It's true, fishing isn't only about catching fish
Entry posted by Rusty
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River Thames, Abingdon, Saturday 23rd July 2011
About two weeks ago I awoke to find that I’d developed double vision. At first I thought that I’d slept strangely and that it would go away by the time I left for work. It didn’t go away and I had to turn back as driving was out of the question.
A visit to my GP saw me looking at waving fingers, smiling, winking and poking my tongue out to make sure may facial expressions were balanced. My blood pressure was through the roof and before I knew it I’d been booked into a specialist neurological unit at the JR hospital. My left eye wasn’t moving as it should. The MRI scan revealed a brain and as a bonus there were no obvious nasties, the ECG confirmed that my heart was doing what it does best and a good look around my eyeballs suggested that it wasn’t a muscular disorder. The conclusion was that a blood vessel supplying one of the nerves which control eye movement was either damaged or blocked….bugger. The consultant was optimistic, the majority of these cases recover to a degree, some don’t but I’m not thinking about that. Whatever the outcome it won’t happen overnight which is a shame because patience isn’t my strongest virtue, I have to wait and in the two weeks so far there hasn’t been any improvement.
The upshot of all this is that I can’t drive until the eye makes a significant recovery or the problem is managed in some way. Getting to the Newbury/Thatcham area by public transport is convoluted and not really practicable so my club waters are out of reach, no fishing for me then.
BUT…..there is a bus that will take me from Wantage to Abingdon in about 50 minutes so I could get to the Thames, I have the drop shotting gear so wouldn’t need bait and I could pare the gear down to a minimum. The double vision would almost certainly hinder the fishing but I didn’t care I just wanted to get out of the house and if it ended up as a pleasant walk along the river without wetting a line then so be it.
Steve kindly lent me his new (short) rod and I took an extendable bankstick for a landing net handle so as not to inconvenience other bus travellers too much. 9:00am saw me disembark and ten minutes later I was riverside, I saw a sign mentioning something about permits but those minor details were going to have to wait on this occasion. The tactics were to fish a spot for five or ten minutes and then move upstream, so far my drop shotting experience has suggested that if the perch were there they’d take the lure quickly, the dying minnow I was using had caught fish before so I had confidence in that.
The first swim was to be under a bridge, once I’d waved of a party of lads whom no doubt will all have terrible hangovers this morning;
Once they’d gone it looked like this;
Casting was a bit tricky to begin with even at short distance just dropping the lure in. I found that shutting one eye at least allowed me to place it accurately next to structures although judging distance was difficult. Luckily I didn’t anticipate having to cast long distance to features, the day was to be near bank fishing. This side of the bridge produced no bites but a move to the other side produced a nice perch which [again] took the lure on the drop;
Another ten minutes passed without a bite so upstream I went. The next fish was a tiddler but caught by a different method, I cast the rig about twenty yards into open water and gently jigged it back. It was pleasing to know that drop shotting can be fished at distance and that the lure must resemble something edible when being worked that far out. That was it I’m afraid, two fish in the first half hour and no more bites all day despite walking a long way upstream and finding some hidden little gems on a couple of backwaters.
Today wasn’t about catching though, it was about having a day out and proving that I could still fish. The weather was good all day and the boat traffic was well underway by mid morning so that probably didn’t help. The rod Steve lent me was perfect for the job providing much more feel than my Avon and not getting in the way when scrambling to overgrown swims. I did almost lose it when I took on some particularly dense undergrowth, I put the rod down and went for it with the landing net handle. Having got to the sidestream I came back out but a different way, it took me ten minutes to find where I’d charged in initially and where I’d left the rod.
I got back to Wantage at about 6 pm and picked up fish and chips on the way home. It’d been a long day and I was knackered, next time I think I’ll take the earlier bus and fish until the day trippers are out in force.
Some pics of the river;
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