Oh, b*llocks

Saturday, 4 February 2012 at 08:24

While temperatures plummet laughingly towards double digits under zero, most Dutch are almost inanely happy. 'Fris,' they call the weather, with a beaming smile. 'Gezond....' (Fresh/bracing and healthy....) They reach into the cupboard under the stairs and start sharpening the blades of their ice-skates.

The Dutch are entirely mad.

No fishing is possible, and won't be possible until this nonsense thaws. I'd hoped - beyond hope, as it turned out - that once I came back from Africa I'd be able to enjoy two or three weeks' pike fishing this month, at what is often a spectacular time of the year for pike angling. Instead I shall set about closed season angling chores, such as cleaning fly-lines. Happy days. If anyone comes near me wearing even a hint of Fair Isle sweater and a silly bloody skating pom-pom hat/skin-tight lycra/jolly ice-rink smile, "I will do such things -- what they are yet I know not -- but they shall be the terrors of the earth" (Lear II.iv.290-292).

Pike, spinners and angelfish

Friday, 3 February 2012 at 07:51

The Tanzania reef is host to hundreds of different species of fish. Angelfish, butterfish, sweetlips.... As a matter of fact, during the last encounters I enjoyed on the reef I spent more time watching the vast shoals of little fish, up near the surface. These great shoals, hundreds of thousands strong, behaved very interestingly when viewed from underneath: they rose to the surface then swam downwards - rose again, swam and scattered downwards - rose again, scattered downwards and regrouped...only to rise again. And I was reminded irresistibly of the movements of a small pike spinner: pulled towards the rod, it twinkles and rises in the water; take off pressure, and the thing twinkles downwards; pull again, and the thing spins and rises..... And pike will take both on the pull or on the drop, while the spinner (or spoon) is fluttering briefly downwards. No wonder smallish traditional spinners like the Mepps and the Ondex are so effective.

While underwater I also spent much time looking at the underside of the water surface, which mirrors what's happening underneath it. A small fish, for example, swimming just under the surface appears as a double image - one, the eyeball-to-eyeball reality, the other the image of the fish as this is captured in the surface mirror. I know that out there off the coast I should have been exulting at the colours and varieties of the Tanzania reef fish that surrounded me, and I duly exulted and enjoyed. At the same time, however, I was thinking in more homely terms, of pike and trout, of what they saw of their prey and of how they apprehended the behaviour of those prey.

Of pike and lions (1)

Wednesday, 1 February 2012 at 09:54

It was Paul Gustafson who once analogised the behaviour of pike with that of the lions of the Serengeti. Never in this lifetime did I imagine I'd ever have the chance to watch lions in the Serengeti...until now. Ten days ago I had that chance, and travelled widely in the south of that great park, watching lions, cheetahs and leopards along with their prey, chiefly wildebeest and zebra. These last mass in huge numbers in the south of the Serengeti at this time of year before making the journey north to the Maasai Mara in search of water - the 'great migration'.

Lions are lazy creatures. They spend no excess energy - why would they? - and are typically to be found resting up. They hunt perhaps twice a week, and after hunting, digest. Yet they're never far from their prey, always watchful.

I found it strangely moving, simply being there in the Serengeti, watching creatures hunting and migrating as they have done for hundreds of thousands of years, and doing so in landscapes that haven't essentially altered in all that time. It was like living on a new kind of earth - or perhaps, on a very old kind of earth that was at the same time miraculously new. I could convince myself, however briefly, that all was ecologically well (though I'm hyper-aware that in so many cases it is not), and simply out of an absurd sense of gratitude I found my voice and breath catching in my throat: the Serengeti was so very fragile, so intricately-constructed - and so beautiful.

Of pike and lions (2)

Wednesday, 1 February 2012 at 09:53

Wildebeest among flamingos, Ngorongoro crater.

54

Monday, 2 January 2012 at 05:49

Plus ça change...

Anglers' plants: the bulrush

Saturday, 31 December 2011 at 10:10

The bulrush, also known as the great reedmace (Typha latifolia) is common in and around some areas of fenland. The plant is wind-pollinated. The bulbous bit contains the seeds and winter birds may help the dispersal process by feeding on the seed-heads. The spiky bit at the top of the plant houses the male part of the structure.

The smallest pike in the world

Friday, 30 December 2011 at 19:22

A short day out in the Friesland polders with JW, who as recorded elsewhere in this diary can charm pike onto his line by merely looking at the water. We picked a difficult day for it: the sun shone harshly all day, there was a malevolent and hard light and a northerly wind, the air temperature was 6C at best and the water was a mere 4C - down from 7C a couple of days ago. The conditions killed the fishing and it was only in the last hour or two that we began to interest the fish. I caught what was probably the smallest pike in the world ('I've caught roach bigger than that,' said JW derisively while falling about laughing) and JW lost a better fish. And that was it. Somehow, though, it was that most old-fashioned of things, a charming day out, ending in a spectacular sunset.