‘To see the pike float curtsey and slide across the surface…pause… then change direction and slink away would have me slip sliding to my feet on the muddy bank eager to strike and not fall over in the process.’
My dear, long-departed Nan would often say, “Fish bite better in the rain.” I’d be mournfully propping chin on hands in her front room window, my outward vision blurred by the droplets meandering down the glass while the smell of her damp coal fire filled my nostrils.
“Your Grandad always said so”.
A man I never met would have been a wonderful angling companion. He rode a little Lambretta scooter around in the late 50s until his untimely death a year before I arrived on the scene. His tackle would be strung about him rain or shine, I’m told, as he headed to a favoured spot, typically Sunbury weiron the Thames, where he fished with silkweed or worm in the fizzy white-water.
My Dad often fished with him in the early days of courtship and eventual marriage to Grandad’s youngest daughter.
I caught the fishing bug early and can certainly remember never being put off by wet weather either.
In my mind’s eye, I can still see myself as a boy of around seven or eight years’ old.
Dad would be looking out at the grey scudding clouds on a Sunday morning and saying, “I dunno… is it gonna to clear up or not? Let’s give it ten minutes” (it seemed to always be ten minutes for some reason).
I’d be ready and waiting at the front door at minute one and my Mum would gently encourage him to ‘go and see what it’s like’, knowing how desperate I was to go fishing and that she’d have us both out from under her feet for a couple of hours on a Sunday morning.
Junior Choice would flow into Family Favourites on the radio and the roast would be nearly ready, the Bisto thickening in the meat juice on our well-timed return.
My independence of travel came in the guise of a five-speed racing bike and, later, a little green trades van shortly after my seventeenth birthday. I’d head off to fish at any opportunity I could, even in the wettest weather.
Wednesdays were half-day closing at work and it was a sure bet I’d be at the local lake in the afternoons trying to tempt stunted roach and rudd in summer or, in winter the equally stunted pike under a green and orange Gazette bung.
Surrounded by elderly oaks, this lake had a rich pungency of silt and decay and I thought it was the greatest smell ever. Drumming rain would pelt the surface in squalls and extend through the let-ups as the tree-line dripped on in continuing fashion.
To see the pike float curtsey and slide across the surface…pause… then change direction and slink away would have me slip sliding to my feet on the muddy bank eager to strike and not fall over in the process.
There were sunnier days following torrential floods when Dad and I would walk across the cow-fields until inevitably, a river once confined to its banks had now seemingly taken on three times its width.
We’d inch our way through the ‘paddy fields’ towards the true bank edge, marked by occasional fence-post tops and a guide of bankside trees. Flotsam and jetsam would boulder past, including on one occasion, a dead sheep from an upstream farm, revolving slowly in the current.
Finding a slack eddy was the answer and gregarious perch and ruffe would snaffle the bounty from nature’s larder, our lobworms! As the skies darkened, we’d retreat home, Dad fearful no doubt of me joining the dead sheep somewhere downstream.
Fishing with my pals in our twenties on a wet winter afternoon, we’d pick our way through the flooded wetland and water meadows, collapsing in hysterics if one of our number stumbled into a brim-full ‘stump hole’ left by extracted or fallen trees, and in good Dr Foster fashion ending up wet right up to our middles.
In later years my pursuit of barbel after dark in the winter would often see me fishing a rising river. Peering into the deepening gloom, I’d observe the slow disappearance of tree roots opposite and detritus now increasingly gathering pace.
Evenings like that were worth pursuing; my mind remembers the unusual-for-the-time capture of a common carp (in a river!!) followed by a double figure barbel in successive casts, both showing an affinity for sweetcorn.
Memorable trips in the rain, each eventful, wonderfully nostalgic and needing no reference to a diary.
As I look out of my window, a low sun illuminates the treetops and beyond them a threatening slate sky contrasts sharply against their late autumn gold.
Maybe I’ll grab some stuff and say to my wife, “Just off out fishing for a bit”.
“But it’s about to chuck it down!” she’ll reply.
“They bite better in the rain…” I’ll call back.
Writing & Images – Earthing_the_Current Dec 2023
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