Flying Solo.....

Following on from my first proper fishing trip with Luke, I was full of beans the next day and felt so confident about everything.  The fact that I had lost £2 to Luke's two lads after a stupid bet about who would catch the most fish didn't even matter.  I had made a bet with a kid of eight and a five year old and even made them give me a five fish head start....How hard could this bet be to lose ?  Well very easily would be the answer to that.  They were like a pair of fishing Gods, hauling in a total of 40 plus fish between them while I managed a measly 20 fish.  I paid my debts amid howls of laughter from the pair of them and they asked if we could do a similar bet next time....My answer, on reflection, was probably not the best example of Anglo-Saxon I could have used to such innocent ears but then I remembered they live with Luke so would have been used to it.

I was buzzing all week, I felt ten feet tall and couldn't stop talking about how relaxing it had been, what I had caught and most probably lied about the size of the fish I had caught.  I wanted to get out there again and the following weekend I decided to head down to West Smethwick Park and see if I could catch something down there.  Luke had said that the test would be the first time I "blanked", when nothing was biting and my tactics were failing.  Would I have the testicular fortitude to stick with it or lose the enthusiasm I had been swept along on all week.

I had spent the Saturday sorting out a laptop for Shaun Hartley, who surprised me when he informed me that he had loads of fishing gear going to waste in his shed and some of it had never even been near the water.  I have thought Shaun was a lot of things over the years I have known him but I never had him down as an angler, so this revelation came as quite a shock to me.  Despite my pleas for him to let me use or even buy some of this equipment, he refused and laughed mockingly as he walked away after complaining, as he usually does, about the standard of the teabags I buy and the selection of biscuits I had.

I headed off to the local tackle and bait shop, Fisherman's Friend, and bought a pint of mixed maggots, a box of 4mm Strawberry flavoured pellets and a few other bit and pieces and looked forward to my afternoon spent where many young anglers from Smethwick and Oldbury had caught their first fish and learned their watercraft.  I was full of confidence and felt that I was sure to catch something, after all I had got 20 fish under my belt already from the previous week.  I was sure that the shellfish flavoured 6mm soft hooker pellets would prove as irresistible to the residents of the newly refurbished lake as they had to their relatives over at Friezeland Pools.  I couldn't fail, it wasn't even worth thinking about the prospect of not catching anything or "dry netting" as Shaun Hartley would say.

I set off in the van with all of my gear loaded, including one of my Mom's fold away deck chairs that I had found in the cupboard under the stairs, buoyed with the confidence of the previous week still coursing around my veins.  I hadn't really given my depression much thought over the previous week, I had been as relaxed and as happy as I had been for ages, and for once I was doing something with my time.  For the last few years I've fallen into a routine of getting home on Friday evening and locking myself away until I had work on Monday, despite making all sorts of plans about what I was going to do with my weekend.  It was always the same thing, I would get this job done, I would get that job done, I would do something constructive with my weekend.  The reality was that I would come in, lock the door and only venture out to the Tesco Express for cigarettes or milk, go to the Abbey Road chippy for a kebab and waste hours on facebook.  This was the norm for me and it would be no different on Saturdays and Sundays with the exception of sleeping on the sofa through the afternoons.  By Sunday evening I would be kicking myself that I had wasted another weekend, another weekend I was never getting back which added to my depression.  It was like I was on a loop, never ending and unstoppable.

I had been seeing people fishing in the park for a while, usually in the corner nearest Victoria Road, so I parked the van on the street and walked the short distance across the grass to the newly built platform from which I was going to fish.  The council often get criticised around here for all sorts of reasons, the state of the roads, the lack of amenities or the amount of spending on West Bromwich town centre (to be fair it really is like putting lipstick on a pig), but in fairness they really have done a great job on these platforms which are all fully accessible for disabled anglers.

I placed my fold away  chair, got my little 6' telescopic rod ready, not that it required much doing to be ready because I had not taken it apart from the previous week and I was off.  My first cast was pretty good and I managed to get out about 20 feet into the pool.  I sat there waiting patiently for the tell tale sign that a fish was interested in the bait.  Nothing happened for 15 minutes so I decided to put a fresh maggot on the hook and try again but got similar results.  Undeterred I tried again but my efforts were all to no avail and I again drew a blank with my hook time after time.  After about an hour of just sitting and watching my float move from one side of the lake to the other I started to have those familiar thoughts about being a failure return and when the ducks began calling I could imagine that it was in fact my Dad sat on the island laughing at me.

At this point I had two choices, I could pack everything up and give Luke his stuff back and make out that fishing wasn't for me or I could take what positives I could from the situation and make the best of what was turning out to be a bad day.  I have a wonderful friend from Portsmouth, Lesley, who is a very spiritual person and she has kind of guided me through some of the darkest times, but the most valuable thing she said to me was that I needed to change how I thought.  I should look at situations differently and seek out whatever positives I could, because there would be some if I looked hard enough instead of just diving into the darkness of negativity.  I was a bit sceptical at first, but when I tried it I found that it really did help and now I have completely changed HOW I think.  Changing WHAT I think has proved a tad elusive though.

After shaking the negative thoughts about my lack of bites I decided to use the time to practice my casting and spent the next hour casting out, reeling in, casting out, reeling in etc.  I was able to get a fair distance with my little rod and came away from my time on the poolside feeling a lot happier with myself.  However, I had a bait box full of maggots which had cost me £2.80, and being the tight fisted bloke I am there was no way I was going to waste them.  I decided to head to one of the local canals and see if I could catch anything there.  I had been reading about canal fishing in magazines, watching videos on YouTube and felt confident that the day was not wasted.  I initially went to one of my favourite parts of the canal system at the end of Engine Street in Oldbury.  The canal here branches off the Birmingham Mainline Canal and terminates at Titford Pool, and it is usually quiet and you can park quite nearby, but today it was rammed with people and parking was non-existent.  Apparently this stretch of the canal is leased by a local angling club and they were having a contest there, so I was forced to seek a new place to fish or run the risk of incurring the wrath of the anglers in the club.

I decided to head for the car park at the bottom of Bridge Street in Smethwick, where I had seen others fishing in the past, plus there was room to park in between the piles of rubbish, discarded sofas and bags of rubble that some kindly local had tipped there.  I decided to fish the Old Birmingham Main Line section that was built by James Brindley way back in the 1700's and was responsible for the growth of Smethwick and the surrounding areas during the Industrial Revolution.  The town today has very little industry and former factory sites have been raised to the ground and characterless boxes built to create new housing estates.  I settled down in one of the large pools between the locks and cast out, hoping to catch something, anything.  I could hear the fish breaking the surface of the canal, hear the odd splash as one jumped but I just could not tempt one to sacrifice itself for my honour which had already taken a battering earlier.

I had read the magazines and watched videos of canal fishing, I had the correct bait, the very bait recommended by the experts in the magazines, still nothing.  I spent the next 2 hours just sat there watching my float move slowly down the canal, carried on the wind that was blowing across the surface of the water and carrying my hopes with it.  Despite the jibes from a certain Mr Hartley, I used the positive thought process and identified several areas which I could take as positives ready for the next adventure on the bankside....