Lanzarote - Wrasse and Wretchocks

Well back to Blighty with a bang, a rather soggy, miserable bang at that, after ten glorious days of marinating in the Canarian sunshine, where the very air tasted of salt and relaxation. The sudden drop in temperature felt like a personal insult, a cruel twist of fate designed specifically to punish anyone who'd dared to enjoy themselves. The missus, in her infinite wisdom, had been right all along; a holiday is meant to be a holiday. And my god, did we ever have a holiday. 

My Fitbit, usually a testament to my tireless tramping in pursuit of something with fins, was now displaying daily numbers that looked more like the price of a pint of milk. The daily routine of finding the perfect spot by the pool, ensuring a constant rotation of sunscreen to avoid resembling a sun-ripened tomato, and then washing it all off again, proved to be an unexpected, and entirely exhausting, discipline in its own right. 

Despite having packed a box of bits and bobs for some LRF, Lure Fishing, or perhaps a spot of float fishing, the moral compass, or perhaps the 'wife-o-meter,' was pointing resolutely towards a sun lounger and a book that I only ever pretended to read. The urge to get out and wet a line was there, a nagging little voice at the back of my mind, but it was drowned out by the siren call of absolute, unadulterated laziness.

The few hours I did manage to carve out were a right old challenge, a glorious flop of an angling session. The rock pools offered up a few fish, but they were the kind you'd need a magnifying glass to appreciate, and the lure fishing was an exercise in pure, unadulterated optimism. 

I spent a couple of hours casting shiny bits of metal into the deep blue only to watch them return untouched, as if I'd just chucked in a particularly unappetising car key. 

Then there were the ornate wrasse, a veritable plague of them. I've never caught so many of a single species in such a short amount of time; they were like miniature, belligerent pirates in brilliant shades of blue and orange, and they'd get to the bait faster than a seagull to a dropped chip. 

They were in such numbers, so ridiculously bold, that in one two-hour session I must have had over forty of them on the line, and at one point, I even managed to land two on a single size 14 hook. 

The fight was a hilarious, double-headed affair, a funny little dance of resistance that only added to the charm of these ridiculously handsome little thugs. 

But as delightful as they were, they didn't really count as a serious fishing session; more of an impromptu wrasse-catching competition with myself, a competition which, I might add, I won hands down.

The fishing, as with a lot of my hobbies lately, had taken a back seat, a passenger to the all-inclusive excesses of a recent trip to Devon, a veritable feast of food and drink that left me feeling less like a lean, mean fishing machine and more like a very well-fed, slightly fuzzy-headed sack of potatoes. It's a funny old thing, a hobby. 

Sometimes you just have to step away from it to appreciate it again, to feel that nagging itch to get back out on the riverbank, to feel the tug of a line and the thrill of the chase. Right now, that itch is back with a vengeance. 

After some rather glorious gluttony on holiday, my waistline seems to have expanded at a rate that would make a weather balloon blush. 

The need to get back into a routine is clear, not just for the sake of my mental health and my beloved pastime, but also to shed a few of those holiday pounds. 

The ten-pound target I'd set myself now feels more like an optimistic fantasy, a hill to be climbed after a rather indulgent rest stop. So, the mission is clear: get back into the swing of things, get back on the riverbank.