Fisherman's Tales - Dave

30th January 2010

It was with some encouragement from Sarah that I decided to return to coarse angling after a break of some 25 years. What had sparked this renewed enthusiasm was partly the fact that Sarah said that she had enjoyed fishing in the past and that after taking over Cats and Dogs Netbuster Baits I wanted to evaluate the products before we released them. My return to fishing and that of the match scene was to be more difficult than I expected, time had moved on and the advances in techniques and equipment made me shudder to a stop.

Coming back into a sport after a quarter of a century had passed by had left me with little confidence, there I was with my waggler rod and swingtip rod and a pole made from fibre glass that weighed more that two bags of sugar, looking at competing against people with all the up to date gadgets and poles that would reach next door but one and weigh less than a bag of sugar, seemed doubting. If I felt this way what about the newcomers to the sport, they must be overwhelmed and in some cases scared away from the sport, well I hope by following me on a journey people will be able to have the enjoyment of the sport whether as a relaxing hobby or on the match scene.

There will also be the chance to read articles by fellow anglers from a variety of disciplines, who from time to time will write articles for the website.

Anyway back to my story, so why do people who have been involved in angling move away from the sport?

Well in my case and I am sure a lot of other cases it is the path of life that takes us away. Work, money, bringing up a family and trying to better ones life. The path of life takes you on many different journeys throughout the years, some of which are good and some of which are bad, but we have to experience these differences to help us decide on our own life. Unlike a computer that comes with a manual to help you use it, first we are guided by our parents, whom we cannot manage without for the first part of our lives, then we discover that we can make decisions for ourselves, some good, some bad. I was lucky in that whilst my dad was not interested in fishing my elder brother and my next door neighbour were, that is the start of the passion of fishing.

I lived in a mining village and back in those days we did not have computers and electronic games. In fact, when I started fishing we only had a black and white television that worked with values, "put the telly on to warm up ten minutes before the program started", there I go off at a tangent again, well we did have some large fishing lakes about forty minutes walk away, "yes we did not have a car". Me and several of the other lads from the village used to go fishing as often as we could, we learnt through our own mistakes and experiences, this gave us the enthusiasm to carry on and by the age of 13 I was ready, along with a lot of my fishing friends, to join the local fishing club, in fact not one but two junior club sections.

Now I have an excuse to go fishing at every opportunity, it became an obsession, I even remember writing essays about fishing for my English assignments including one of "the man eating perch".

Well that's enough of be blabbing on about the old days. In my next articles I will look at the aspect of getting started with a brief look at different disciplines and tackle.

Tight Lines
Dave