Fishing is a lot like.......

Fishing is a lot like making love to beautiful woman. When you are young you plunge straight into any available water with inadequate tackle and no experience. It doesn’t matter where or when, you just want to catch that first fish and your recklessness and ineptitude means that many desirable specimens are lost.

As your ability grows so you find an obsession for the pastime and will visit any muddy hole just for the chance of a dabble, its quantity not quality that you crave.

Ultimately, as you become accomplished, your desire to specialise comes through and your efforts are likely to be rewarded with much more success. You will be tempted by distant venues and will fish every selection of water from headland streams right down through curvaceous flood plains and even taking the odd dip into the estuary.

A time will come when you will settle on one given venue. It will give you everything you desire pretty much whenever you wish. You will explore its every inch and find certain areas that are either more productive or which are more receptive to your chosen methods. You will happily remain on this venue for many years unless you are affected by poachers or a new, fresher venue becomes easily available.

Of course there will come a time when you will still have a yearning to fish but the ability to do so will be affected by other causes. At such times you can sit back and take solace in the trials and tribulations of your past and know that when the urge is strong enough, you can choose your swim for comfort rather than ambition and just be content with being there.

I went chub fishing yesterday. I have to admit that my choice of swim was, once again, down to comfort but, in my defence, it is a very good winter chub spot. I know I’ve dripped on about my ills and have been inundated by your flood of indifference but it's my blog and I write about my exploits, and this year the ‘ills’ have had more influence on my fishing than anything else. I’ve got a couple of herniated discs and am waiting for a further hospital visit for some sort of injection procedure which ‘should’ help, and a buggered shoulder that will be operated on in the new year. That will put the kibosh on my spring and maybe some of my summer plans but hopefully (and nothing is guaranteed), I’ll then be back to paragraph four. In the meantime I shall probably bitch and moan a bit so please be gentle with me :o)

Back to the chub swim and what a glorious autumn day it was again. Unlike your average weather reporter, my life does not crumble every time a cloud covers the sun. Quite why they are so apologetic when it rains in the winter is beyond me. I think it's all to do with them sending a ‘positive message’ to try and cheer people up, perhaps they could try another way and get rid of the badly dressed anorexics and the effeminate mother’s boys and just tell the truth. 

See, told you I’d be grumpy.

Anyway, it was bleak but mild and in my chosen spot the sounds of the 21st Century rarely encroach, instead you can listen to the birds and be enthralled by the skeins of geese passing overhead in the growing gloom. There is always something happening around you when you fish and I become quite absorbed, how people fish with headphones on is beyond me.

Nothing much happened on cheese paste bar the odd rattle from minnows or gudgeon. It's odd but that’s the second time that paste has failed despite it being a great favourite of mine on the river, I’d usually fish with it with complete confidence. But once again this season, meat has saved the day. I went a few years without even opening a tin as I firmly believe it had become way too spooky for most fish to go near it but not now. Come dusk and chub cannot resist it and when fished over a bed of small pellets, a little piece of meat has been a winner for barbel. It has outfished every other bait I’ve tried.

And so I put on a little ragged lump and had a slight but positive knock and landed a chub of three pounds or so. The swim went very quiet but I was comfortable and happy to sit touch ledgering into dark when a sharp pull had me back in action. This fish scrapped well and was easily over four pounds but I slipped it back rather than faff about with a camera after dark. Like the first, it was plump, scale perfect and a pleasure to catch. I just know there’s a five pounder or two in this area and maybe even a six, but they can wait for now.

I hurt and ache in many places today but my river understands and will doubtless accommodate me again as soon as the urge returns.