Fish hunters

Photo: One of the locals at the fish place.

I ended up doing a bit of 'father son' bonding yesterday when Andrew and his mate asked if they could go fishing. Now my last attempt at fishing ended up with me tangled up in line and cursing the rod. In short I had no idea how to do what is probably a simple job. However, Andrew's mate does a lot of fishing and knows how to do it and has all the gear, so of course I agreed to the trip so i could learn from the boy. Off we set to the weird and not so wonderful world of still water bait fishing at one of the local fish places. Out in East Lothian's hill billy country, this place attracts a certain type of punter. Let's just say the gene pool was probably less than the size of the small pond we were at. In fact, i would not be surprised if some of them were related to the fish. Here were several grown men dressed in almost uniform like fishing attire. I am not an expert in fish psychology, but does wearing full body camouflage, sun glasses in the rain and silly hats really lure them onto the rod? At the pond, the sight of a dead trout floating around raised concerns in my mind about the quality of the water. There was little sign of any kind of life in there. After a tutorial from the junior fishing instructor, I had a go at it. There was no 'powerbait' (whatever that is) left, so it was 'worm bait' (which is garden worms in case you wondered) as the choice of ammunition. That's exciting bit over with, and then you wait...and wait...and wait. Fishers tell me they just switch off and think about 'nothing', but sadly my mind was thinking about fish, and I found myself imagining what was happening beneath the surface, creating little scenarios where the fish tries to outwit me. Occasionally one of the fish related people would grunt a noise, in the belief one of its relatives had taken the bait and was going to be reunited, but none of them were genuine. I could hardly believe my ears that those cliches of 'I had a 4 lb tout that got away' and 'I caught 5 this morning but i put them back in' were actually being spoken around the stagnant pond. Needless to say after 2 hours of this we were all cold and wet, and frankly quite bored having had no success. Hopefully when the weather improves i will try the sea. We're off to Italy in the summer and I'd secretly like to catch a fish in the Med, so some practice is needed.