“If there’s a God of Angling, he’s got a warped sense of humour”
AS THE famous song goes, you can’t always get what you want. Even with the vagaries of chance, however, I seem to be on a bit of a roll right now when it comes to accidental and unwanted catches.
In an ideal world, we would get what our efforts deserve more often than not. Instead, we have what appears to be a restaurant where you can order a medium-rare steak and end up with a cheeseburger, or vice versa. If there is, as some of us suspect, a God of Angling, he’s got a warped sense of humour.
Last week was a case in point. I set up in what looked like the perfect perch swim, complete with overhanging branches and perfect depth. The next few hours were then rather like an unwanted song stuck on repeat: a positive bite, elastic streaming out and short-lived excitement as the 3lb perch in my mind quickly became a carp.
What looked like the best perch hole ever had more pasties than Greggs!
I hate to sound ungrateful, especially on a cold day, but as hard as these fish pulled it became tedious. Perhaps the biggest irony is that I bombed in my most recent match before lockdown, drawing a swim that seemed devoid of the very thing I needed – yes, carp.
Similarly, I also had one of my best trout of the season not long ago, a fully-finned beauty of 4lb-plus. Had I been fishing with my usual six weight rod and a realistic fly I would have been in a state of rapture. So why on earth did it decide to grab a 6ins pike fly?
How exactly we’re meant to receive these wanted or unwanted gifts is debatable, but a lot of it has to do with our original intention. If we try for a particular outcome but get something totally different, we can’t claim the same merit. Hence my cracking trout was met not with admiration, but ‘how the hell did that happen?’
Maybe the dynamic changes with a rare fish, or those on light tackle. I’ve had some white-knuckle battles with big carp on light tackle. They can be exhilarating, and at least under these circumstances we can claim a bit of skill at getting them into the net.
Do we take all these somewhat undeserved catches too ungratefully, I wonder? Most long-suffering anglers are willing to accept that a measure of bad luck is part of the game, so why not accept our happier accidents in the same spirit?
Perhaps the truthful answer is that we all like to think that our catches are down to our own skill and knowledge. Realistically, that’s only partly true. Luck will always play a part, and we are closer to gamblers than chess players or track athletes.
“Maybe the dynamic changes with a rare fish, or those on light tackle”