thanks for your telegram. whilst you were panning for gold in the godforsaken pit i was bounty hunting too, chasing shoals of silver in hell’s ditch off a long shingle barrage beach that was thrown up in the storm of ’87. a short walk from the public bar of the wellington public house, in a town where edward hopper memorial homes loom out of the mist on a saturday night.
elsewhere in england this summer’s night is a disco fucked up, lager!, lager!, lager! all sunburn, hopes and heartaches, a cocktail of synthesizers and synthetic drugs but here on the edge of town everything is still and cold, the temperature in the fog half that of a mile away. the sea stills to nought, its waves suspended, so quiet a spinner cast a hundred yards away can be heard hitting the water with a spooky sound similar to a single sniper’s shot as if from an open window behind. feet shifting on stones echo in the gloom and we fish on our breath shortening with each cast.

and then as soon as it came it lifts for a sunset of dewdrops and pearls. the mackerel long gone. a forgotten jukebox tune. the light lingers as a necklace of streetlamps flicker in the distance. napoleon laughs. time for one more in the wellington.

drinking to the morning’s tide on the birdtable

ja

ja

your news of death in bivvy city put my indicators half-slack. a different face on the wanted poster now. heathcliffe holds up spawnbound coach. the old dodger gone, no 2 robbed of its pearls, and half the bivvies with it, i suspect. two years back, opening night down wimbledon common or richmond pk, the 40 came out at ten minutes into the new season. bob said 11 bivvies packed up and went home before the new dawn broke.

moral high ground gives me vertigo; the truth is i bounty hunt, all the waking minutes. take this month’s letter: a heatwave journal, a spaghetti north-western two-and-three-quarter-pound test curve newsreel; a quatermass and the gravel pit of boiling-point carp angling.

arse pit. in summer a toilet bowl, municipal bidet where buttock-brains collect for the holiday of saint dysfunction. by mid june i’d pulled off, nagged by failure, not a single run since my february 40. heatwave a-coming. sealed with a kiss, see you september. then a dog walker told me something which sent me to hell and back…

arse pit is only small. fifteen acres.

invisible carp on vows, they never show an ankle or an eye, deep water owls, buried treasure. night fishing was banned two seasons ago after years of fishing abuse and carp trafficking; it somehow got itself into a layby between champagne and essex. white vans, huge fish on the mobile auction. the locals still see germans taking their zander back over the zeigfried line in refrigerated benz. thirty big fish left, perhaps; between 30 and 55 lbs. living like rats in a castle. down there, in there, somewhere. because every square yard the bottom changes. dungeons, troughs, gulleys, plateaus, bars; sunken gravel extractors, bouys, old deux chevaux. 30 foot holes, rocks, stones, gravel, stinking mud, drop-offs, ledges, margins plunging sheer from on high, sandy beaches where it’s water off a crucian’s back.

four times a year there’s an enduro. 48 hours of carp angling with asterix and obelix, traumatising further the galicians who escaped the essex cohorts first time round; fires, barbeques, beachcaster pods, deadly nightshade flavour decathlon discount boilies, carnaby street tents, million candle lamps. two bream sometimes attracted by the lights, or the music. the gaule believes fish are attracted by lights at night. and music by default. this is enshrined in the regulations by the error of an ignorent bureaucrat. in 1829 the ministry of agriculture convened to edit what became the royal ordonnance of 1830. the functionary charged with listing all fishing methods banned, came to a favourite poacher’s tactic, pêche au clairon. in other words light, made by fire. a non-angler, he assumed clairon was a clarinette. he ammended the law to read: it is forbidden to fish with clarinette, trumpet and any other musical instrument. but carp are but tone deaf mortals. now and then a big one falls for drum at the enduro, angling’s son et lumiere. four rods per angler, two anglers per swim, more junk boilies than a sweet factory. fishing arse-pit any week after an enduro is like oyster fishing after british petroleum have blown up an oil rig.

