Thursday 16 July 2015

The Voices

Do you ever get that feeling? You know the one..that inner voice that whispers, "Go there, you'll catch there".
I took the back roads home, tearing round the bends like an inept rally driver..stupid. That's fishing for you, or me anyway. Makes me throw caution to the wind and focus attention on just rivers, fish..and stuff.
 I reached home in one piece, loaded the car messily, kissed the missus and set off....rapidly.
 Two hundred yards up the road the voices started, " You've forgotten your camera you baffoon, more haste , less speed."
 I actually just abandoned the car and the gear in the middle of the road and ran home to fetch the camera, much to Lady Sarah's dismay...she's sees this behaviour regularly.
 The journey to the river is a short one and once through the noisy fishery gate that inner voice, call it intuition, insisted that I walk to the very furthest swim again...without looking at any of the others for signs of fish.
 The session was rather auspicious in that it was to be the first time I would use the Hardy Perfection Roach that I had purchased some months ago, alongside my Allcocks Match Aerial.
 Bait was caster, hemp and bread. Tackle was one of Richard C's floats and size 14 hook.
 The flow was not excessive, just enough for the reluctant reel to do it's job.
First trot, a lovely 10oz dace to caster.
Then not much at all..I fed hemp and caster, a pinch every trot. 
 I know that the fish could take hours to get on the feed and that just before dark would be my time..but how did I know that? Something was keeping me right here, searching the swim, holding back, adjusting shot.
The inner voice knew I should stay.
Darkness began to fall and by this time I'd taken the rod's first roach and a few chublets. All very nice. Is it experience that guides my path or have I absorbed some of the river's spirit over the years? I fished on, straining to see the float tip, and when I could just about see no more...under it went.
 The strike was met instantly by a very satisfying arc of the rod and the fish was soon some way downstream and making bid for freedom up a nearby inlet.
 I was more than a match for this fish though and he was fought and duly landed. 
 Laying in the net was a rather nice chub which I weighed in at 5lb 2oz, worthy of a photo I thought.
 I took the camera from the bag, the camera I had run back home for, and pressed the ON button..nothing...battery as dead as a Dodo...The bloody voices didn't tell me about that!

1 comment:

  1. Ha! Great punch line :o)

    I know the feeling Gurn, that urge to drop everything and get to a particular spot is irresistible and woe betide anybody or thing that gets in the way.

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