What Fascination In Fishing? (7 October 1978)

When we were boys, my brother and I went sea fishing whenever we could.  This could only happen in those years when our parents could afford to take us to the seaside for a week.

As boys, we could see no point in being at the seaside if we did not spend most of our time either in or on the sea.  After all, we could look at flower gardens in the park at home.  We could sail little boats on the park lake.  We could ride on roundabouts at visiting fairs; watch Buffalo Bill himself rout Indians at travelling circuses; stare at lions and tigers at touring wild beast shows; and fish in the beck for tiddlers.  But nowhere than on the sea could we pitch and toss in real boats and try our hands at real fishing.  The weather did not matter; we would have got pretty wet however fair it was.

No so with Dad.  He had once been to Ireland and ever afterwards he hardly durst take a penny ferry.

As fishermen we were more or less unsuccessful except on one memorable occasion.  The venue was Morecambe Bay.  The boatmen who invited you to go for a morning’s fishing there plied from the beach.  Their boats had no motors in those days.  The boatmen either sailed or rowed you out and in.

This was the last morning of the holiday and the train back home left Morecambe station at 2 pm.  We had difficulty in persuading Dad to let us go fishing and had strict instructions to be back at the digs by a certain time.  So off we went very happily and our happiness increased when, in due course, we and five or six others in the boat began catching large flatfish as fast as the boatman could bait the hooks, deaden the fish and string them.

We lost all sense of time until someone happened to say what time it was.  Then there were cries of surprise all round and we ourselves were horrified, for we ought to have been at the digs at that hour and instead we were out in the middle of Morecambe Bay.

We were still some distance from the beach when we spotted Dad there.  He was “carrying on something shocking,” jumping up and down, waving his arms and shouting I know not what.  And around him were the pieces of family luggage; for although on the first day the exchequer was full enough to the digs by “landau”, as he called the horse-drawn taxi, it was too empty by the last day to permit of any such luxury.

So we were lugged straight from the beach to the station and arrived there just in time to bundle ourselves on to the train, having had no dinner, but trailing enough fishes to feed a biblical 25,000!

I was reminded of that occasion by recent reports of the hostility of anglers to the proposed marina at Woughton.  I have never done any angling myself and know only enough about it to report the results of catches at matches.  But I seem to remember that not long after I arrived in this district one local club alone had about 1000 members and I would be surprised if there were not many more today.

I have never quite understood the attractions of sitting on a river or canal bank angling for fish that cannot be or is not eaten and is put back in the water after it has been caught.  Yet all those people, some of my friends among them, cannot be wrong about its charms.  Quite definitely, angling is not just an excuse for taking a nice quiet snooze in pleasant surroundings.

For one thing, the weather in the season is not always all that good for snoozing.  One winter’s morning I was putting the car away after two hours of tennis played with snow blowing in the air and ice patches on the court.  I was saying to myself “You must be mad,”, when down to the garages came another car and out of it stepped a man who had been fishing since dawn.  I wondered then which of us was the madder.  As far as I knew, both of us led happily married lives.

Shortly afterwards a tennis pal of mine, the late Mr. Tim McCoy, suddenly stopped playing.  Eventually I met him in the street and asked him about his absence and he said; “Well, you know that nobody enjoyed a game of tennis more than myself, but now I’ve got another sport I enjoy even more – fishing.  You ought to take it up, old boy.  There’s nothing like it.”  I could well believe that.

I also have another Bletchley friend whose main pastime is, or was, angling.  Whenever he had the chance he went to the Norfolk seaside, but spent a good deal of the time away from the sea, fishing in the numerous inland waters, while his wife sat near him on the bank reading and occasionally going for a stroll.

One year I was staying near him and thought I would accompany him, just to have a closer look at this fishing lark.  I remained with him for some time, watching the non-action, but he was not catching anything and I do not know for certain that he ever did.  Later I asked him where the fun lay in fishing for something you could not eat.  “oh” he said, “If that’s all you want I’ll see what I can do about it,”.  And sure enough, next morning he appeared at the caravan door bringing some fine fish he had caught from a boat before I was out of bed. But it did not answer my question.

Game fishing is an altogether different kettle of, as the saying is.  In this the catch is eminently edible.  There is nothing I like more than a good fat trout.  In fact, the most delectable fish I ever tasted was what my Bideford hostess – a relative – called a salmon trout caught in the river there that very morning.

But eels I reckon the most inedible, however they are served.