so. i fish arse pit as a lone bum; in winter, or in foul weather. being there in summer is my idea of hell. only truth is like a slick on the sea of complacency. aversions do not produce carp. i had to see it at its worst. in the heatwave. for two summers i’d been scrambling that message. twice i drove by with the rods in the back. twice affronted by contemporary versions of ezekial’s vision. the second time, i saw paramedics resusitating elephant woman beside a supermarket carp rod, her dayglo lilo adrift over 25 feet of water, the “danger no swimming” sign broken up to grill the special belly pork on promo from hundreds of pyres round the bank.

the logic of persuasion sang sweetly: arse-pit carp feast on naturals. when water temperatures exceed 25 and the levels remain high, you bet the wage packet. i’d always meant to fish those margins early morning, pile the bait in close when the new-born crayfish prowl the edges. my last resistance fell when this dog walker said he’d seen carp, big mamas, at five in the afternoon in the last heatwave. ganged up, right where i’d hoped, right where elephant woman got her mouth to mouth.

the heatwave came the day they said. french heatwaves run on time. so hot the butterflies stuck to melted roads. i cut short a week session in central france and came home biteless. brooded that weekend, tying rigs, dutch courage for pre-battle nerves. 39 degrees in the caravan, i had to stay outside 24 hrs a day in any case. sleeping down in the field now while my appeal against the mayor’s decision goes through the tribunal admistratif in caen. fighting on two fronts.

monday on the front line. arse-pit 3 pm. like there’s a dustman’s strike. ten minutes on the crackerjack podium, armfuls of litter, half the programme till my swim was clean enough to put the gear down. over at the carpark bank 4x4s had broken through the barrier, driven onto the grass while municipal workers errect fences round them to prevent this. sunbathers lay in a rubbish tips. the glint of bottles and cans sailing on the water. 28 degrees. green algae has closed the plage but the ropes are cut down by cavalry bikinis. amphibious ghastlies, dogs, wags on lilos and always someone who thinks it’s funny to shoulder their girlfriend in a fireman’s hug and pretend they’re going to dump her in the water while she shrieks.

i sit under a tree. dappled shade, like being splashed with burning chip oil. i’m in the furthest corner from that carpark, taking in the situation which now i’m here looks only half way to hell. if this doesn’t work, my summer is ruined.

in front of me a Y-shaped island, buttocky, with a green metal bridge across. here the channel is at its narrowest. 30 feet. it widens out, down to my swim. the island sweeps away in front of me. 20 yards at one point. 40 at its furthest. any further and i’m casting parallel to the bank, under the trees. here the island continues for a hundred yards to its point. there are no plastic flowers in my swim to remember elephant woman’s last voyage.

i cross the bridge with 10kgs of bait, a particle spoon and thermometer. one snogging couple on the island, the other leg of Y to mine. i take temperatures along the margins. they match the air temperature. 27. no fish visible, so i cast a 3oz lead and marker float across from my swim. things look good now. the channel island margins are hard, stones, aggregate, crayfish graveyards. the open water in front of me is gravel at 60 yards. depths from 1 to 17 feet, undulations, shelves, holes. i find the margin drop offs at 4ft, walk back over the bridge, pick up the boilie bucket and kerb crawl the island for jail bait. high banks, looking down shafts of direct sunlight, like lazer sights into thin green water, furred up stones glossy on the bottom. i choose three spots. bush, inlet, angle. i decide to trail the bait, wondering if the carp come up the channel from the bridge end left of my swim, or towards me from the furthest point. i stand by the bridge, spoon loaded with the first 30 baits when a carp, an upper 20, drifts out of green shadow, onto the marginal shelf, swivels round, then sets off along the margin towards the only bush. holy moses.

this is an event. hell comes good first assignment. over the past two years i’ve fished 150 short afternoon or evening sessions on arse-pit. average four hours through autumn, winter and spring. this was the second fish i’d actually seen swimming in the water at close range. the other was a five pounder. french public waters are not intimate. the municipality sheers any bankside cover zealously. everything goes; bushes, reeds, bullrushes, irises. since the revolution nothing must impede the masses from total access. total access means cars, bikes, quads, granny on a lead, delinquants on parole and any passing chain gang. freedom to bongo, party, barbeque, swim, havoc and annoy. dog toilet, jam-rag station and urban myths about carp anglers robbed of everything on the island at gunpoint by gangs from chartres. the french have a problem with authority; they slavishly follow the rules of state which might otherwise lead them to individuality, but they flount all the regulations which protect the environment, personal respect and the tranquility of others. fear of eccentricity, their only outlet is suicidal driving and public nuisance beside the water. but the carp angler is bound hand and foot by regulation. and his obvious fear of grass, reeds and bankside bush. he must abide, in any case, on pain of a report from the garde and a hefty fine. he must pack up half an hour after sunset while the citizens destroy their heritage freely into the small hours without so much as a complaint to the coppers.

