Ramblings..

It seems like ages since I last had a fish, to be honest I don’t feel that enthusiastic, at least not enough to trek anywhere for a few 1lb codling. Some of my mates have been out and about though..

Mark Bessey fished that well known gay male dogging/nudist beach, Tramps Alley at Corton, the other night. He managed a few but said it was a pain in the arse…

His words not mine, I swear you couldn’t script it.

Good news is I have managed to get some holidays so I’ll be able to fish the ICCM. PK’s running scared I reckon, he managed a top ten finish in the event last year, which given his performance through the rest of the last winter season, was a cracking result. He reckons he might not be able to make it this year. I hope he does, I hope all the boys support the event and many more. I know I bleat on about it, but it’s a good social meet with the added benefit of doing something good for those less fortunate, the link is here, just follow to the ICCM sign up page:

http://www.leader-lines.com/

Pedro’s been out and about since he got back from Ireland, while one or two of the other boys are struggling for inspiration. You can’t blame them, sometimes the place spoils you. I’ve had that before when I used to coarse fish a lot. I’ve had weeks over there where you’d be swinging in 1lb roach ‘cos they were run of the mill, then come back and fished the Grantham canal for 6 micro perch. Ireland addles your head at times.

With the looming threat / promise of the licence and bag limits, the rumour mill’s been working overtime. I’ve heard we may not be allowed to use lines below a certain diameter and other bits and bobs hardly worth repeating here. If and when it comes I doubt we’ll ever see a bailiff let alone one carrying a micrometer to check your line!

The current run of small codling has raised a few hackles too, it happens every year. People saying that catch reports shouldn’t be posted on the internet giving away the locations of fish and how can anglers say they take a few fish when the less than 10m commercial fleet can’t and that the reports are undermining work done by the ESFJC etc etc.

I think we need a reality check, anglers taking a couple of fish for the pot is hardly going to worry the <10m commercial fleet, their quota’s were bought up by the large producers, nothing we as anglers did forced the cod closure, the commercial market decided that. It may come as a shock to some but shore anglers don’t play a significant role in a commercial fisherman’s life, shame really because if they’d relied on us for a living they would’ve been out of business years ago.

Let’s get some perspective, one good breeding year, that incidentally was forecast by government scientists three years ago, doesn’t add up to a cod stock revival. That and there’s not enough money in it for a couple of trawls full of barely sizeable fish for the over 10m fleet to bother them….be a different story when they’re 4-6lb next autumn.

I for one will keep reporting and with the current situation with these small codling it’s a good opportunity to show that us anglers can be conservation minded. Make sure the dog walkers and other beach users see you return most if not all and only keep enough for yourself, let Jesus feed the five thousand.

On a lighter, less political note, a mate was in the process of renewing his TV licence. Apparently you can get a concession on your TV licence if you’re blind. No shit Sherlock, it’d be the last thing I’d be paying for if I was blind. I can’t think of anything worse than being blind, I’d hate to have to touch ledger everywhere. I mentioned this to another “mate”, he said he could think of something much worse than being blind. He said ‘imagine being a Siamese twin’ that is quite bad I said. ‘yeah but your conjoined brother's gay, and his boyfriend is on his way round', ok I said, that's even worse, 'and you’ve only got one arse between you...’ Fair play, I’ll take blindness.

We were talking today about Mnemonics, you know those little rhymes that help you remember things. In my industry we use them all the time and they do my nut. It got us to thinking over tea break about how we used to remember stuff at school. Richard Of York Gave Battle In Vain is one most of us remember that helped us recall the colours of the rainbow in the right order, there were loads like that. I told my mate that I used to remember trigonometry by: Tommy On A Ship Of His Caught A Herring, Tangent = Opposite/Adjacent etc. He said they used to remember it by the famous volcano SOHCAHTOA, I didn’t have the heart to tell him the famous volcano was KRAKATOA the daft currant!

Duh huh

Enough of my ramblings. I won’t get out fishing until next week now, high pressure’s set in for a few days and they’re small tides until they start to build next week. I fancy next Friday night, we’ll see how it goes.