The fishing time seems to be as limited as ever at the moment a cruel trick of modern life, really. We spend all week grafting, dreaming of float tips dipping and rod tops nodding, only to find that when we finally get a sniff of free time, it’s dark, cold, and our enthusiasm is balanced precariously on the promise of one half-hearted bite. Still, I’ve found that the best chance of success or at least the illusion of it is to sneak out straight after work, grab the rods from the boot, and fish that hallowed window known as the witching hour. You know the one: an hour before dusk when, if you’re lucky, something with fins might actually be awake and mildly peckish.
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: I find it difficult to sit behind a motionless rod. I’m not one of those stoics who can stare at a static quiver tip and call it “meditative.” To me, that’s just boredom with tackle. But this after-work quickie an hour or so before dark that’s just about dooable. It’s the angling equivalent of a cheeky pint: short, sharp, and slightly disappointing, but you feel better for it.
A couple of days previously, I’d winkled out a rather nice chub on a ludicrously large piece of spam. Not your polite cube either more a full English breakfast serving. The kind of bait that would make a vegetarian faint and a chub drool in admiration. Naturally, the plan was to repeat the tactic. Why change a winning formula when you’ve got processed pork and sodium on your side?
So, with a bit of crushed hemp and a whiff of halibut groundbait mixed into something that resembled grey porridge, I lobbed in a few freebies the baiting equivalent of “help yourself, lads.” Then I left it to rest, figuring the chub would need a few minutes to overcome the trauma of finding an entire meal dropped on their doorstep. While that settled, I went for a bit of a wander part roving, part bailiffing, mostly nosing about pretending to look important.
There’s another swim further downstream I’ve been eyeing up, the kind that just looks fishy. But like most anglers, I’m a creature of habit and superstition, so I slunk back to the same peg where I’d caught that decent chevin before. Predictability, after all, is a comfort when your fishing time is as rare as a unicorn with a club card.
Of course, true to Sod’s law, the conditions changed the moment I got comfy. There’d been cloud cover all day, and I’d been thinking, “Perfect just what chub like.” Then, as if on cue, the heavens parted like Moses at the Red Sea, and I was bathed in brilliant sunlight just as I cast out. The temperature started to drop, the air went still, and my confidence sank faster than a feeder full of lead shot.
Still, it was hard to be cross. The sunset behind me was ridiculous vibrant pinks and oranges glowing through the last tatters of cloud, the kind of view that makes you forget your toes are cold and your bait smells like regret. The sky was glowing like Alex Ferguson’s nose after a night on the Rioja and apparently, he owns 5,000 bottles of the stuff, which would have been double if he didn’t drink like a fish himself.
Anyway, I settled in for the final act. The lump of meat sat there in the swim, radiating the kind of greasy confidence only tinned meat can. Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Then, just as the light began to fade, a single pull. Then another. And suddenly, a proper bite the kind that jolts the heart and sends the brain into full reflex mode. I struck like a man possessed.
Nothing.
Not a sausage (ironically).
You’d think I’d have learned by now. I’d promised myself that I wouldn’t strike unless all hell broke loose something biblical, like Charlotte Church in a vest top belting out a hymn. But no, old habits die hard, and I went for it. The rod whizzed back through the air, and the line went slack, and I was left staring at the tip as if it had personally betrayed me.
I sat there a while longer, nursing my wounded pride and wondering whether chub are actually just small comedians wearing scales. I imagine it down there, belly full of my bait, chuckling to its mates, “You should’ve seen him, lads fell for it again!”
Still, that’s fishing, isn’t it? The quiet optimism, the false hope, the tragic comedy of it all. I packed up in the dark, the smell of spam still on my hands and the faint sense that I’d been outsmarted once again.
Next time, I’ll take my own advice. I’ll wait. I’ll be patient. I’ll only strike when it’s chaos incarnate.
Well that’s the plan anyway.
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