The Fear...!!!!!

With autumn well and truly here and the nights closing in this evening’s session was therefore a short one, two hours in-fact. We have had a bit of rain recently so after negotiating past the grazing Jacob sheep I settled into a swim hoping that because the river is up a nadger and slightly coloured I’d have a chance for a fish. If I don’t manage a session in the week after work then it’s down to one fishing trip a week. I want to catch a river Zander and fishing well in to dusk does seem to be the best option.

It’s quite therapeutic watching a glowing isotope at civil twilight, the feint glow of tritium is a nice distraction from the otherwise potential left temporal lobe electrical activity. I don’t like fishing in the dark to be honest, the figment of one's imagination which occurs as a result of one's brain filling in gaps unnecessarily means night fishing for me anyway, can become a bit of a nightmare, literally.

The purchase of a small handheld Nitecore EC25 torch didn’t really help my phobia either because 800 lumens may well be a powerful torch , but when that torch illuminates the death stare from an albino deer , it only adds to the visual terror, an incident that I nearly sh*t myself. I can only imagine what as state I’d be in if I ever get to see the ‘Beast of Barford’ or a headless apparition of Piers Gaveston.

As soon as the pipistrelle exits from its roost and starts to tonk my line, I can last an hour, or thereabouts, so any tips welcome to make it more bearable please. An overnighter on the bank, on my own, puts the fear of dread in me. Not a cat in hell’s chance. My mate and fellow fisherman Simon could tag along is always an option but I’m a solitary angler deep down and the reason why I go fishing is therefore scuppered, so much so I’d rather go down the local for a pint of Mad Goose and a packet of pork scratchings.

Weirdly smoking the odd mini Cuban cigar seems to dumb down my irrationality, now you would have thought a collection of airborne solid, liquid particles and gases would be the last thing my visual perception needed. But for me it works, the warm glow of the light imbues a small comforting deterrent and the localised stinking tobacco haze provides a barrier between me, the ghouls, ghosts and apparitions.

The short session didn’t go too well, It wasn’t a 100% Zander pursuit as apart from the rod out with a section of lamprey, I had another rod out to try and tempt a Barbel. Apart from debris and bats making the isotope dance not a touch, zilch, diddly-squat.