as for the carp; my 150 sessions produced a mere 5 carp: a 25, 26, 29, a 30, 34, a 37, and one 40. the three top weights were the same fish of course. on my very first session a mid-30 came off at the net and in early spring one bumped off seconds after hooking it.

i’m still following this carp. the top of the bank is screened in poplars. i dodge from trunk to trunk. at the bush it turns two circles, sinks out of sight onto the lower shelf. half a minute and it’s back, setting off again away from me. i follow it all the way to the point and make a decision.

a boilie chase, a 10kg bait lane from the point to the bridge, a kilo spent on each spot over 4 square yards. by 5 o’clock, three pva bag rigs are out. one combi extreme bottom, one korda IQ stiff rig, one withy pool, size 10 barbless hooks, 14mm boilies, 2oz disguised running leads, safe zone or amnesia leaders, slack lines.

the island, a berlin wall, i fish the grey area. from the other side comes open- top rap on the wind. i watch another beer bottle bob round the point instead of a carp. there are green wheelie bins every fifty yards. the nearest one to me is burned down. the sun brings out the worst in people; brings out the worst people. they do not deserve this water. give them concrete. give them east berlin, these coolbox gangs. along the road ton-up motorcyclists tear through traffic on one wheel. and a dark green humped back carp head & tails over the middle rod. big as a spare wheel.

early evening, slaps and swirls under the bank now, so close only half a circle spreads out across the swim. the carp are flattening side saddle, stretching mouths up under the tree roots, thieving crayfish like kids knobbling a bubble gum machine. two of the rods are tapping round, lines flickering. i rehearse my own lines, run through the safety proceedure, but the bite doesn’t come. 8 o clock, 9, half 9, quarter to ten. a flat swirl over the left hand rod, the one under the bush. at 10 the slack is half taken up, the bobbin rises an inch off the ground and the rod top pulls and stays in a polite curve. i hit it in two feet of water and it decides to make a run for the bridge. a dirty fighter, into the tree roots and crossing the channel one margin to the other. i net it in twilight. i recognise the first fish i ever caught from here. up a pound from 29 and into the top 30 by an ounce. triumphantly disappointed.

i’m back next day at 2.30. trail another ten kilos of bait round the island margins. 30 degrees, open water awash with bathers. litter abhors a vacuum and my swim has received its morning delivery; white plastic cups, cellophane off fag packets, a pair of dirty orange shorts. before i’m set up two bozos in red white and blue start spinning off the bridge. next time i look there’s a mepps splashing under my baited bush and the blue bozo trying to see what i’m doing.
-i’m fishing there, i tell him like a territorial army captain.
he mepps his way round to me. sits uninvited, drinks his beer in my swim. when he sees i’m english he talks me-tarzan french.
-me, he says pointing to his chest. there, he points to the private lake opposite. me, there, carp, record. me, here, enduro, record. me, here, carp, record.

