More to it...

Why do I do it?  Why do I spend time sorting fishing gear, preparing bait, loading up then driving miles when I know deep down I have little chance of actually catching the fish I’m after?  Why do I go out on a horrible, dark, drizzly morning when just walking through the long grass makes my legs soaked before I even start?

But here I am, hidden behind a wall of reeds and beneath a low set oval brolly that I’ve just about managed to squeeze into a tight gap in the undergrowth.  I’m looking at a pod and three rods with baits cast into clear patches amidst a weed chocked swim at ‘the Valley’.  I haven’t been here in weeks, in truth the place has beaten me.  There are still a few special fish that have avoided the otters but finding them has always been the problem.  Yes it’s an idyllic place to be but I can’t keep coming back, time after time, knowing all the odds are against me.  Yet here I am again today, why?

I needed to fish, that’s why.  The oppressive debilitating heat of the last week has gone and now it’s much cooler, grey and drizzly which may be unpleasant but at least it makes me feel I might have a chance.  Well more of a chance than that last week when it was too hot to even go outside for long.  At least here I can relax in the solitude and enjoy the wildlife.  A Wren has been bustling about, using my rods as a perch at times.  A Buzzard flapped lazily across the fields on the far side and I followed a Hare when I drove down the track earlier.  Not that I got down early, I wasn’t motivated enough to drag myself out of bed at a respectable summer hour.  But here I am nonetheless with baits dropped into clear patches hoping a Tench or Carp might find them.  I tell myself I have a chance, no matter how slim.

At 1055 I tuned in the radio only to find it’s raining in Southampton with no cricket imminent, I’m disappointed but not surprised.  The Huey show on 6music will have to do instead.

By the early afternoon the gloom had lifted and the wind dropped away, here but not in Southampton.  It had turned into a still, muggy afternoon.  The calm surface is showing every bubble and fishy disturbance and reflects the Hobby which darts upstream on the hunt.  I try to stay confident for my own hunt but I know it’s not going to happen.  Why am I here?  Why do I do it?  A well worn anglers cliché springs to mind…