CHAPTER 3
CHILDHOOD FISHING
‘As no man is born an artist, so no man is born an angler.’
PAUL
When I was young, I spent a lot of time fishing, and I’m aware when I go fishing now, it’s a vain attempt to recapture my childhood.
When I was a kid, everyone went fishing. Everyone. Well, not everyone: I’d get together with a load of mates from my street or school, be up early, catch the 5:00am train out to Cheshunt and Broxbourne, all laden down with stuff – I used to make my own sandwiches and coffee – and we’d walk for miles. We’d be out of breath the whole way and it’d be barely six in the morning, and we’d have no food left because we’d eaten it all on the way there.
As a child, it’s the independence that first appeals to you when you go out like that. You’re not just going to a football match on the bus with all your mates from down the road, and then going home again – you’re going out into a different world. It’s an adventure.
You’ve left your usual urban environment and suddenly, you’re out in this unfamiliar rural place, and you’re immersed in it. You’re not walking through it, you’re not looking at it – you’re in it. You’re actually in that world and you’re a part of it, part of the hierarchy of nature, red in tooth and claw. And maybe for the first time in your young life, for that one thrilling day, you feel like you’re utterly free.
Bob used to go when he was a kid as well, so it’s a similar thing for him. But he sussed out quite early on that during our trips now you can never quite recapture it. You’re attempting to catch not only fish but recapture something you’ll never quite be able to truly recapture, though even now, when I go down to the river, I still feel that sense of anticipation and excitement that I vividly remember having as a kid.
The very first time I went fishing was with my dad on the River Lea. The Lea has always had a significant history in fishing, because it’s one of the places where Izaak Walton used to fish some 400 years ago and was probably in his thoughts when he wrote The Compleat Angler, which pretty much set down the modern concept of angling. And it’s significant for me personally, because it’s where I first fished and fishing’s the thing I most associate with my dad.
I was five at the time yet that memory is so vivid. My dad had just got a job at a chemical company called Morson’s in 1963, in deepest, darkest Ponders End, when we moved to Enfield from the Rhondda. They were the first British company to manufacture poison gas, but I think they’d probably packed that in by the time he took the job.
We fished in a place called St Margaret’s on the Lea – once you get there, you’ve got the navigation canal and the old River Lea winding in and out of the canal, as it were. He had set up this little rod and float for roach, with a small pinch of Mother’s Pride for bait – not even a maggot – cast it out, and said, ‘When this float goes under, you tell me.’ Well, he turned round to give me the rod and that float immediately went under. I shouted, ‘It’s gone under! It’s gone under!’
Straightaway. Immediately, there on the end of the line: a little roach. Oh, and a roach is such a beautiful creature – a sparkling silver, iridescent blue and red little thing.
Prepare yourself for a lazy cliché: the roach wasn’t the only thing that got hooked that day.
As I got older, I started to do more fly fishing with my dad. I’d done a lot of coarse fishing – that was the main thing where I was brought up in Enfield – but the fishing my dad had done in Wales was much more rural and wild.
Having said that, when he was growing up, the local heavy industry meant the river in the Rhondda Valley ran black with coal dust, so there was nothing in it to fish for. It’s ironic that now the heavy industry’s disappeared, the river’s improved so much, it’s sparkling – so they’ve now got this beautiful river full of fish, but all the work has gone.
Paul: Me and my dad enjoy a day’s fishing together.
We’d go back to the Rhondda Valley for our holidays and we started going out to the Usk or the Wye for a day’s trout fishing, because those were the fish he was familiar with from his youth. My dad started as a bait fisherman, until one day he saw this bloke with a fly rod walking down the riverbank, and he thought, ‘What on earth is that?’ He had absolutely no idea, but once he’d got some kit, he took to fly fishing quickly.
Technically, you wouldn’t say he was the best fly fisherman, but his strength was he knew his streams from when he was a young kid, so he was very good at fishing those rivers. Even if his technique wasn’t perfect, he could always winkle out a nice trout.