beside him, in the dirt, there’s a one pound perch with a stick skewered through its gills. this mighty hunter, raised by apes, finishes his beer and says he’s going home to fetch his photo album to show me. he joins his friends; they start spinning their way back to the carpark. already, carp are moving down from the point. tarzan keeps glancing over. he saw where i cast, the rigs, baits. i’d given him my jane speech: moi, carpe, zero. the last thing i needed was tarzan clued up. they pity you, they leave you alone. i was on fish, dodging snipers. i’m watching tarzan when two beeps on the bush rod pull the tip round. i wind down and hit it. even in two feet of water it lies up like a medicine ball before rolling down into mid channel. i look at tarzen. he’s swinging through the trees. the fish runs back up the margin and ploughs through the middle swim. clutch adjusted i let it run then look back at tarzan. he thinks i’m reeling in. he’s spinning with his back to me. if i keep low he’s out of sight. there’s no art to this, crude as a village fete tug-o-war. a big fish too. fifteen minutes just holding on, keeping it in tight circles. still haven’t even seen the leader knot but it’s close in, finding depth you wouldn’t think was there. i reach for the net. stand up to get purchase. tarzan’s away down the far end throttling tigers. i slip into the water. first glimpse of the leader. it pings off the dorsal. i’m like a goalie facing a penalty. decide it’s going left under the roots, but it goes right, makes for the line on the middle rod. i switch sides too late. it comes off.

i shrug at losses. never understood the tantrumonger, rod javeling hysterics of the tv fly stars and competition carp pros. trembling fingers are no good either. i change the rig, bag up and hit the spot, bait it hard, and know the next run is coming. there are carp weaving down the baited zone, scrumping boilies and swerving in and out of tree roots, like skateboarders in a junk food carpark. attention seekers, doing their animal voices, beavering over breakfast, crocodile file, they could eat a horse.

it’s eight o clock. suffocating air, wiping sweat out my eyes when the middle rod takes a slow curve. the same tug-o-war, a french carp with traction avant, under the rod tip it’s like boat fishing for cod over wrecks. boots full of water, i net it more like a deck hand hauling a drunkard overboard back on the poop. 32lbs of blubber. this time i might have smiled.

will the heatwave keep them coming? or will it evaporate the margins and disperse the rioters? will i get back up there in time? arse pit cards are marked. cripple creek ferry rules. water like a green baize, someone up there’s always got the derringer pointing at your knees. so i bet the lot, called their bluff for the second half of the cruise… i’ll tell you what happened next week.

goldrush on the birdtable (the water’s going down/it’s a mighty tight squeeze)

dp

ladies and gentlemen

for those of you who may find yourselves in the vicinity of canary wharf next wednesday 14th july i would like to invite you to cabot square at noon sharp where as part of robin turner’s ‘roam‘ installation (www.roamlondon.org) i shall be doing a short reading on certain aspects of the history of angling in london and then retiring to chat and fish at the eastern end of south quay dock in the company of barry, the secretary of one of london’s oldest angling clubs ‘the brunswick brothers’. this event is part of the create festival and entrance is by advance ticket only which can be obtained by e mailing the nice young lady on the door natalie.curd@host-boroughs.org.uk. tickets are very expensive to those who don’t casually hang around my stall and free to those that do, so as the latter you are formally invited to e mail natalie and have your name put on the guest list.

in the meantime i shall be stalling out as usual tomorrow (thursday 8th july) at spitalfields antiques market from the appointed hours of half past seven in the morning and three o’clock in the afternoon selling the usual array of fine vintage fishing tackle, drinking gallons of tea and talking about nothing in particular. i look forward to your good company.

john
andrews of arcadia
vintage fishing tackle for the soul
spitalfields market
commercial street
london E1
thursdays
07.30hrs – 15.00hrs
07980 274 383
www.andrewsofarcadia.com

dp

the cuckoo and its call never made it as far as the heath, a wanted photograph and description pinned to a noticeboard by the boating pond by the birdman of north london. we had the consolation of a brood of owls that sat on the branches of the yew in the morning sun and shrieked as they hunted in the dusk. the 16th came and went with a village of bivouacs on the dam of no 2 pond and the capture of a carp that broke the scales at 43lbs, a pound under walker’s old record. it died after being caught for the second time in three days, spawnbound, its passing making the front page of the newspaper.

in hampshire on friday i fished with geoff and we found another elderly victim of the unbroken heat that has made every pond in the south a primordial soup of hatches and gas, a perch carcass in the reeds, well gone, but still no less than 4lbs. geoff buried it in silence and marked the grave so we can return in the winter when the worms have taken their revenge and dig up the skull for keeps. in sombre mood we fished on, out beyond the reeds in a shallow bay up to our waist in the water as the rudd came and went and the tench remained capricious.

