Fishing Forever E-Book

David Churchill

• Herausgeber: Merlin Unwin Books
• Kategorie: Für Kinder und Jugendliche
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2014

Seitenzahl: 145

Beschreibung

A brilliant collection of exciting fishing stories for teenage readers. Ken says, 'Come fishing tomorrow Dave,' and because there's no football, Dave goes.   From that day on, he's hooked by the magic of the river, with its battling barbel and primitive pike, big chub and shining roach.   But the river has mysteries too. Is a ghost fishing between them on the Bank? who's drowning on the day they skive school? How wise can it be to explore an underground lake where something very big swims in the dark? Have the lads discovered an irresistible bait? And how much in love do you have to be to let a girl challenge you to a match?   One thing is sure - whatever happens, he'll be fishing forever.

Leseprobe

Dedicated to everyone I have fished with, and with especial gratitude to Mike Jones and Ken Glasby who have contributed so much to my pleasure in the river and hence to these stories.

Contents

Title PageDedicationHOOKEDSPOOKEDLANDEDTRAPPEDBAITEDMATCHEDRETURNEDOther books by David ChurchillAbout the AuthorCopyright

HOOKED

Friday and four o’clock at last. On the school bus. Big kids of Y11 ruling the back seats. First years at the front, excited about their homework. Me and Ken, somewhere in the middle, recovering from the stresses of the day.

Ken says, ‘Come fishing tomorrow, Dave.’

‘Not me,’ I say.

‘Give it a try. You’d like it.’

Ken’s different from me. He doesn’t say a lot, but it’s hard to say no to him. Still, I have a go.

‘I like football,’ I say.

‘Town aren’t playing at home,’ he says smartly. ‘Go on, I’ve got no-one to go with.’

‘You always go with your uncle.’

‘Not any more. He’s working abroad. It’s a pain. Come on Dave. I’ve got loads of stuff you can use. We can make a day of it, if the weather’s OK.’

I look out of the window, seeing the fields and trees whizz by, and a blood-red setting sun. Suddenly I quite fancy doing something different.

‘You’ll have to show me what to do,’ I say.

The rest of the journey home I listen while Ken gets carried away about what we might catch, and how we’ll do it. I’ve never heard him talk so much, and I haven’t a clue what half of it means. I wonder what I’ve let myself in for…

Half past eight and I was still spooning down the muesli when Ken rang the bell. He paced up and down the kitchen while I packed up the sandwiches Mum had made and stuck them in the backpack that my homework usually lived in. Then we were on the road, me travelling light, but Ken well-loaded with a rod bag over his shoulder, a tackle box strapped on the back of his bike with elastics, and a folding stool on top of that.

It’s a good job he was nearly six feet tall already – the biggest kid in Y9. On me, the rods would have been dragging the ground.

Soon we were out of the village and had turned off the main road.

‘It’s a brilliant day,’ Ken said, sniffing the air. ‘Great day for fishing.’

‘Great day for football,’ I said.

He ignored that. ‘See where that belt of mist is lying,’ he said. ‘That’s where the river is.’

In spite of all he was carrying he was going fast, and I had a job to keep up, especially with wellies on. I know now about the excitement that gets hold of you when you can almost smell the river, but it seemed a bit unnecessary at the time. After all, we did have the whole of the day – if I could stand it that long.

After a few more minutes we came to a bridge over a ditch, and a farm gate. I followed Ken off the road and we left our bikes chained to one of the gate posts. Ken unpacked the tackle box, and pushed the stool into my hands.

‘You can carry that,’ he ordered. ‘It’s for you to sit on.’

Then he was off at a great pace, over the humpy field, towards the mist. A bit of his unusual excitement was getting through to me now. It did feel good going somewhere I’d never been before, and the secrecy of the mist gave it a touch of magic. It was the fishing I wasn’t so sure about.

After about five minutes of keeping up with Ken I was sweating in spite of the cold dampness of the air, but at last, after we’d gone from one field into another over a wobbly stile, there was a gurgling sound of water and he stopped and I could see that we were there.

‘That’s the River Ray,’ he said, pointing to a smallish river coming in from our left, ‘and this is the Thames.’

It was interesting to see how two rivers join. The little one came twisting out of the mist across the field, running through deep mud banks. Then suddenly the bank gave way to rushy beds, by where we were standing, and it flowed out into a wider river – the Thames itself.

Of course, it’s not like it is in London. Where we live is near the start of the river, so it’s only about as wide as a country road. But the water looked good, the way it curled and eddied as the two streams joined. Naturally, I felt like making a splash, so I picked up a stone and lobbed it in.

Before it even hit the water Ken was shouting, ‘Dave!’ He sounded really mad.

Whoops!

‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘I forgot about the fish. Will it make a difference?’

‘They’ll get over it,’ he said grumpily, after a moment. ‘But move back a bit, and try not to wave your arms around so much. The water’s too clear.’

I hadn’t realised you can scare the fish away. First lesson!

