I was hoping to write about going fishing this week but again I haven’t been. According to the tests I haven’t got Covid but boy, have I got a rotten stinking cough which is keeping me awake at night so that I feel even more awful during the day! Anyway, I have been on Facebook to pass the time and read this fascinating post by a guy called Harry Crosby about his fishing journey and I asked him if I could use it and he said that I could, so here it is! Thanks Harry for being my first guest blogger and if there is anyone else out there who wants to have a go then let me know.
“I’m now 61 years of age. I started fishing when I was 6, I grew up on our local brick pond chasing those striped sergeants with a tin of worms, in my teens I chased the fish I could see from a tree that overhung the corner of the pond, I wondered at their size and the dark olive green and their paddle like fins. A regular on the pond, Bob, was a master angler and I would watch him for hours catching giant roach on the slider and those big green monsters I’d seen from up high, he was always willing to give you a handful of his maggots if you asked to “borrow a few” or spare a hook if you needed one. He showed me how to hook bread flake, and the first time I used it, I caught, what I thought was a giant tench, well at 3lb it was the biggest fish I’d ever seen!
I progressed from there to fishing the local rivers, learning to ledger, this was before feeder fishing. Moving forward I learned about ground bait and how to feed for the huge shoals of bream our local river was known for, by the time I was in my twenties I was catching regular big bags of those big black slabs, from there I moved onto the faster moving waters of the other rivers in my area. I went everywhere on my push bike, mile after mile with my rods tied to my cross bar and my basket on my back. I followed the chub through the seasons, until I caught my first barbel, then for nearly 20 years I concentrated on the barbel in some majestic places, cold nights and misty mornings, hour after hour watching the rod tip, with more failure than success if I’m honest. Don’t get me wrong I’ve had my red letter days and nights chasing those lovers of moving water, my whole world was consumed by catching the biggest fish in the river, and when I never, I was devastated.
Until one day a few years ago, I sat with my neck aching and pins and needles in my arse after an uneventful session. I questioned why I loved fishing, and why my life had been consumed by hour after hour of sitting motionless with the off explosion of excitement. I got home put my barbel tackle in my shed, dug out my centre pin and my stick float rod, bought some waders, and went to the river and just fished for anything I could catch, I felt I had stepped back in time, and now I enjoy my fishing as much as I did on those long hot summer days at my local brick pond. Sometimes we can lose sight of why we enjoy the art of fish fooling.”
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