a gravediggers joke on the birdtable

ja

ja

the mayflower sailed without us. i’m more overdue than a victorian library book. apologies, winter’s ashes still in the grate. even fishing was a snatched pastime between overwhelming odds. as you know, i was building a new jerusalem with a blue dexta of dagenham, top of the charts in 61:

only france is the vichy of the e.u. fascist village mayors who don’t know the war’s over. communes where the national front happily vote in the left. their tea dance spies, algerian war heroes, human pesticide, scour the lanes every afternoon looking for signs of resistance. detector twingos, hearing aid snoops, housecoat denouncers. the registered letter came. sarko’s bloody thumb print, the black spot, the dancing men, the five orange pips of nationalism inside. summoned to gestapo hq. the mayor in his hunting sweatshirt, pink nylon collars poking over the top. the sweatshirt for me, the pink one for the ladies. one for each face. he stood under the president’s portrait and with reference to article N1 of the PLU state code ordered me to remove all traces of my existence from my own field. named and shamed on the village notice board. obliged to uproot 25 fruit tree saplings, 50 fence posts, 100 yards of fencing and 4 rows of potatoes. i am forbidden to put down chickens, orchard, garden, pond or hut. the chicken palace of ozymandias sits unfinished in the barn. the hens were murdered by the police fox before they got to see their promised land:

appropriately, the fields are full of poppies. and civil war blue:

one man & his cat and a confederate tractor, i’m on the barricade. manoeuvres by autumn; a gypsy caravan, a camo net and a wall of hedgerow hops. rogue male beside the candlestick; spud crop in the foxholes.

meanwhile, the carp defy all eviction. actual war heroes, passing through the lines undetected. unstable temperatures, spawnings abandoned, a good spring for naturals. they don’t need anglers right now, and there blow pirates in the swim:

three bites in three months; all three fish came off on one carp a year waters. hook points turned over, leads too heavy, hook links too short… it’s a long wait to find out which.

then the good life began this weekend in june. cherry picking, summer mushrooms after a thunderous deluge, the pushy ceps, the girolles like boat people drifting on a sunday sanpan:

just remains for me to bid you quills away for the 16th as the cuckoo fades out.

sandbags round the birdtable

dp

dp

thanks for your letter and apologies for the long overdue reply, the first song of spring choked by the wind from the north, the sharpened quill frozen in the inkwell, as have passed several whitsun weeks of fairs, floods and famines, the fly rod unpacked, the riverbank untrodden. closed season dreams remain such, the thought of haunting the wey every other tuesday after the dust-up of kempton a fantasy, the march browns hatching at midday but the trout staying well out of sight and the queue for the chip shop lengthened by one more weary angler at lunchtime.

the beech trees at the foot of the heath are out in all their splendour painted on a cold sky like a fresh venables canvas, light leaves under dark, boughs creaking in the late frost. the last few mornings have been ones watching the sunrise in the wing mirrors as i take to the lanes to hold up my lot number in drafty auction houses and drink tea in lay-by’s whose burger wagons fly flags of st george bleached white by the winter just past.

on sunday coming where we shall be down by the stadium it will be one calendar month until the opening of the season, a day when jack hilton bobble hats can be seen on the 214 bus, lines will be cast once the whistle has been blown at midnight.

between now and then a mayfly hatch if we are lucky and the continuation of a casual fly fisher’s dream.

ja

this just in from John Andrews:

ladies and gentlemen

john

ja

as your season ended with that stillness in the pool of a pike’s eye, i stood behind winter’s barricade when the flesh eating winds of march came over, carnivorous skin-strippers from the east. planting an orchard and keeping the beacons alight with the hand slashed brambles of a new and promised land:

the trees holes filled with water, the spade still in my hands, the land a clay pig bleeding by the slice. by next day the water had frozen into twenty kilo plugs. elsewhere i dug for sand, broke tea-cups and collected stones to line each hole. at night the wild boar played billiards with my divits and half the holes had to be re-excavated. but now, in spring rain and a more vegetarian breeze, 24 saplings await the mixed fruit of my labours: cherry, apple (cox, belchard, reine de reinette) pear, peach, almond, plum, the bees already going stick to stick attracted by the blue of plastic protector sleeves:

