Now as we know Anglers are prone to telling lies. A sad reflection on the practitioners of the Noble Art, but unfortunately true. Psychologists have come up with several reasons for it, including:
POETIC LICENCE: Every angler is a poet at heart, and so given to the poet's natural habit of embellishing the boring old truth to make a story worth listening to. Who wants to hear about a one-eyed gudgeon, for God's sake? or an albino bullhead !!! well I do.
CREDIBILITY GAP: Nobody believes an angler, anyway, least of all his fellow anglers. So it's no use telling them you landed a 20 lb carp: they'll knock a good third off the weight for starters.
Tell 'em you caught a 30 lb carp. By the time they've finished their mental arithmetic, they'll have got it right.
INFLUENCE OF THE MEDIA: Open any angling publication and what do you see? Monstrous fish being smirked over by immodest captors. These, you are told, are the only fish worth taking notice of. Makes you spit.
FAULTY OBSERVATION: A fish always looks bigger underwater, especially if it's fighting hard. Often all the angler sees of a fish which breaks him is a flash of scales from its flanks. Who's to say it's not four feet long?
SENSORY DEPRIVATION: Sitting all day cocooned in weatherproof clothing causes sensory deprivation, one common symptom of which is hallucination. Nothing like a good hallucination to tell in the pub. Which brings us to:
THE DEMON DRINK: Now that's a bit more like...
Well you say that I've been off it for a while, the odd glass of wine, and the odd beer but to be honest I've not really missed it after 3 weeks of holidays. I'm sleeping better I must admit so maybe I'll continue on with the odd drink here and there. Much like my fishing I suppose the odd session here and there. Now with a river Zander session planned with Nic skirting the high winds of Storm Agnes, I fancied a dabble for the gudgeon down at the Rive Alne.
I've stumbled upon a swim where there could well be a PB beater, so with the river conditions all a bit naff I was well up for giving it a go. The best Sam and I have mustered up so far is 32 grams or 1.13oz which ain't a bad gudgeon until you're told the British record is 5 times that, wtf !! 👀. Still ignoring that for a sec I've gudgeon to catch.
This time I'd have the small drug dealer scales with me because I'm sure the biggest of the Gonks I managed to catch last time here was a PB it was certainly up there with the larger ones I've caught over the years.
What I didn't expect though was the first few fish were minnows that were determined to get the maggots. This is with the bait dragging the bottom too to try and intercept those bottom feeding Gonks. This was turning in to a totally different session to last time though as the bites were much much harder to come by.
I was going to move but then out of the blue I managed a small'un so I continued on in the swim where in and amongst the minnows there was the odd gudgeon. The problem was nothing like the scale of the ones I was catching the other day.
Just out of interest I popped the biggest of them on the scales and it only registered 0.5 ounces which when I looked back at the pics of the other ones I caught on the previous session these were a 1/2 / 1/3 of the size., so it's a shame I didn't have the scales with me last time.
Still I've got a gauge on how big they are now so at least I know not to forget them next time. That's where the fun ended because boy it couldn't be a more different session than last time. I moved swims for 10 minutes where it was minnow after minnow and then had to re-rig after casting in a tree 😁
I started to lose the light where I was hoping things would pick up but sadly, no they didn't. A tough session indeed even though I caught the old gudgeon not the size I was after.
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