Fishing makes my soul sing

Each to his own and my own is fishing. It has always been fishing. Since I first bobbed a worm down the Cuckmere River at the age of 6, to fish has been to salve the soul. ‘‘If I were called in to construct a religion,’’ wrote Larkin, ‘‘I would make use of water.’’

So would I and my water would be a river. Rivers are like time: They just keep coming. Rivers sweep away thoughts and send them out to sea. But in recent seasons I have fished too little. This season I haven’t fished at all.

So one warm afternoon this week, when I am beset by thoughts of this and that, I go to the cupboard in the garage where I keep my fishing gear and I take down my rod.

All fishing tackle is lovely but a rod is the loveliest. Just to hold its lightness in the hand and to feel it flex is to be taken away from the world a little.

I tip dried sand from my fishing boots. In the pocket of my fishing vest I find an empty Bounty wrapper, nibbled through by garage mice. And some sort of mite had got into my fly box and chewed at the hackles, but the flies will serve.

I drive across town to a stretch of river that I haven’t fished for perhaps five years. A lot can happen in five years, and it has.

Thirty yards from the river, where once were cow paddocks, there stands a vast triumphal arch of concrete. And running across the top of the arch a four-lane motorway, the flow of vehicles as constant as the river.

I tackle up to the unaccustomed noise of traffic. My eyes struggle to see the four-pound nylon tippet and my fingers tie the old knots clumsily through lack of practice.

I choose a pretty little fly with trim brown body and upright wings. I don’t know its name but it fools fish.

My water would be a river. Rivers are like time: They just keep coming. Rivers sweep away thoughts and send them out to sea.

To build the motorway they had to fell a lot of old-man willows and the nearest pool of the river, once shaded and hard to get at, is now exposed to sun and wind and passers-by. A new track down to the water is barred to vehicles by concrete blocks.

A council notice warns people not to dump rubbish. But a pink tricycle lies in the shallows, and what may be the frame of a washing machine.

After the first bend the motorway veers left and the river right and the noise of the traffic sinks to a distant hum. I step off the bank into the water. To wade is to feel a river fully, the cold force of the flow, the bed of the stream.

On this stretch a family of mute swans used to live, parents and cygnets paddling ahead of me as I waded upstream. At this pool here a terrier once leapt into the water to try to seize a fish I’d hooked. And under that overhang there was always a fish. I see no fish now but I strip line and cast, feeling the lazy flex of the rod and the sing of the line. The tippet unfurls like a frond of fern and lays the fly on the water’s skin as softly as a kiss.

Two hours later I am back in my car. I’ve caught no fish. I’ve seen no fish. I’ve left two flies in an overhanging willow. But as I drive back across town I am singing. Each to his own.