The Fishing Coach

This month has seen the start of what I hope will be a regular monthly event. A group of my fishing mates and I have decided to meet on the first Tuesday of each month for a curry night in an Indian restaurant in Molesey (Surrey). Although we are all anglers, most of us have different backgrounds and professions resulting in a varied catalogue of conversation subjects. I am sure that many of the topics will be mentioned on this blog in the future. I hope that the initial group of eight or nine can be expanded to broaden the experience base of the forum and expand the topics discussed and the opinions expressed.

The first one was a great success and resulted in a decision to have a day’s fishing together on the river Itchen, the journey turned into a farce that the late Brian Rix would have been proud of.

Let me set the scene first. We were divided into two groups, one coming form the Wimbledon area and the second from the Walton area. I was driving the second group but I had had a terribly disturbed night’s sleep and was not at my best. In the car with me were Les and Roy. The second group were in two cars and only Bob and Brian from BB Angling had been to the venue before and they were in separate cars. A point I should have considered is that although they had both been to the Lower Itchen Fishery with me on a couple of occasions, I had been driving and knew the way, they had been early morning passengers and therefore not as conscious of their surroundings as they would normally be. So in my diminished state I made some incorrect assumptions of previous knowledge.

Bob with grayling on the river Itchen

The first priority for both groups was to get a “big boys breakfast” on the way and here the master plan started to unravel. I overslept and was half an hour late picking my team up. The boys from Wimbledon had decided to use their favourite local cafe and had planned to rendezvous with us on the way, we were going to find a place to eat first. Due to our delay, the rendezvous was arranged by mobile phone before we had eaten, so shortly after meeting I pulled into a cafe for a breakfast. This involved the others waiting for my team to finish our breakfast, now this might seem selfish of us but remember the cooked breakfast on route is an important part of the day.

At the curry night earlier that week we had discussed the route and the venue had been pinpointed on a map and involved following the M3 down to its junction with the M27 and taking the first junction off the east bound M27. So after breakfast we set of with me in the lead of the convoy with tempers already beginning to fray. After a while on the motorway the car I had thought was part of the convoy I was leading overtook us and I realised we had been split up. Here I made another mistake, I thought Brian and Bob both knew where to turn off, so I didn’t slow down as much as I should have done. After we passed the fist turn to Eastleigh I got a call from Bob saying that they had taken it. Not understanding the confusion (my excuse is that I was feeling guilty for being late, very tired from lack of sleep and keen to get to the fishery) I was a little less than diplomatic with Bob. I unfairly criticised him for making what I considered a silly mistake, instead of trying to say something constructive. Les took the phone from me with a diplomacy not normally associated with one of his previous calling (ex CID) and calmed things down. Brian driving the other car had followed Bob and both vehicles then got separated from each other and independently lost in the maze of ring roads, by-passes and motorways that is modern Southampton.

The next hour was spent in frantic and sometimes mildly threatening phone calls, with all three groups driving round Southampton, with which none of us were familiar, in different directions. All the time Les did a wonderful job of negotiator/peacemaker but I am dreading my phone bill - a suitable penance some would say. At one stage Les informed me that one vehicle was parked on Southampton docks next to the troubled luxury liner that had recently been in the news.

Eventually we all arrived at the fishery, I mumbled my apologies and slunk off to fish on my own for most of the day, in shame. Luckily everyone had a good day and friendships were still intact.

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