Dad and David are keen fishermen but I am not. Sandford Lock is a walk away from the caravan and I hate it when we have to go fishing, for the preparation takes for ever and when we arrive we just sit. 

– The first thing to do is to dig for worms, says Dad. 

After looking all over, when we can’t find any, we go down the tackle shop to buy some meal. That is, a tub of crawling white maggots. I am amazed someone is deliberately encouraging maggots to breed in this way. 

In the tackle box is a set of hooks with a round tin of lead weights that look like gun shot. The hooks have barbs so they go into the fish but do not come out again. David assembles a hook on some line, crimping a number of weights along the line above it with special pliers. He makes several of these. 

– The weights stops the hook floating on the surface or you’d never catch a fish, he says. 

Or more accurately, the most interesting bit of the whole thing does that. Fish floats are made of cork and balsa wood to all sorts of designs. David has two, a chubby one with a spike either end, and a long thin one. The end the fish will see is painted green, the bit that sticks out of the water is painted bright red. He threads the line through elastic bands on the float, showing me how, by moving it up and down the line he can adjust the depth of water at which his hook will hang.

David had a secret weapon which he maintains will always catch him a fish. He sends me for an old loaf of bread from the bin which we roll bits of into little balls that he then places in a sandwich box. He sprinkles Birds Custard Powder all over them, closes the lid and we take turns to shake the box vigorously. 

– This is bait. Custard attracts fish. 

It is that simple. I admire my older brother for the things he knows, the things he can do.

Only now can we leave for the river; so we pick up the rods, net and box full of maggots; reels, lines, hooks, sandwiches follow and a flask of tea. I learn never to drop this, for once when I did, the flask sounded like a cement mixer when it was rolled along. Dad threw it away in a long arcing throw, into the birch woods. 

– No bloody tea now, said angrily.

Fish prefer the half-light and rain, so we always leave for the river very early and on dismal days. On arrival we install our tackle on the riverbank in a place where the fish are rising. This place takes ages to find, requiring what Dad calls savvy. 

My fishing rod is a length of garden cane with a string attached, a bent pin on the end.

– That’s enough to be going on with, says Dad. You’ll get a proper one when you’re ready for it.

That day is a long way off for I cannot even start the process, unable as I am to face putting the worm on the end, a cold squishy thing I have to pierce with the pin.

David’s fishing rod comes in a long canvas pouch that laces up at the end. Inside are two or, if you are my Dad, three rods that fit together really cleverly, to make one long rod that tapers at one end where a metal loop has been bound on with twine. All the way down are similar loops. These all have to be lined up on the same side. One is always coming loose so we spend yet more time in the wet by the river, binding twine around it, making knots with cold fingers, biting the long ends off with our teeth. At the thick end is a grip with two brass rings. 

David takes the reel which has miles of nylon line wound onto it let’s go fly a kite and holding it to the handle, pushes the two rings over the struts to hold it on tight. 

– Look, the nylon comes with a number which tells you its breaking strength so that you don’t use a trout line when catching a marlin, he says.

I dare not interrupt to ask what a marlin is. Sounds like a bird so I imagine him fishing for birds. 

He feeds out the line through the hoops until he reaches the end of the rod. The ratchet on the reel makes a whirring noise as he does it. 

– You need a ratchet so that when winding in a fish you can pull him in, but he can’t pull you out – or perhaps that’s in, he confides.  

Another obscure nugget of information. 

From the tackle box he takes one of the prepared hooks, tying it to the end, adjusts the float, releases the ratchet on the reel. Now he is ready to cast his line which takes an age to learn to do properly. 

– Glance behind, flick the rod up and then down straight out in front of you, he instructs me.

The line makes a graceful snake, the ratchet whirs and when I can next see the float, it is bobbing in the water over by the other bank. Mostly though, the hook catches in the coat of the boy next to me or in the overhanging branches when I do it. This is why we need to prepare lots of hooks because the hook breaks off whenever I rip a tangled line down from a tree. 

Fishing has rules of etiquette which everyone knows without anyone having to say:

Never cast with someone standing behind or their eye will end up in the water. 

Boats do not pass between rod and float, not out of consideration for the fisherman, but because their propellers will foul, costing a fortune to mend.

No-one makes any noise when passing or the fish will take fright. 

Every passer-by must be acknowledged at least with a nod even if I have never seen them before in my life. 

As I sit, I hear not-so-amazing stories of fish that got away. They have interesting names like tench, dace, perch and pike.

The idea of fishing is to trick a feeding fish into swallowing the maggot on the hook rather than the harmless insect to its left or right. When it does, the hook becomes embedded in its throat or its lip and it is caught. I am fervently hoping that, with any luck, no fish will bite – so as to miss out on the whole messy bit that comes next. If one yanks too hard as it bites, the hook slips and goes into the fish’s eye. Fishermen have three ways of telling if a fish has bitten: the float disappears, the rod jerks in the hand or, when one is off weeing in the blackberries, everything falls into the water. Some men put a sleigh bell on the end of their rod so they do not have to sit permanently holding it. 

Oh, David has hooked one! 

Looking down, I marvel at how strong is its will not to die. A fish is even more stupid than a chicken. It does not know that it is being caught for sport, for instead of relaxing it resists every inch of the way as it is slowly wound up out of the river. 

Up on the bank it enters its death throes, gills frantically working to breathe in this strange gaseous environment, flipping and flapping, arching its spine from head to toe mouth to tail as it tries to swim away from us in the air. It is burnt by David’s hot hands as he holds it to use the special metal device that extracts the hook out of its silver flesh. Somehow it escapes his grip, dropping onto the path where it wriggles dirt all over itself, screaming in a small voice, bleeding red blood. I am horrified. He laughs, dancing around the flapping beast until he can pick it up to put it in the net which is down in the water. The fish is back in water but a bird in a cage. It dies later and I’m not surprised. 

I can’t see the point.

But I can of crisps!

Dad and David often fish at Sandford Lock because it’s near a pub, convenient for when we have had enough. We sit outside on our own with lemonades and a packet of Smiths Crisps. I breathe in the beery smell of bitter and stale fags that wafts out of the door making shades of Mum flit across my eyes. 

The crisp packets are made of waxy paper, that David holds up to the light to see where the Blue Crisp is. When he has spotted it, he opens up the top so I can rummage around in the greasy chips till I can fish it out. It is not really a Blue Crisp but a packet of salt held in a blue twist of greaseproof paper, shaped like Dick Whittington’s swag bag.

David will not let me untwist it. Inside is damp salt which he pours into the bag. He holds closed the top and shakes vigorously to disperse the salt all over the crisps.

At last we can sit back and eat. Grandad says crisps are the most expensive way in the world of eating a potato but they taste dandy and I don’t care.

Categories: Event

Colin Hicks