When fish-crazy Professor Henry Hughes of Western Oregon University came to England, his rods and reels stashed optimistically under Christmas presents for his wife’s family, this was the only escape he could muster, the first week of the New Year. But what can you catch in January, apart from the flu? We’d met by email when Hughes wanted to include an old story I’d written about chasing bonsai sharks in The Wash in an anthology of fishing writing he was working on. He was hoping I could take him on a similarly batty adventure. And now all I really had to offer were pike. Good in theory. The creaking-creel school of pike angling paints a romantic picture of hunting Esox in the depths of winter, galoshes crunching frostbitten grass, icicles on the nose and vast pike swirling menacingly under a duvet of mist. But in my experience, on those arse-numbingly frigid days of angling folklore, pike are impossible. They are nutritionally celibate, fishy Trappists, sunk to their midriffs in ooze and weed, contemplating only the inside of their dull, fishy brains and locked in semi-hibernation. The only way to catch one on such a day is to dangle a rotten herring infront its face for 12 hours. And I don’t fish with bait. There’s grayling, too, of course. Just like pike, they slow down in the depths of winter and, just like pike, are so much better when you can see them and stalk them. In October, for example.
TEMPERING EXPECTATIONS
I tried to temper Hughes’ expectations. We’d have to hope for a warm spell, I said. We might have to use plugs and spoons. And there are no grayling in Norfolk. None of this fazed him. Not at all. He’s from Oregon, where men are men and sturgeon are nervous. Hughes’ luggage jingled with fishy Oregonian hardware as I met him off the bus at King’s Lynn. It was New Year’s Eve. We drove the long way home, reconnoitring the local dykes and drains.
Bu hikaye The Field dergisinin January 2020 sayısından alınmıştır.
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Bu hikaye The Field dergisinin January 2020 sayısından alınmıştır.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
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Rory Stewart - The former Cabinet minister and hit podcast host talks to Alec Marsh about the parlous state of British politics, land management and his deep love of the countryside
The gently spoken 51-year-old former Conservative Cabinet minister is a countryman at heart. That's clear: he even changes into a tweed waistcoat for the interview, which takes place at his London home and begins with a question about his precise career status. Having resigned from the Commons and the Conservative Party in 2019, the former diplomat and soldier has reinvented himself, first with an unconventional but promising run as an independent for the London mayoralty (abandoned because of COVID19 in 2020) and then as a media figure, co-hosting one of the country's most popular podcasts, The Rest Is Politics, alongside Alastair Campbell, the former Labour spin doctor.
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