Hi all...just a quick tale... are you sitting comfortably?
When I was about the age of 8 my grandad, an avid fisherman, took me to a local fishing pond called Great Elm. On the way up to the pond, fishing rods over our shoulders like soldiers off to some watery war, my grandad regaled me with stories of the big fish that he had caught over the years... the sea bass the size of a baby's cot... the weaver fish that he stood on in Morecambe Bay... needless to say, by the time we got there and had set up the rods I was sooo excited that I could almost imagine hauling a great scaly monster of a fish from the murky deep and how proud everyone would be that I, who had previously only managed a few sticklebacks in an inexpensive net, had caught such a beast.
There we stood, lines cast, in eager anticipation of the spoils of the deep. And we waited... and waited... and waited. Now, as you can imagine, at 8 years old and after being regaled earlier with such fisherman's tales... I WAS SOOOO BORED.
Movement.... A pull at the line...
Grandad got closer to his rod in the stand...and then moved to mine... he told me to reel-in slowly just one turn... I did it... all of a sudden the line became taut and I could feel the fish pulling as I pulled back.... My mind wandered again to this great beast from the abyss that I would heave out of the water... I frantically tried to reel it in to the shouts of encouragement from my grandad... "pull" he shouted
I could see it... it was huge! Flashes of a scaly beast inches from the surface!
"It's a bloody great Pike" he shouted " pull back hard.
The Pike was now half out of the water. It was magnificent and massive! Gargantuan even! And I pulled... I pulled with all my might... and landed flat on my back on the dry mud... visions of the tale of the glorious catch making way to the jibes that the biggest fish I had caught...EVER... was a tiny stickleback! The shame took over me like a wave from the lake.
Suddenly grandad started laughing. I flushed with embarrassment at the thought of him laughing at me... then I saw that he wasn't looking at me at all...
The line hadn't snapped but the Pike was gone... something was still on the line.. There, at the end of my line, still attached to the hook... were the mouth-parts of the Pike!
To this day I still imagine that old Pike swimming around Great Elm with a face like a prize gurner and such a bitter expression in its eyes as it liquidises its meals and reminisces of The Teeth That Got Away!
Scooby Preston,
Leigh, Lancashire.