“I went fishing for peace & quiet. I got an earful!”
NE of the biggest traps of modern angling is how painfully noisy and ambitious it can become. I know folks who write an actual shopping list of what they want each year.
Admittedly, I have a loose heap of daydreams and targets, too. But alongside “hoofing great bass on a lure” and “sucking less at match fishing,” this year has instructions like “fish simpler” and “catch some peace and bloody quiet”.
The latter can be hard to come by, but I aim for at least one session a month when I have no strict target other than a few bites and zero mobile phone signal. And I thought I’d found the perfect place for this, down at the overgrown end of the Grand Western
Canal, a little oasis of calm.
Or so I thought. Within half-an-hour of arrival in sleepy Burlescombe, the local chatterbox found me. Now, this old guy was friendly enough and I don’t want to be unkind, but you’d struggle to find better fiction at Waterstones. Gems included “Of course, back in the 1970s this whole stretch was only 18 inches deep,” along with finger pointing to a swim where he’d caught a 34lb pike. Perhaps he meant 34 pike of a pound each? A bit further along, he’d had a 7lb perch, allegedly!
For the unaware, the Grand Western is a classic schoolboy style fishery: narrow, weedy, dirt cheap and shallower than a boy band. The lack of vast specimens and diehard anglers laying siege to it are partly why I love it here. The only records it ever produced were when someone dropped a box of LPs off a bridge.
Seven-pound perch? I never know what to do in these situations. I have huge respect for my elders, but also a distinctly naughty side. I was tempted to ask him where I could get hold of some of the magic mushrooms he was using, or enquire whether there were any decent kraken showing this winter.
Of course, by saying I was in the wrong swim (the ones I’d been catching from were clearly an illusion) he’d also given me an excuse to scarper down the bank. In fact, I’d already been thinking of a lovely wide bay that I fancied for big roach.
Ten minutes later, the birdsong was replaced by the rumble of heavy machinery. How typical that on my one afternoon off, some of the quietest swims in England had become a drilling site. Two official-looking chaps were repairing an overflow. Important work, no doubt, but not quite what I’d imagined.
I still caught fish, including some gorgeous roach. But I couldn’t find their big sisters any more than I could find 10 minutes of silence. Next week I’m going to venture even further in pursuit of peace. Failing the local library, I might volunteer to be sent into space.