My Own Worst Enemy by Robert Edric

Author:Robert Edric [Edric, Robert]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Memoir, Sheffield, writer's autobiography, 1960s, the North, grammar school, John Burnside
Publisher: Swift Press
Published: 2022-02-23T16:00:00+00:00

27

Istarted going fishing when I was twelve or thirteen. Someone gave me a rod, reel and wicker basket and I was quickly seduced by the tackle shops and their arrays of brightly coloured floats, their endless varieties of lead weights and – most dramatically of all – by the fish-shaped lures and spinners: iridescent silver and blue minnows, cast out and then retrieved through the depths and then across the shallows, their bait-mimicking motions caused by their brass swivels and propeller-like fins. If nothing else, then at least these useless accessories looked like small, actual fish on the end of my all-too-often empty line.

I bought an expanding tackle box – an elaborately hinged contraption which opened out into a succession of clear Perspex drawers, every one of which I filled with all these bits and pieces. Most of the time I used only tiny lead shot, minuscule hooks and porcupine quill floats. Maggot, hook, shot, float. Cast out, adjust float depth, sit, watch, wait, sit, watch, wait. Every five minutes I would reel in my line in the hopeful expectation of there being something on the end. More often than not, my maggot would be missing and I would interpret this as having had a bite or a nibble, a near miss. With each cast, doubt would fill my mind regarding whether or not the maggot was still down there wriggling enticingly on its hook. Older men told me to suck the maggots to liven them up, but I never did.

I became friends with several other fishing boys and we went off together most Sundays. Coach companies ran anglers’ excursions from the city centre, departing at five and six in the morning. These ran out into the Peak District and down through empty, green Lincolnshire all the way to the Fens. We were dropped off, shown where to go, left for the day and then picked up and brought home eight hours later.

I spent whole days at deep, dark mining- and mill-ponds, and at small Water Board reservoirs. I sat on the steep, man-made banks of the Welland and the Nene and caught a hundred gudgeon, every one of them weighing less than an ounce. On the days when our floats never moved, we switched to those seductive spinners and annoyed the more experienced and patient anglers with our constant splashing.

The more committed fishermen possessed landing nets, keep nets, umbrellas, rod stands, catapults, ground bait and mechanical and battery-powered sensors which picked up the slightest twitch of their rods’ slender tips. I bought whatever I could afford of these gadgets, but my catches remained disappointingly small or non-existent. I bought fluorescent floats and bite indicators for dark mornings. I went night fishing with my friends and we sat in the dark and the cold on our wicker baskets struggling to see what we were doing.

We fished in ponds ringed by slag heaps where nearby drinkers watched us and then laughed at us and wondered aloud if anyone had ever caught a fish in the last twenty years where we now sat and waited.

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