I’ll set you up with a float,’ Ken said. ‘The main river’s only slow moving. You can fish along the side. I’ll ledger in the hole where the rivers meet.’

I said, ‘OK,’ not having a clue what any of it meant, and still feeling a prat for lobbing the stone in.

A bit of bramble caught against my leg as I went to take an intelligent interest in what he was unpacking from his tackle box. I pulled my leg clear and stamped on the bramble to squash it into the mud.

‘No!’ Ken growled.

‘What?’ I said.

‘Vibration – you’ve got a gift for it. Move quietly. I kicked a board on the edge of a lake once, and fish jumped out of the water about fifty metres away.’

I stood there like an idiot now, afraid to move at all. Did he really think this was better than watching football! At least you could make a noise without being told off.

Ken put a rod together that was twice as long as he was. Then he put a reel on it and pulled off line. I moved, carefully, a bit closer, and watched him thread the line up the rings. Then he pulled a good length through the top ring and did something to the reel.

‘What did you do then?’ I asked.

He showed me how the reel worked – how the bale arm traps the line and how you open it to get line off and how it snaps shut when you turn the handle. It was clever stuff.

‘I’ll put on a waggler,’ he said. ‘You’ll manage better with a bit of weight.’

The waggler was a long, thin float, transparent, but with an orange tip. He threaded the line through the bottom of it and squeezed a big shot each side.

‘Two AA’s,’ he explained, ‘and a number 4 near the hook. It’s three pound line. I’ll tie it direct to a size 16 hook – barbless. Keep it simple.

It wasn’t simple to me; more like a foreign language. Still, I was getting the general idea.

‘We’ll start about a metre deep,’ he said, as he tied a little hook and snipped off the tail of line. ‘If it’s no good you can go deeper – ’til it drags the bottom. Perhaps a smaller hook.

The only fishing I’d ever done was for crabs, off the pier on holiday. The hook he’d used already was smaller than I thought existed. I couldn’t see how you could hope to hook a fish with anything smaller. Unless all this fishing Ken did was only for really little fish, or tadpoles or something. But that certainly wasn’t the way he talked about it. I’d have to wait and see.

‘Now bait,’ he said. He took the top off a round green tub and I just managed not to jump back at the sight of a seething mass of wriggling maggots. I made myself peer closer. They were a mixture of colours – bronze and red – and they were all in furious movement, squirming and turning, like a thick liquid simmering in a pan.

Ken took an empty container out of his box and tipped some of the maggots into it.

‘Right, these are yours,’ he said. ‘Chuck two or three in each time you cast, and put one or two on the hook. It’s your turn to buy them next week.’

I opened my mouth to say, ‘Who says I’m coming next week?’ but Ken went on. ‘Let’s show you how to cast now, then I can set up myself.’

He fearlessly plucked a bronze maggot from the tub, nicked it on the hook and stepped to the edge of the bank. Taking his time – he’s quite a good teacher, actually – he showed me how to hold the line against the rod with one finger, open the bale arm with the other hand, draw the rod back and flick it forward, taking your finger off the line so that the float can fly out, pulling off line as it goes, and land neatly out on the water. The float flipped upright and dipped under so that just the tip was showing.

‘Now you shut the bale arm,’ he said, ‘take up the slack line and let the float drift around in that quiet water in front of you. I’ll teach you trotting later on, OK?’

While I stood there, carefully holding the rod and watching the float turning gently amongst the bubbles and bits of straw, he was setting up his own rod, telling me what he was doing as he went. He was taking the teaching job really seriously.

‘I’m going to ledger – bottom-fish – fish the tip,’ he said. ‘See this rod’ – I glanced across, afraid to take my eye off my float. I didn’t really know what I was supposed to be doing, but I wanted to get it right.

He was bending the yellow tip of the rod over, so far that I thought it would snap, but I could see how springy it was.

‘No float,’ he was explaining, ‘just a weight that the line runs through, so the bait stays in one place right on the bottom. There’s a deep patch where the waters join. I’m worming for perch.’

It didn’t mean a thing, but I nodded and looked back to my float. It wasn’t there. I looked all over the water in front of me; there were bubbles, bits of straw, a reed moving gently backwards and forwards – but no sign of a float. Now whose fault was that?

‘Ken,’ I said a bit nervously. ‘Ken, my float seems to have gone.’

‘Strike!’ he said. ‘Quick!’

‘Strike…what do you –’

‘Lift your rod. Now!’

So I jerked up the rod and out came the the float. It flew over my head and landed on the grass behind me. Not just the float though. A fish came too, flying through the air like a silver dart.

When Ken picked it up – I wasn’t quite sure I wanted to – he said, ‘It’s only a bleak, but it’s a fish Dave, they all count. Your first one, even if it did have to catch itself.’

He slipped the hook out of its lip, saying, ‘Barbless hooks are great.’ Then he offered it to me. ‘You can put it back,’ he said.

I cautiously held out my hand and he slid the shining little arrow into it. The fish lay there, panting, brilliantly silver, with one cold eye staring up at me.

