Tuesday, 20 August 2013

A Journey


jour·ney (jûr n )

n. pl.jour·neys

1.

a. The act of traveling from one place to another; a trip.

b. A distance to be traveled or the time required for a trip:

2. A process or course likened to traveling; a passage
 
 
I count myself lucky in a lot of ways when it comes to my fishing.  Over the last 15 years I’ve visited and fished in some great places. When I started out free lining  for Mackerel in Troon harbour as a kid I could only  dream of wetting a line in some far flung places for the huge fish that I might have saw in the pages of publications such as the Angling Times or Sea Angler back then. Equally, sleeping in a bus shelter waiting for the first bus home after fishing all night for Codling is a long way from getting dragged around like a rag doll 30 miles out in the Pacific attached to a Sailfish, great memories just the same of people and places, fish caught and of course fish lost across the Indian, Pacific and Atlantic Oceans the Caribbean and up in the Arctic.  I took getting spooled by an estimated 1000+ pound Blue Marlin pretty well for instance, the skipper took it worse than me I’d  had a good week, 5 Blues to 550+ pounds and a bonus Big Eye Tuna of 220 pounds, what’s to get upset about? I was lucky in Portugal landing a Mako on my own travel rod in the last 5 minutes of a tourist boat trip, lucky catching two GT’s on a canoe on a “day off” from the main trip, lucky beating a seal to my PB Mullet, it’s a borderline obsession you see.
Total bedlam
These days I’m happy closer to home catching Bass. At times chasing what might be described as the right fish seems a bit like me assuming the role of Captain Ahab and the Bass being Moby Dick ,as it stands today I’ve still got both legs and I’ve not had a boat wrecked so things are fine. I met an angler recently who got the fish he was after in June this year, he was 67 and yet again, recently it was reported on a forum that someone got the fish of a lifetime on his first attempt, it’s an odd thing this fishing and it can do strange things to your head if you let it but that’s the challenge and the uncertainty I guess. All I can do is learn, keep fishing and make the cast. The train might get into the station on the next trip or I may need to sit back and enjoy the view for a while, either way I’m still lucky.

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