Back in those days, when we were growing up, we’d take all the trout we caught and eat them – we were fishing for the pot. We might put a couple back if we’d caught a lot, but that would be our dinner. Taking them back to my auntie’s house in the Rhondda, frying them in a bit of butter, tucking into them as they came out of the pan, jumpers for goalposts – oh, you can’t beat it. And when he was young, growing up in the Depression and through the war, it was a real bonus to have fish on the table.
I have absolutely vivid, rock-solid memories of those days. I can picture my dad fishing at a very beautiful place called Sennybridge, high up the River Usk, with me on the bank not quite knowing what I’m doing, and him slightly oblivious to me. I can remember catching my first trout: he’d plonked me on the river with a worm and he went downstream to fish a little run, and I remember pulling out a good-sized wild trout. That’s absolutely fixed in my mind. I also remember some beautiful days on the River Wye, where I caught my first grayling and a salmon parr – a juvenile salmon that hadn’t yet gone to sea. A creature of staggering beauty, that was returned very quickly.
And I used to make him take me to rivers in England that had more coarse fishing. I remember he’d found the venue, I found this little bit where the stream came in, and we had a lovely day catching small chub, roach and dace – it was magical. I was freezing cold, not wearing the right things, like kids do, and my dad had to effectively rub the life back into me. We went to this part of the River Ouse a lot. I can’t imagine it’s still like it was and I don’t want to find out, because it is fixed in my mind.
I fished with my dad throughout my life. Even up until five years ago, we used to go fishing together. It became something to rely on, that we’d always be able to go out fishing. It’s something we were lucky enough to enjoy doing together for the whole of our lives.
One year for his birthday, I got him a day every other week on a tributary of the Test, and that for him was heaven. He couldn’t believe he was doing it. I know he was definitely pleased with that. He did well for a boy from the Valleys.
I often wonder if the old Freudian thing is true: do I like fishing for itself, or do I like fishing just to please my dad? I think anyone who does a pursuit that their father does asks themselves that question.
The places I fished as a child still have a really strong draw for me. Every time I go to my mum’s, I take a little detour up to Enfield Lock. I go to this bit – it’s called Ordnance Road, it used to be a small arms factory – and it’s rubbish. It’s an industrial bit of Brimsdown with a power station on one side and a boatyard on the other. There’s a bit called the Pike Pool – but I’ve never seen a pike there, it’s just full of crap.
When I do visit, though, I’m never disappointed.
At the time there was a garage near us that also sold fishing gear. It’s strange but true, and a testament to how popular fishing was. It was difficult to nick the stuff from there but the people who worked there had no idea about the prices, so you could change the expensive prices for cheap price tags and get a good discount.
In Coming Up For Air by George Orwell, he went back to visit a pond of his childhood, where there were big carp – but when he returned as an adult, he was crushingly disappointed. Not me. I don’t go mad, expecting to see salmon leaping or anything, because it wasn’t like that when I was young. It’s not very different from the way it was when I was fishing there as a boy.
That bit of the old river where I caught that first little roach with my dad is now a big estate, so built-up you can barely move between the houses. But if I go up there, I can still see that bit of river.
Even now, whenever I see a little shoal of roach swimming down a stretch of water, I still get excited. It’s life-affirming. Later on, my mates and I would go further afield. We’d fearlessly travel on bikes, trains and buses in a way that would make modern kids have breakdowns. We joined the LAA (London Anglers Association), which gave us access to loads of waters. My most formative trips – where I learned about freelining for chub and hemp-fishing for roach, swimfeeding and ledgering for barbel – took place on the old River Lea around Kingsweir. I also joined The Kings Arms fishing club in Cheshunt. I was junior champion in 1973!
Bob: The first time I went fishing was with my dad and we went pike fishing in a lake, but I was so tiny. I only have fleeting memories of him catching one – just a tiny glimpse. My main memories of my dad are him beating me with a leather belt. That’s the sort of thing you would remember. You remember that.
Paul: Did you tell me your dad wore lederhosen? Do lederhosen come with a belt?
B: No, Paul, he wasn’t permanently in lederhosen. He didn’t go to work at Fox’s Biscuits wearing lederhosen.
P: It would have been good if he had.
