Not had a bite for hours

 

John ‘The Strawberry’ was a great lad, only nineteen years old and really loved his fishing trips with us. The problem with him was that when he went fishing the first thing he did was to turn on his radio ghetto blaster and it took many attempts to explain the importance of being quiet and that if he wanted to play his music could he turn the volume down.

His next task was to get out a massive pack of sandwiches, even though he had already had a full English breakfast at Newark on the way to the river. He would then assemble his fishing tackle and on this particular match the tactics were to ledger fish. That involved putting a lead weight on the end of your line, whose purpose was to get your bait to the far bank of the river. The theory being that the large Bream, our target species, were always located near the far bank of the river.

Cliff shouted “time”, this meant that the match had started and we could start fishing. Suddenly there was a loud splash about 20 yards downstream from where John was fishing. “Watch it John” someone shouted “that lead bomb nearly took my head off, you’re supposed to fish in front of you, not 2 pegs downstream” “Sorry” John apologised and retrieved his lead and hook.

Things were very quiet and after about 2 hours of fishing, with no fish caught, things became desperate. Whilst the match is in progress there is a general rule that you stay in your peg and not walk around but one or two anglers were moving up and down the bank asking others for advice to improve things. On approaching John’s peg I asked him if he was having any better luck than the rest of us. “Not had a bite all day” he said “my rod tips not moved at all”. “Pull your line in and let’s see if we can set you up with a better method” I replied.

John picked up his rod and his tip bent right over. “It’s a fish, it’s a fish” John yelled excitedly “I’ve got a fish”. No matter how hard John tried he could not move the fish. He tried to bring his line in and his rod tip bent even more. Backwards and forwards his rod kept going and still the fish would not come in. “This is a big un” John yelled and the other anglers had started to gather around him to see what he has caught.

George, one of our best anglers and more observant than most, said “John, pull it a bit more and let’s see what’s happening”. John did this and George started to laugh. “Pull again John and watch the rushes on the far bank”. John did this and as he pulled the bullrushes on the opposite bank gently swayed towards us.

“Sorry John, you’ve hooked into the rushes over there” George said. John was a very humorous person and joined in with the laughter that followed as he realised that for 2 hours, he had been fishing with his bait hanging in the bulrushes and up to that point, he hadn’t had any bait in the water at all.

George went on to win the match.