back on arse pit the sun is now a glint in the eye, a sparkle on the rims of your reel spools. the plovers have quit the fields, the tree lines thicken with bud and green spills of tadpole leaf. the margins are a catkin regatta and the grebes are courting like torvill & dean fallen through the melted ice. tea in a t-shirt, polaroids under the beanie. are the carp of darkness stirring at the bottom of their wells? to find that out it’s bait up or shut up now the sun is about to set after 8 o’clock:

yesterday, a half flask session at penelope pit where spring is a new pile of green beer bottles on the bank and another old tree cut down. flooded banks and a southerly off the wheat plains. my pockets stayed empty but it was good to be back.

fat bats plucking spiders off the lines at dusk, two house martins scouted past stopping only for a map reading chatter. irises poking through frogspawn, newts in my pond warm their legs in a spate of sunlight. spring but for the carp crashing like summer cars in an M1 pile up, still a long way off in the fog.

daffodils on the bird table

dp

the season began and ended in the depths of the english countryside, sunrises and sunsets with an ice age in between. the only tench the ones in the memory, the only chub the ones on the wall. at times the only rods the ones in the locker. the whitewater a backwater of the mind and the thames a torrent of cold tea. nine long months which drained the soul with only occasional reprieve. a hoard of golden rudd on a windy july afternoon, a barrel of mackerel on a shingle beach before the pub opened. the salt on our lips should have told of the winter to come, but the ale in our bellies gave us hope. dashed as always, the winter that did come one of empty glasses and fires piled high with welsh coal and orchard culls.

and so to frensham to pay homage on the last weekend. the water like crystal, the sky like fine blue powder. a breeze from the north and the promise of spring there somewhere but still far off. in the surrounding woods birch trees, their boughs snapped by heavy snow and the feeling that something has gone before us. owl droppings on the paths, fir cones underfoot. a place too fine to fish, but fish g and i did as is the custom. a few small ones to a homemade norwegian copper spoon and then just as the day was gone and the temperature dropped a fat pike of 10lbs with its attendant jack that followed it into the landing net. there they lay on the dead reeds, a defiant elizabeth 1st, the queen of ice, and her jack.

the ghost of sandy denny standing by the birdtable

ja

ja

your blue-knuckle crevace de coeur set my dinner cold. jack london turning in his grave. frank barlow on ice at the hippodrome. here we kept the sledges loaded and the braziers lit. the way to the lake still ditched in old grey coats of last year’s decomposing snow. arse pit like a fishmonger’s slab, hailing bream eyes, skirts of frozen wave round tree stumps,
sheets of ice-drift catching on the lines.

fishing with ancestors, you can hear the water creak like a longboat after dark, you walk on pressed air freezing into sheets like snipped up basildon bond in the first wink of moon. an origami of snow in a footprint. a sky with its throat cut.

then spring blew off course all weekend, crash landing in a norman field.
winter letting go, a bored pitbull that’s already had your bones out. pond green as a billiard baize, algae vandalized by a passing heron. the solar fountain spouted through the ice on sunny days, the cat’s bar stool, four paws of fearless billiards where tigernut stooped to drink:

you’ll get your fishing now. on march the first, magpies ran along the road, picking up their fallen nests. a jay with a stick too long to take off. over wind busted water, the creak of rusty swan wings. the crocus joins the snowdrop. the muddied lamb, the daffodil thumbs up along the banks. a bee on the scrounge. i filled the flask and went up arse pit. it had taken flood with tidelines a yard wide after the hurricane. spring ripple, purple catkins, blackbirds on the fife, water temperature up three degrees to six. teatime when i placed the baits, thump down hard on the plateau, the old gravel road to home. tea with the cup lid tight, still in gloves, sun behind a net curtain, not even a roach on the shy.

been through it a hundred times and packed up beaten. but things happen on march 1st. 6.15, still daylight, two beeps on the left hand rod, bobbin pulled tight. gloves off, the combat honourable, sullen as memorial day. the first fish of 2010, an old friend, third visit, a st david’s day 40:

wind in the willows on the bird table

dp