How to Fish by Chris Yates

How to Fish by Chris Yates

Author:Chris Yates [YATES, CHRIS]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: SPO014000
ISBN: 9781468305494
Publisher: Abrams
Published: 2012-08-01T05:00:00+00:00


TWELFTH

CAST

The

Seasons

of an

Angler

The obvious temptation now, after I’ve spent the last hour or so taking dictation from the river, is to cast again and try for another perch. Like any other angler who’s just made a catch, I’m always fairly eager to get my line back in the water, but if I’ve just landed something special I feel it’s not only dishonourable to the fish but also to the occasion if I don’t pause to properly appreciate the moment. For now, I still feel a three-pounder is just too glorious to share the day with anyfish else, and I don’t care that, perch being shoal fish, there may be a strong possibility of an even bigger one. I have several angling friends who have made net-splitting hauls of huge perch, but if I caught a second sensation I feel it would probably take the gloss from the first. However, if I landed half a dozen and they were all huge, wouldn’t that make this pleasant day yet more pleasant? Probably not, because each newly caught fish would diminish the worth, the special qualities, of the one before, reducing the original marvel to a unit in a row of numbers, like a sole lost in a shoal or a cod in a pod. I don’t need a barrowful; all I ever hope is that, every now and then, some brilliant creature rises out of the secrecy of its river so I can rejoice in it and make a definite you-are-real-after-all contact.

If I was going to eat my catch I’d like to bring home more than one fish. Organically grown perch from a (reasonably) pure river are superior to trout, but, unfortunately for my family, I have raised them beyond the height of the kitchen table to the same status as the holy cow.

A fishing day without fish can never be a disaster or even just disappointing for there will always be something along the river to brighten the spirits. Yet though I can ruminate for hours on the look of the water or the reflection of the sky, it matters very much that I try my best to catch something. Furthermore, it must be the right kind of something. So if I hook a fish at this time of the year, at this particular season of my angling life, I’d prefer it to have stripes.

The perch is as emblematic of autumn as an amber leaf, a field of mist, a russet apple or a plume of bonfire smoke. It is the colour, charm and soul of an autumn river made fish-shaped. When I was a child, my first success was with summer fish from the village pond, but the first perch from a river was taken in the autumn, and it was so bright and boldly patterned that it made its still-water cousins seem drab and pasty in comparison and ever since then I’ve always associated proper perch fishing with autumn and rivers. I didn’t catch a rod-bending perch for years, and



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