B: ‘We should do a Swiss range.’ He was adamant about it. ‘We could call it … ALPINE.’ Put the horn on the front with biscuits coming out of it. ‘PRRRRRRPPPPP! Have a biscuit!’
BOB
I have such fond memories of going out fishing as a lad. Bicycle, Woolworths rod, a little bag of size 16 hooks, worms from my garden and a Mothers Pride white sliced strawberry jam sandwich wrapped in tin foil.
We used to go to a place outside Middlesbrough called Great Ayton, to a little pond near there, to catch little roach. You could see them through the clear water and just watch them take your maggots.
Or we’d take the Esk Valley line from Middlesbrough to Whitby and stop at Lealholm or Glaisdale to try and catch a little brown trout. Our success was very limited, as was our technique, but I never remember that mattering too much. What was important was loosening those strings that tied you to your home and your family. I suspect I’m still using some of the lines and routines that were first spoken by me and my mates on the banks of the River Esk.
As we got older, the actual fishing was much less part of the day than the journey, the meeting up, the being away from your parents, being part of a secret gang … finding a mucky book, maybe, hidden in the bushes or what have you. But those memories are just as much about friendship and growing up – being at one with your mates – as they are fishing.
There was always a bit of general uncertainty about the day when you went out fishing as a young man. Mystery. I’d think, ‘I don’t quite know exactly where we would be fishing, I don’t know what would happen if I got lost or fell in – I just don’t know what’s going to happen today.’
You don’t know if some bigger boys are going to come around the corner and throw your gear in the river, kick you in the head. It’s a bit like that, town fishing, isn’t it? You’re isolated out there, and there’s always that little bit of jeopardy, that you could get kicked in.
There was that fighting technique from the skinhead time where they pulled you down by the hair and kneed you in the face. I mean, as a technique, that’s probably been around for ages, but it was definitely around then, and they’d come and practise on you.
They must have been important times in my life, because those early places you fished, they have a resonance with you forever. I used to go to this place called the Roach Pool. It was a place you weren’t allowed to fish, but its location was passed down from father to son – ‘Oh, there’s this secret place, you have to get through a fence, go through these woods …’ I mean, I’m sure it wasn’t true, but you did have the sense of, ‘Oh, we shouldn’t be here.’
And even when I was 30 – so I hadn’t fished for 15 years – if I went back to Middlesbrough, I’d still drive over from my mum’s just to have a look at the Roach Pool. Not fishing, just to have a look.
You think of those great coming-of-age films – like Stand By Me and that – and whatever that vibe is, that’s what I get when I’m at the Roach Pool. Apart from my family home, it’s the only place that gives me that melancholic feeling of childhood.
But it’s strange because it really wasn’t that big a deal in my life. If I look back, I probably went 15 times or something. There are things I used to do much more often – I used to go to the Cleveland Centre shopping nearly every night – but for whatever reason, this is the only place that has a resonance for me.
So when Paul and I go off fishing, are we actually on a search to somehow connect with a place and time from our youth when we were truly happy? Maybe? Probably!
What I do know is that if I knew it was my last day on earth, I’d go back to that roach pool and see if I could just collapse there and become a part of it. It’d put a smile on my face if I could do it there. Just take the worry out of those last few hours.
I’d actually like to go there now.
So fishing is tied in with that nostalgia, but I’ve always wanted to do it again. If someone ever said to me, ‘Would you like to go fishing?’ I would think, ‘Yeah, I’d love to go fishing,’ but I only know one person who’s a fisherman, and that’s Paul.
So over the years, I’d see Paul and I’d say, ‘We’ve got to go fishing.’ And it only took 15 years for us to finally do it.
P: I went back to Enfield Lock a few years ago and I was just looking at the Pike Pool when a woman came out of the bushes on the other side and immediately started bawling me out: ‘What you faacking looking at? What you faacking looking at?’ I said, ‘I’m looking at the Pike Pool.’ ‘You’re a faacking pervert!’ ‘Piss off, you silly cow, I’m looking at the Pike Pool!’ Turned out she was having a piss and thought I’d been watching her. That bit of the Lea’s changed a bit since Izaak Walton’s time. Or maybe it happened then as well.
Bob: I have no idea what we’re talking about in this photo. Probably pies.