I’ve never really got on with a full moon, fishing-wise. Some anglers apparently see a great big glowing orb in the sky and think it’s going to improve their chances, whereas I see it and start wondering whether I should have stayed at home and alphabetised the tackle box.
I’ve actually got the evidence to prove it, because whenever I look back through the blog my full-moon sessions have produced roughly the same result as putting a baited hook in the garden pond and waiting for next door’s goldfish to develop a taste for boilies. So when Sunday evening suddenly presented itself as a fishing opportunity, I was already having serious doubts about whether I was being productive or merely providing free entertainment for the local wildlife.
The previous day had seen the moon at its full-moon finest, the Harvest Moon hanging over the UK like a giant celestial indicator, although I’m not convinced it was actually indicating anything remotely useful. By Sunday it was technically a Waning Gibbous, which sounds less threatening, but to my eyes the thing still looked enormous and perfectly capable of ruining another fishing session.
I’ve been putting in a reasonable shift lately, although the fish haven’t exactly been queuing up to congratulate me on my commitment. There have been enough bites and odd fish to keep the optimism alive, but with the evenings closing in rapidly and winter beginning to rattle its keys outside the door, I’m conscious that there aren’t that many comfortable sessions left before the annual battle with darkness and Seasonal Affective Disorder begins.
I’d put some bait in the swim the day before, which immediately made me feel like someone who knew exactly what he was doing. It was the same swim where I’d had the carp, so naturally I arrived expecting the fish to have spent twenty-four hours forming an orderly queue and discussing amongst themselves who was going to be first on the hook.
This time I’d brought two rods, which isn’t normally my way of doing things because I generally prefer concentrating on one rod and pretending that every minute without a bite is part of the plan. The swim was absolutely enormous though, so two rods didn’t seem excessive and, if anything, made me look vaguely professional.
I’d also acquired a couple of those Temu indicators, because apparently fishing tackle has now entered the technological age and I’m not prepared to be left behind. One of them actually flashes blue and red when you get a bite, which means I have finally reached the point where my fishing equipment has more sophisticated warning systems than some small airports.
I arrived at about half past six and the farmer was there with his wife and son, getting ready to feed the sheep. He was fascinated by the fish I’d been catching, and it was nice to see someone genuinely pleased by the idea of a few decent fish rather than immediately asking whether I’d weighed them on something that cost more than his tractor.
He struck me as one of those proper, salt-of-the-earth farmers who keep quietly getting on with things while the rest of us discuss the price of coffee and whether our phone battery will survive until bedtime. I’m sure farming is hardly the easiest game at the moment, so if a few fish stories put a smile on his face, then at least I’d achieved something useful before even reaching the river.
Anyway enough of that, back to the fishing, I drove round to the parking area beside the entrance to the 2nd field, sorted my gear out and headed down to the swim. A little bait went in first, followed by the slow process of assembling the usual barbel gear while trying to look as though I hadn’t forgotten something important in the car.
The sun was already beginning to drop and the view was superb, with that lovely evening light that makes even a muddy riverbank look as though somebody has spent a considerable amount of money landscaping it. This is one of the reasons I keep going fishing when the catching is poor, because occasionally you realise that sitting beside a river watching the day disappear is actually the point.
The fish were certainly showing, with plenty of activity across the river and enough splashing to make me seriously consider whether I’d brought the wrong equipment.
It was exactly the sort of evening when trotting a float would have been wonderful, especially with the fading light making the float easy to pick out, but naturally I had arrived equipped for sitting behind two stationary rods like a man waiting for a bus.
Both rods were eventually out and the waiting game began. There were a few little twitches on the rod tops, which immediately caused the usual chain reaction of checking the indicators, staring at the line, staring at the water and finally deciding that the fish had probably sneezed somewhere downstream.
Dusk arrived with considerable confidence and then proceeded to leave without producing so much as a decent chub pull. The new indicators remained beautifully illuminated and completely unemployed, which I suspect is exactly the sort of career situation they were hoping to avoid when they were manufactured somewhere in China.
Then came one proper little chubby twang about half an hour after dusk, which in other circumstances might have been enough to get the heart rate going.
On this occasion it was more like receiving a polite text message from someone you haven’t heard from in years saying, “Hope you’re well,” before immediately disappearing again.
Even the chub appeared suspicious of the situation, which is never a good sign. When the normally obliging fish decide that something isn’t quite right, you begin to wonder whether they’ve received a memo about your bait and are conducting some sort of industrial action.
To my right the moon was now shining brightly over the countryside and, despite knowing perfectly well that it was technically waning, it looked full enough to me. I stared at it suspiciously for a while, as though it had personally organised the lack of bites and was now sitting there enjoying the consequences.
An hour after dark seemed like a perfectly reasonable point to call it, particularly as I’d already been there long enough for the river to make its position abundantly clear. If anything was going to happen, surely it would have happened by then, unless the fish had suddenly decided to begin feeding at some ungodly hour specifically to annoy me.
So I packed everything away, leaving the river to its nocturnal residents and the moon to continue doing whatever it does. Another session had gone into the fishing diary, another blank space had been added to the full-moon evidence file, and once again I had successfully demonstrated that catching fish is only one of the many things you can fail to do while fishing.
Still, I’d been out, enjoyed the evening, had a chat with a farmer and watched a beautiful sunset over the river. And as every angler knows, that is precisely how you turn an evening without a bite into something that sounds suspiciously like a successful fishing session when you tell someone about it later.
The three evenings before, and just after a full moon are great for carp, but crap for barbel. That's information gathered over years of trying to break it's curse, and failing. But there's always some charmless nerk that bags a whopper and throws my faith into a hedge.
ReplyDelete