It's curious when I come across something I have written more than a year ago, I rarely remember the contents. There is a vague retelling in my head and some of the imagery remains, ghost-like and fleeting, but the detail is gone.
At first it worried me and now it comforts me. Suffering from insomnia, I find that writing in my journal or putting down some ideas, gives me peace and allows me to sleep if not well then at least better than I would have had I not sat down at my desk. It's an unburdening, a release.
Some years ago, a conversation with a work colleague and friend led to him saying "you should write an article". We had spoken about my recollections of fishing with my Grandfather (Grandad) and the difference between now and then.
Today, while idly going through some old writings on my computer I found the article and it was like reading something written by someone else. It's over five years old, but the warmth about my Grandad threads through and the simple toiling that he filled his retirement with, all focused on his family, bring him back to me.
Just for him, a simple man, with simple pleasures, content with his lot and always amusingly gruff, warm, a teacher, a gardener and a fisherman, here it is (slightly amended and updated for blog purposes):
"Things Change ….
“Things
change” is a common statement and cliché and we’ve all heard it and accept it. But
a recent conversation with a Bass fishing friend can make you realise how much
has changed. The comparison between now and the late seventies when I was
fishing with my Grandfather are eye-opening.
Since
my Grandfather’s death in the early eighties I have not been fishing or even
been in a boat. As a young teenager it had a profound effect on me and it was
twenty years before I stood on the beach to the bay where he moored his fishing
boat. I lost the heart to fish but not the lessons he taught me during our spring
and summer fishing trips together. He was a simple man, quiet and unassuming,
knowledgeable about his vegetable garden and the prawn, crab, net and Bass
fishing which were highlights in his life. He passed on his knowledge by
showing you how and then getting you to work out why you did it this way or
that. Not so much “show and tell” as “show and think”.
A typical
days fishing started at four am. We would walk the two miles to the coast,
carrying our gear and talking quietly. We would get into his wooden boat named
after my Mother, “Pat” and what would follow would be an hour or so of retrieving
prawn pots, emptying out the catch into a tin bath. The contents were then
sorted. A strong memory is the lecture I would get for missing a female prawn
laden with opaque-pink eggs along her abdomen. He would say “that’s next year’s
catch there, throw her back!”
The prawn catch, devoid of fish and
small crabs etc. which were thrown back, would be placed in an “Holly” – a
wooden box - which was attached to a buoy and kept on the seafloor. Inside was a
large bait trap packed with dead crab for the prawns to feed on until we wanted
them. They were usually brought home on a Sunday for the family afternoon tea.
When he saw the
conditions were right the old man would keep back a few live prawns - no more
than ten – in a small water filled bucket. I would row at a steady pace which would
not disturb the fish - progress without haste was what mattered. He would get his
rod ready as I rowed close to shore. The sun rising over the breakwater at our
backs, we would work to the slap of ropes on the yacht masts and the cry of
gulls. When his rod was ready, he would
push the hook through the tail of the live prawn; the bait was left alive,
snapping its tail in his open hand and able to swim free on the hook attached
to the line with a swivel. The flick of the old man’s wrist to throw the bait
over and his placing of the rod in the boat over the stern was always the same.
He would then assemble and prepare the my rod – the reel was modern (then) called
“Black Prince”– which he hated, preferring to fish with his old centre pin Bakelite
reel on his.
We would row further out, drifting
with a gentle, regular scull. What would follow would be a lesson is patience
and silence, drifting with the tide and wind. He would watch the lines, telling
me to scull a few strokes in this or that direction and then drift. The essence
was quietness and the least disturbance when rowing.
If we were lucky a fish would take
the prawn and he would be into the fish, his back to me, reeling in and letting
run; directing me away from mooring buoys in case the Bass wrapped the line around
a chain to break it and escape – which happened a few times. He would also get
me to turn the boat to avoid the fish heading under the boat and run to the
bottom – so you had to be alert and follow his instructions. These moments of
excitement, were a lesson in his knowledge and experience; sometimes with both
of us bringing fish in together. Any
mistake that I made was treated with the comment “Jonah”, but then anyone who
fished with him on an unsuccessful trip was called this. Something I only
learned years later.
It was
recounting to my friend and that we never took a fish under four pounds (usually
the old man could tell the weight before the fish came in the boat – if they
were under they went back) that I was treated by a shake of my friends head in
wonder. Any fish around four pounds we did not release – they were for eating – and it was not unusual to take two or three,
four to five pound Bass at a time. When my friend told me that fishermen these
days caught and released, I could hear the old man’s voice querying “why fish
then!” But then for him it was not a hobby or sport; he got pleasure out of it
but it was more like a post retirement activity that made him feel useful and
put food on the table. My friend then told me about the reduced Bass stocks
etc. and it was my turn to be shocked. In my naivety I had thought that other
Grandfathers, Fathers and sons were fishing as we did.
As we talked
my friend told me about lures used for Bass, something I had never heard of and
I commented that we used live prawns and only live prawns for Bass; I believe
my Grandfather thought it had to be the best of what the sea had to offer or
the fish would not bite. Either that or no-one had got him to try a lure.
I can only
imagine what the old man would have thought about the photographs in Bass
Magazine (copies supplied by my friend) or the collapse of fish stocks. We have
no photographs of him and his Bass – it was a different time. We, as a family,
comment, thirty years after his death, on the size of Bass for sale in
supermarkets.
Things were different then and the knowledge he gave me about my
local shoreline has all but faded.
I hold onto
fond memories linked to our years fishing. In so many ways he was ahead of his
time – returning fish he thought too small, never taking more than he needed,
making sure next year’s catch of prawns made it back into the water than onto a
plate. I learned even as a child that not all fishermen were as forwarding
thinking. He thought it was common sense to take what he needed rather than
being greedy and keep in mind the next season. He made us think about the
consequences, if you take too much, you famine next year. I think, after
reading and re-reading the articles about the Bass fishing community and how
they have changed from thirty years ago that the old man would have understood
and even admired the sport of catch and release. I may be doing him an
injustice in that he would have been less taken aback than I was.
I think he
would have been practical about it and come to terms with fewer fish on his
table. The photographs would have amused him but then I think he would have
adapted and become a subscriber of the magazine.
Maybe he would have had us
packing a digital camera along with our other gear."
https://www.ukbass.com/bass-magazine-141/
