I’m still hooked, but the fish aren’t

Idon’t know. You open one of these glossy fishing magazines and there are all these pictures of men festooned in flies doing clever things with rods, boats and lines in beautiful places on beautiful rivers and lochs, and you think: well hang on pal. I do all that – well the beautiful places at any rate – and what do I catch? Zilch.

True, I don’t devote my every waking moment to it like the truly obsessed. And besides that, there’s always Waffle paddling out to retrieve my fly and threatening to disappear over the next set of rapids which isn’t helpful.

But even if I left her at home or tied her to a tree, I am beginning to suspect that deep down I lack a killer instinct – that drive and mind set which says: this cast is the one, the deadly one, the one and true and perfect cast that will drop a perfectly presented fly on the nose of the largest, freshest swum, and probably stupidest, fish that ever went to Iceland and back.

Or maybe it’s not shortage of killer instinct, just not enough will power and concentration, or what at school they used to call “lack of application”.

Plus, that thing they say about having to think like a fish. I can’t really imagine being a fish at all. Well spawning time perhaps, but that’s all over in a jiffy. Wiggle, wiggle, wiggle. Job done. And if any of the progeny survived they’d be almost certain to ignore you; straight past up river without as much as a by your leave. Nothing new there then.

But what struck me while leafing through pages of idyllic fishing photos – usually taken in bright sunshine, but never mind – was that I couldn’t ever remember women featuring much on these pages, at least not in any obvious number. Which is odd considering women seem to catch most of the big fish and quite possibly more of them.

Fair enough, there’s the professional fishing writer Marina Gibson, who I would rate any day over the hoary old male media fishing slebs; the Robson Greens and the Paxmans. But apart from Marina, female appearances in fishing mags seem to be limited to reader’s letters snaps of freckly 10-year-olds on holiday wrestling with their first fish. For which I have the utmost admiration to be sure.

Perhaps women don’t see any point in posing for fishing mags. Or maybe they don’t get asked. Oh well. Never mind. Back to the river with Waffle to give it another go. n