It is the first week of March and despite the sunshine of
the last couple of days it is clear that winter hasn’t finished with us
yet. The weather forecast for the next
two days is pretty grim with inches of wet and heavy snow expected overnight,
and high winds to push the drifts about into the most inconvenient places. And it’s cold. Still quite chilly, and the local ponds look
grey and lifeless. And every morning I
walk out through the garage and give a perfunctory nod at the fishing rods
resting on the wall-rack. Hence the
angling question in the title. This is
the time of year in this part of the world where frustration with the weather gnaws
away at the desire to go fishing.
Freshwater fishing, my passion and joy, has to wait for at least another
month and those few extra degrees of temperature to wake up the fish that are
still sleeping deeply in all senses of the word.
So like countless others at the close of winter I fall
back on a handful of distractions.
Reading about angling, preparing for angling (cleaning and restoring
rods, reels and other paraphernalia) and thinking about angling. And it is the latter that prompts these
words.
Where would I wish to catch a fish? That’s a question that all (be honest)
anglers ask at many times in their lives.
If I could answer that question, and then be beamed away a la Star Trek
transporter to a destination of my choosing, rod and tackle in hand, where
would that place be? I suppose it would
depend on the type of quarry. If I was
after salmon I would choose, not Alaska but the wilds of the Kola Peninsula in
Russia. If I desired brown trout it
would be the fast and challenging chalk streams of southern England. The small Appalachian brook trout with its
flashing rainbow leap? The high-altitude
rivers and streams to the north of Cashiers, North Carolina. Pike?
The four-thousand year old lake at Slapton, Devon, England. And so on.
With the exception of Russia I have visited all of these
places, together with countless others.
I have caught fish also. In most
instances I have returned my catch alive, but in others I have brought it home
or occasionally cooked it on the bank, well prepared with a filleting knife, a small
skillet and a flask of wine.
Yet there is one place, and one place only that I keep
thinking about, and to which I would love to return. It is not mentioned in any guide book or
sporting journal, nor featured in any expensive angling charter brochures. God forbid.
It lies some three miles east of the town of Taunton in Somerset, England,
on the Taunton-Bridgewater canal, and is a place called Charlton Bridge. Surrounded by farms and farmland it is a shallow
stretch of the canal some hundred metres long, clear in places, weedy in parts –
and locally renowned for being a place where roach and tench may be landed “at
an ‘andsome size” (as they say in those parts.)
When Assistant Curate at St Mary Magdalene, Taunton, a
quarter of a century ago, I would fish this water at least once a month,
determined to gently catch and release one of these prize specimens. In three years, through summers, autumns and
winters, despite catching fish everywhere else in the county, I never so much
as had a timid bite at Charlton. And so
I can think of that narrow country bridge, and dream of a revisit. Just one more cast might …
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