My Fisherman friend...

It can’t be that hard. Can it? Fishing?

I’ve never really got to grips with fishing. I never fished when I was a boy and it wasn’t until we came to Wales that I even thought about it - but with so much sea around… well, it seemed like such a waste. After all, isn’t the sea meant to be FULL of fish?

My dad gave me an old beach casting rod which I took to the beach and snapped within minutes – problems with the bail-arm. Well, how was I to know that you were meant to release it when you cast? I’m sure it didn’t say that in the book.

I’m a tryer though, so straight into town to buy another rod… and a new reel, and some line, and weights, and floats, and funny metal things that looked like fish, and some tinfoil hooky things on some line, and a box, and a hat, and a net… I bought just about everything that they had to sell. Surely I could be a fisherman now? After all, I had the gear.

After losing about twenty quids worth of tackle in an hour I was getting pretty fed up. So, perhaps I should have tied the weights on better… and how was I to know that the sea was full of rocks and weed that had been put there simply to grab my tackle so that I had to cut my line and send yet another fiver’s worth of lead and steel down deep to Davy Jones’s locker.

I kept on trying though. How hard could fishing be?

One evening we took our rods to Pwllheli harbour. It was the end of a lovely sunny day and I was definitely going to catch a fish this time. Holly had brought her little rod along with her and was playing at casting into the water a few feet from shore. How sweet. I on the other hand was casting way into the deep water of the harbour channel. I was bound to catch a fish this time, no doubt, definitely, absolutely a fish, and a big one.

“Dad, dad, I think I’ve caught a fish.” Holly screamed excitedly.
“Don’t be silly, you can’t have. It’s probably just some weed.” I replied in my best ‘I know best’ fisherman voice.

It wasn’t weed though. It was a fish - a little Dab. Still at least it proved that there were fish in the water. It would be my turn next and I was going to catch a whopper, maybe a Sea Bass or at least a Huss (whatever that is).

Two hours later I packed away my fishing gear, put it in the car, and later (after we’d arrived home) I stowed it away in the shed.

And there it has remained to this day, gathering cobwebs in the dark whilst I continue with my fishless existence.

Until…

This weekend I met a chap who has offered to teach me to fish (well actually it is his son who has been tasked with teaching me). We popped around on ‘kayak’ business (no, not now – I’ll tell you later – I’m talking fishing here) and I got talking about how I’d love to catch a fish and how I never had - and of course Gaynor filled in all the hilarious details of my disastrous fishing attempts (thanks Gaynor), and the long and short of it (the outcome) was an offer to teach me to fish.

Deep joy! What a nice man, what a very nice man.

So imagine my disillusionment when, last evening, I received this picture on my phone from said ‘very nice man’ showing me what his son (his fourteen year old son) had caught that afternoon… two, lovely, fresh, juicy, trout.

What is he trying to tell me do you think? Perhaps he’s simply showing me what my future in fishing terms has to hold… but look at his face… is he gloating? Is he shaking those two fish at me? Goading me? Is he saying - ‘Look at these lovely fish and you’ve never caught so much as a minnow – LOSER’?

No, he can’t be. Fishermen aren’t like that are they? They aren’t competitive, or close, or singularly vindictive. They are all very nice men. I’ve seen ‘Extreme Fishing’, Robson Green seems very nice. Yes, that must be it, I’ve taken the picture the wrong way – not goading… encouraging, that’s all. It isn’t a sneer. It’s an open honest smile. It isn’t a taunt. It’s a gesture of welcome to the fraternity of fishermen.

After all, aren’t all fishermen friends? I’m sure that’s what it says on the packet.