My father was
a very keen angler and my older brother followed suit and in the fullness of
time, so did I.
There was however
a vast difference between my brother and I, namely that he was a good fisherman
like my Dad, and I was hopeless.
Amongst
other things I couldn’t bait my hook properly, I was hapless, noisy and
terribly clumsy.
If I managed
to avoid falling in the river, lake, or stream. I would drop something in the
water instead.
The inherent
problem with fishing for me was (A) the fishing rod was twice as long as I was
and (B) the line had a hook on the end.
I would get
snagged in weeds or bushes or trees, passers-by, my Dad, my brother, a boat, in
fact you name it and I would get hooked on it.
But if all
of that wasn’t enough to qualify me as a useless angler then the fact that I
had never caught a fish would have sealed it for certain.
For three
years I fished with my Dad or my brother or with mates and nothing, and the
longer my drought went on the smaller my angling peer group became.
I was so
desperate to catch a fish, but the harder I tried the worse I got.
I even
dreamed of catching fish and in those dreams, I caught them by the dozen on
unbaited hooks and I reeled them in effortlessly,
But when I
woke again next morning, I was the same crap angler I was the night before who
nobody wanted to fish with.
So, it was
for this reason that I found myself fishing alone at the age of nine on
Southgate Boating Lake.
I had been
there all day and hadn’t even got a bite so just before I decided to call it a day,
I cast my line in again, this time from the boat jetty.
My float
went plop about forty feet from the jetty and I nodded to myself with
satisfaction.
Within a
minute or two I became aware of something digging into my foot.
I waggled my
wellied foot in an effort to dislodge the source of the discomfort, but when I
put my foot down, I realised I had just succeeded in moving the offending
article more securely under my foot.
There was
only one solution to the problem and that was to remove my boot and shake out
the debris.
I lay my rod
on the jetty and sat down next to it and removed my welly.
As I shook
it a small pebble bounced off the jetty and splashed in the water which was
when I realised my float was bobbing franticly in the still water.
I had a
bite, and it was a bloody good one.
I didn’t
have time to replace my welly, so I quickly stood up and snatched up my rod and
line and struck.
I felt
instinctively I had it hooked and began reeling it in, my maiden catch.
And there I
stood on the Southgate Lake boat jetty reeling in my catch wearing only one
welly.
Moments
later I landed the thrashing writhing monster of the deep, a three-inch-long
Gudgeon the most beautiful fish I had ever seen.
And in
timely fashion just as the fish appeared a small group of angling friends were
passing the jetty to verify the breaking of my angling duck and as a result I
would no longer have to fish alone.
It is a day
that is etched into my memory and I was so grateful for that tiny fish and
incidentally that was the one and only Gudgeon I ever caught.
