‘I intend, of course, to leave these books to my sons one day and they’ll see some of my life in its pages. They’ll find pictures of themselves as small boys, proudly holding fish they had caught with me or their Grandad‘
Well, today marks another opening day and a fresh season ahead: hoorah! A couple of weeks back, I completed my sixty-third circuit of the sun and since around the age of five, I’ve been a fisherman. My earliest memories are drawn from deep down, of times fishing the river Mole on a Sunday morning or the occasional weekday evening with my dear old Dad after work and school. There were times we would try for a perch in the Thames from the old stone wall at Walton but generally end up with a few pope (ruffe) for our troubles. We’d have many a tussle with bootlace eels but, just occasionally, a surprise would come our way. I recall a decent roach being hauled out by Dad, he having endured a biteless few hours ‘fishing for big stuff on the bottom’ (as he put it) until the dough-bobbin pinched on the line beyond his rod tip twitched into life. Meanwhile, I delighted myself in swinging bleak after bleak towards my eager hands. They would shower scales which seemed to turn up for days after, stuck to bits of flesh which had missed a scrub at bath-time.
Sadly, it has been too many years since seeing either a pope or a bleak now and only recently had I the good fortune to be re-acquainted with the mighty gudgeon.
As I grew older and gained a degree of independence, my teenaged mates and I would sit on our Efgeeco tackle-boxes long into the darkening evening, our Ever-Ready bicycle lamps weakly flickering across the water, illuminating our floats until, inevitably, they petered out. The tench seldom bothered us anyway but a new set of batteries would be required before the next weekend, that much we knew.
Perhaps twenty years or so later, I started to record my trips in a book. The first one was a 9” x 7” single cash book. I wrote in longhand, in brown ink with an old fountain pen, feeling loftily that it might pass muster with Mr Yates should he ever read it. It is stuffed with short, one-liner blanks, a sprinkling of red-letter-day, full pages and a plethora of printed photographs that Boots the Chemist would have developed for me to stick in the lined pages. Here and there are other memorabilia such as day tickets, beat maps and lists of acquired tackles.
As an avid reader and collector of other people’s fishing diaries I am glad I’ve now documented over thirty seasons of my own. I progressed after that first year from the simple cash book to a fine-looking ledger, covered in green leather and inlaid with gold script called ‘The Country Sportsman’s record book and Journal’ conceived by John Humphreys and illustrated with little vignette illustrations by the wonderful artist John Paley.
Each page also contains a short quote regarding hunting or fishing and leaves space to add date and place, my companions, the bag and, finally, remarks. I spotted this in a bargain bin of some ‘stack ‘em high’ bookstore and got it for no more than a few pounds, I’m sure.
That first fully completed volume covers 1993-2002, the second in another version is blue, specifically called ‘The Fisherman’s Record Book’ covering 2003-2021. My current working (and third) volume is the same green version as the first as I couldn’t find another ‘Fisherman’s’. A curious searchfor one online today shows them (…now out of print…) to fetch between £100-£200 unused, so I’m rather glad I bought a fourth and final volume a few years back which will no doubt see me out.
I intend, of course, to leave these books to my sons one day and they’ll see some of my life in its pages. They’ll find pictures of themselves as small boys, proudly holding fish they had caught with me or their Grandad. They will re-read the time when I was the only seasick angler on a boat full of families mackerel-fishing out of Padstow, clinging in equal measure to the side rail and our youngest son as the boat pitched and rolled.
They’ll see the summaries of years totalling up the catches by species and listing the season’s best fish. They might smile fondly at my own rough and ready illustrations – sketches scribbled occasionally to reflect some aspect of a session, perhaps a float, or a mayfly or a departing fish breaking me off. John Humphreys writes in the foreword to his ledgers that it’s never too late or too early to begin a sporting record. While mine could never be considered worthy of being published or even being read by anyone outside of my family, I am so glad I began them. I can let any page fall open and be immediately transported back in time and rekindle each memory as if it were only yesterday.
If I may, I shall close with this entry of ten years ago, at the start of the 2015 season:
June 16th – River Wey, Ripley
Mixed bag of chub, roach and rudd
Remarks – Opening day of the season. Fished very traditionally with my 11’ Hardy Roach Perfection, Young’s Trudex, home-made quill, a couple of shot and size ten hook. Bait was bread flake or maggot. A beautiful evening.”
Writing & Image Earthing_The_Current, (Summer ’25)
You must be logged in to post a comment.