Some things you can never life down or live up to. You are tagged for life like a salmon, or ringed like a bird of passage. And if you are known to have been a fisherman (angler), no matter what else you do in life, you are marked. At a meeting or reception people come up to you and don't ask how the grocery trade you are involved in is doing, or how the law is going, or the stock exchange, if those are your involvements, they say eagerly "How's the fishing?"
Dear, good, kind friend, the answer is often vague not to say evasive. Fishing for pleasure - leave out the zealots - is something you do, in certain places, usually with certain friends. You fish this river because it winds a lovely ribbon, with bends and twists, and it has shallow water tinkling over shingle of many hues. Then there are the deep pools where the fish lie in sunny and dry weather. There are some notable trees, perhaps, and some fine stonework in the bridges. As well as fish.
And then the lake. This one is particularly a favourite because you can easily walk around it; it has sandy, pebbly shores where you can light your fire after dusk. And there are fish. But, above all, fishing is where your friends are. There is the exceptional night in June when you are alone, when the light thickens and the plop of rising trout is all you have to guide your cast. But mostly it's the three or four of you, into the car and off to one of the few familiar sites. The White Lake, a dream. Here and there a river that is just about OK, but only a couple where it is a pleasure to be at all, at any time.
These sites are diminishing. Arterial drainage. Pollution, even slight. There are few enough trout just where you want to be for the above reasons. So you say to the kind enquirer: "Ah well, a few casts here and there, a couple of hours now and then, thanks." And you are grateful for the fish landed on your doorstep by kind friends. Nothing like a trout just taken. No freezing, no preserving. Just out of the river.
All this because that kind and creative man Kevin Whelan at his Burrishoole Fishery and Salmon Research Agency sends, along with his newsletter, a spiral bound softback book with the bold title Catch Record. God bless us. Do you know what you would have to do to fill this book? Catch no less than 1,040 trout, salmon or whatever. And fill in details under the column headings: date, venue, weather conditions, method used, flies used, number of fish, heaviest fish, sea trout, salmon, rainbow trout/brown trout and total weight. Phew.
Resolve: to fill one page this season. Thirteen lines for entry. Thirteen (may the evil be far from us) fish. With the newsletter reporting the best week ever at Burrishoole, with 120 grilse in a six day period in 1995. And the sea trout situation is improving there. More another day.