response. The errant anglers were made well aware of the situation they were in regarding fishing in the wrong place, and all without the need for a face-to-face meeting, which can, and sometimes does, lead to confrontation.

The second agenda item refers to the mis-reporting of captures, whereby the captor wrongly attributes the venue to a notable catch of fish, in order to prevent the true identity of said venue from others, probably with the intention of keeping the place to themselves, and sending other anglers off on a wild goose chase. This item caused much debate amongst the members, with the vast majority of them agreeing that this type of behaviour should at the very least have been written into in the club rulebooks (or would be, if they existed).

In fact, what angered them most of all was to find out that protecting the identity of their waters in this way should be mandatory, and that it was not already covered in the club rules and regulations. This was a huge oversight on the part on the founding club members, whoever they were, and if they could be identified, they would have be quizzed about this glaring omission, but the couldn’t, of course, so they weren’t.

Anyway, the meeting was brought to a close by the chairman, after giving a brief overview of the club’s accounts, where he was pleased to report that telephone and postal charges were still running at zero, although stocks of unheaded notepaper would need replenishing. He finally bade goodbye to the members, and told them that the date, time and venue of the next meeting would not be announced. Then the hooded members (for privacy reasons, of course) picked up fresh supplies of ReallyTwee clad dollies and pins and left the building the same way as they arrived, at ten-minute intervals, ensuring that none of them even knew which way the other went home.

Now, of course, having confirmed the existence of the HP(S)S, the club will be disbanded and reformed under a new title, which will not be made public, but if a club near you starts acting in a similar way to the above, you can have your suspicions, but don’t think about it too much, they might just be tuned in……..