‘Go on then,’ Ken said, ‘it’s had a bit of a rough time already,’ so I swung my arm back to throw it into the river. Mistake number three!

‘No.’

‘No?’

‘Don’t throw it. Slip it in gently. How would you like it!’

Seeing the sense, I went to the edge of the bank, put my hand into the cool water and opened my fingers. It was really good, the way that fish took off back into the depths.

I turned to step up the bank and as I did, a lump of earth broke away under my foot. The clod of dirt, grass, stones, plus my left leg, went sloshing into the water – I nearly went too, but I just grabbed at the edge of the bank in time.

As I heaved up the side my welly boot, full of water, slid right off and splashed back in, all by itself this time.

There it was, half under the water, drifting slowly out of reach and on its way to London. I was just about to panic when Ken swept his landing net out and scooped it up.

‘Well done Dave,’ he said. ‘What are you trying to do? Follow the fish?’

I was wishing I hadn’t come, and thinking that Ken must be wishing the same. But he said, ‘I haven’t had a wellie-full for ages. Good job it’s not freezing. Sort yourself out, then let’s see if you can cast.’

It’s not a nice feeling, wringing out a cold, soggy sock and dragging it back on your foot. Then sliding the whole chilly lot back into a smelly welly. I thought it might warm up inside eventually.

Still, I had caught a fish, and I quite fancied catching another.

So I managed to make myself hook a maggot on, and I pulled back the bale arm like Ken had shown me. The float immediately plunged down and tangled around a thistle.

After about five minutes I untangled it, wound up the slack line and tried again. Again the line just fell off the reel.

I glanced at Ken. He was sitting comfortably on his box, his rod was on rests beside him, and he was contentedly watching the tip.

He felt me looking at him. ‘What’s up now?’ he asked.

I told him. ‘Try again. I’ll watch…Hold the line first…With your finger.’

Ah! That’s what I’d forgotten!

I held the line with my finger pressed against it, flicked back the bale arm, raised the rod over my head, and cast.

All that happened was that the float swung round and round the end of the rod into a tangle, with the float and the maggot somewhere in amongst it.

‘You’re supposed to take your finger off when you cast,’ Ken said. ‘Keep at it, everyone does that at first. And don’t cast so hard next time or you’ll end up on the other bank in amongst the cows. I’ve lost a lot of tackle that way.’

I was encouraged – and challenged. There was a lot to learn here, I reckoned. So I set about learning.

Two or three tangles and about half an hour later I managed a decent cast. This time I watched the float and when it dived under, after a moment of not being sure, I lifted the rod, carefully, and there was another bleak twisting and shaking on the end of the line.

This one dropped off before I could bring it in, but I began to feel that I knew what I was doing.

‘You’ve got it,’ Ken called. ‘Wind in the slack line after you cast so that you can strike better. And if you keep getting bleak try moving the float up the line a few inches…fish deeper.’

So I fished, with one soggy foot but a feeling that I was starting to know what I was doing. After one terrific bite, when the float just dived, I hooked a little fish with a mouth as wide as its body, and tentacles under its chin.

The hook was further inside the fish’s mouth and I was afraid of hurting it trying to get it out. Ken came over and showed me how to use a disgorger. He slid the slit down the line to the hook, gave a little push and twist and out it came.

‘What is it?’ I asked, as he went down to slip it back into the river.

‘It’s a gudgeon. They live on the river bed. Proper name is Gobio Gobio. Means it’s got a big gob.’

He stepped down the bank to slide the fish back into the river, and as he bent, a movement over his shoulder caught my eye. It was the thin, yellow tip of his rod, twitching and bending.

‘Look at your rod!’ I shouted.

In two big steps he was up the bank. He took the rod off its rests and struck smartly

‘Wow!’ he exclaimed. ‘What’s this?’

It was definitely exciting. He was holding his rod up, as much as he could, but it was bending and jerking as if it was alive. What made it so exciting was knowing that something strong was on the end of the line, but not being able to see it.

Ken spared a moment to teach me.

‘Look Dave – I’m loosening the clutch, so it won’t snap the line. It’s three pound line, but this fish has got a lot of power.’

He was slackening a knob on the back of the reel and there was a sudden scream as the fish took off up-river, tearing line off as it went.

‘Got to keep some pressure on,’ Ken said, ‘or it might throw the hook. It feels like a big perch.’

He was winding line in, and sometimes the fish let him. Other times it went on a run and screamed off the line that he had just retrieved. But I could see how he was playing it, not forcing it. We still hadn’t seen it, but it was definitely coming closer.

‘It’s getting tired now,’ Ken said, after about five minutes of this. ‘Get the landing net, Dave. Put it in the water ready.’

I did that, and he began to ease the fish closer to the bank. It was only making little runs now. Then the line rose, drops of water spraying off it, and the ledger weight appeared. Then a tall spiky fin, like a sail, rose up, and a big scaly back with dark stripes running down it.

‘Perch. Big perch,’ Ken said, a bit croaky from the stress. ‘Nearly there.’