At first I thought about writing more of a dry report from a fishing outing, but then I realised my last three trips have some common themes running through them, which begs exploring.
All of them involved spending the day in good company of my friend Bartek, having a ton of fun and catching absolutely nothing at all. Outings like these remind me that catching fish is often just a side effect of going fishing.
We arranged the first trip at the beginning of November, targeting pike and perch at Rudyard Lake. It’s not exactly local water for either of us. For Bartek, it actually involved a 1.5h drive, for which I’m incredibly grateful. Standing by the water’s edge felt rather surreal - the last time we’ve done this together was approximately 15 years earlier. Two kids with their push bikes, trying to whisk something out of a poached, polluted and neglected urban clay pit outside of a small city in Poland. Here we were on a chilly November morning, overlooking water again. Now one of us bald, the other one bald-ing, both sporting bushy beards, more than 1000 miles from home. The clay pit of our childhood replaced with a large reservoir in a foreign country. It’s strange how life weaves itself - a lot of things have changed, we have changed, but finding out that we can still share this joyous activity was one of the more precious discoveries of the last year for me. The monster pike which were alleged to live in the depths of the 3-acre clay pit were most certainly a myth (just like the tank buried in the bottom, which local kids could blame for their lost tackle). At Rudyard, monster pike are a fact. We didn’t get to see any that day. Even jigging for perch didn’t bear any fruit. No wasps to save the day. It didn’t really matter - we had a thermos flask with hot coffee, a lot of stories and dumb jokes to share.
The next two trips took place in Nottingham. This time, it was me visiting Bartek for a weekend at the end of January. Two birds with one stone - we get to hit the water again and I got to scope out the city where I will be moving next July. We were motivated as ever. I was confident that our small jigs would deliver something. First came the Beeston canal - not even a knock. At least we got to patch up our morale by me showing Bartek the joys of cream tea (the superior Devon style, I’m sorry, my Cornish readers). On the way back, we spoke to an old veteran who spends his days by the canal with his pole and maggots. That day he hasn’t seen any perch either - this at least cleared my conscience.
The day after, we headed out to Ironmongers Pond and a nearby free stretch of River Trent. Again, it was a case of whipping silent, cold water with no signs of life. The humour hasn’t left us however, and at some point we actually got to a point of tears joking about our school days. In an attempt to save a pike float which we snagged and lost 15 feet away from the bank, we tried throwing our landing net like a javelin, retrieving it with a length of braid - quite a comedic sketch for pedestrians and cyclists on the other side. I probably don’t have to tell you - it didn’t work. In some way, blanking was the best outcome of all - catching a fat specimen is now becoming a matter of honour. We’re both driven (more than we are skilled) and this project is going to be the cornerstone for our future adventures. I cannot wait for the months ahead - stalking Trent chub on summer evenings, chasing autumn pike in the local gravel pits and searching for perch spots on Nottingham’s canals.