What scares you when night fishing?

[AnnaWerner]

For me, it's two things, in order:

 

1. weird people (I carry a large knife on my belt whenever I'm night fishing.)

 

2. slipping on a slippery spot that I can't see in the dark and blowing out my knee again (This is actually a perpetual source of paranoia whenever I go fishing, day or night. I've done it before, and the pain is beyond belief.)

[Alan Stubbs]

Going Home to the Wife after a weekend sesh arriving 1 hour later than i told her

 

 

Rather getting home an hour earlier than you told her and discovering the milkman hadn't left yet.

 

The only thing to worry me when night fishing is personal security.....although I have fished a venue where there were horrendous roars rending the air in the early hours of the morning. They sounded so close, but in reality, they were the lions from the safari park about a mile away!

The first time you fish the venue could quite possibly be the last if you're of a nervous disposition!

[Alan Stubbs]

People often talk of footsteps tramping along the pebbles on the more remote parts of Chesil Beach. We had one chap in our shooting club who claimed to have been passed by someone dressed in the sort of clothing you see in pictures of people 2-300 years ago, complete with tricorn hat and gaiters. He spoke to the person but got no reply. It was about 2.00 am and in bright moonlight.

He was a teacher in an 'approved school', not the sort to be easily frightened. He left the club and never went on the beach again.

 

If you wake at midnight, and hear a horse’s feet,

Don’t go drawing back the blind, or looking into the street,

Them that asks no questions isn’t told no lie,

Watch the wall my darling, while the Gentlemen go by!

 

Four and twenty ponies

Trotting through the dark..

Brandy for the Parson

Baccy for the Clerk.

Laces for a Lady, letters for a spy.

And watch the wall, my darling, while the Gentlemen go by.

 

Runnin' round the wood lumpif you chance to spy,

Little barrels roped and tarred all full of brandied wine,

Don't you call to come and look or use them for your play,

Put the brushwood back again they'll be gone next day.

 

Four and Twenty Ponies.........

 

If you see a stable door settin' open wide.

If you see a tired horse lyin' down inside.

If your mother mends a coat all cut about and tore,

Don't you ask he whose it is or what it's use is for.

 

Four and twenty Ponies..........

 

 

If you see King George's men all dressed in blue and red,

You be careful what you say and mindful what is said,

If they calls you pretty maid and chucks you neath the chin,

Don't you say where no one is or yet where no one's bin.

 

Four and twent ponies............

 

If you do as you've been told, likely there's a chance,

You'll be give a dainty dollie all the way from France,

With a gown all lacey and a velvet hood,

A present from the gentlemen for long o' bein' good.

 

Four and twenty ponies

Trotting through the dark..

Brandy for the Parson

Baccy for the Clerk.

Laces for a Lady, letters for a spy.

And watch the wall, my darling, while the Gentlemen go by.

 

Rudyard Kipling...this is probably the first poem I remember when I was at school in Sandwich - there are a lot of resonances to the things that were going around by the quayside back in the mid sixties even.

Edited April 9, 2009 by Alan Stubbs

[tincatinca]

Rudyard Kipling...this is probably the first poem I remember when I was at school in Sandwich - there are a lot of resonances to the things that were going around by the quayside back in the mid sixties even.

 

I have not heard that for a very long time. It was one of the favourites in the English lit lessons. Here is another one in a similar vein that was also very popular

 

 

 

 

THE LISTENERS

"Is anybody there?" said the Traveller,

Knocking on the moonlit door;

And his horse in the silence chomped the grasses

Of the forest's ferny floor.

 

And a bird flew up out of the turret,

Above the traveller's head:

And he smote upon the door a second time;

"Is there anybody there?" he said.

 

But no one descended to the Traveller;

No head from the leaf-fringed sill

Leaned over and looked into his grey eyes,

Where he stood perplexed and still.

 

But only a host of phantom listeners

That dwelt in the lone house then

Stood listening in the quiet of the moonlight

To that voice from the world of men:

 

Stood thronging the faint moonbeams on the dark stair

That goes down to the empty hall,

Hearkening in an air stirred and shaken

By the lonely Traveller's call.

 

And he felt in his heart their strangeness,

Their stillness answering his cry,

While his horse moved, cropping the dark turf,

'Neath the starred and leafy sky;

 

For he suddenly smote the door, even

Louder, and lifted his head:-

"Tell them I came, and no one answered,

That I kept my word," he said.

 

Never the least stir made the listeners,

Though every word he spake

Fell echoing through the shadowiness of the still house

From the one man left awake:

 

Aye, they heard his foot upon the stirrup,

And the sound of iron on stone,

And how the silence surged softly backward,

When the plunging hoofs were gone.

Edited April 9, 2009 by tincatinca

[Alan Stubbs]

I have not heard that for a very long time. It was one of the favourites in the English lit lessons. Here is another one in a similar vein that was also very popular

 

 

 

 

THE LISTENERS

"Is anybody there?" said the Traveller,

Knocking on the moonlit door;

And his horse in the silence chomped the grasses

Of the forest's ferny floor.

 

And a bird flew up out of the turret,

Above the traveller's head:

And he smote upon the door a second time;

"Is there anybody there?" he said.

 

But no one descended to the Traveller;

No head from the leaf-fringed sill

Leaned over and looked into his grey eyes,

Where he stood perplexed and still.

 

But only a host of phantom listeners

That dwelt in the lone house then

Stood listening in the quiet of the moonlight

To that voice from the world of men:

 

Stood thronging the faint moonbeams on the dark stair

That goes down to the empty hall,

Hearkening in an air stirred and shaken

By the lonely Traveller's call.

 

And he felt in his heart their strangeness,

Their stillness answering his cry,

While his horse moved, cropping the dark turf,

'Neath the starred and leafy sky;

 

For he suddenly smote the door, even

Louder, and lifted his head:-

"Tell them I came, and no one answered,

That I kept my word," he said.

 

Never the least stir made the listeners,

Though every word he spake

Fell echoing through the shadowiness of the still house

From the one man left awake:

 

Aye, they heard his foot upon the stirrup,

And the sound of iron on stone,

And how the silence surged softly backward,

When the plunging hoofs were gone.

 

 

Walter De La Mer. He was a favourite poet because his poetry is so accessible.

[HerbalMonkey]

Walter De La Mer. He was a favourite poet because his poetry is so accessible.

 

My 8 year old step-daughter scares the life outta me when fishing. Probably because she tends to fill her mouth with bait maggots and spit them at me regardless of my screams. I would like to say they are manly screams, but I would be lying to myself.

[chevin]

While it's not a perpetual fear, I well remember a few moments of terror one night in the early '60s. I was night fishing a swim on the River Shannon and I suppose I must have dozed off. The night was deathly silent and pitch dark. All of a sudden there was a cough and a blast of warm air on the back of my neck. Walking on water? Easy! I damn near ran across the surface of that river. As I jumped there was a noise of something jumping just as I had and when I looked round, I saw a cow that looked every bit as startled as me. I suppose my scream might have had something to do with that! Somehow it had crept up behind me, got its mouth a few inches from my head and coughed.

[HerbalMonkey]

While it's not a perpetual fear, I well remember a few moments of terror one night in the early '60s. I was night fishing a swim on the River Shannon and I suppose I must have dozed off. The night was deathly silent and pitch dark. All of a sudden there was a cough and a blast of warm air on the back of my neck. Walking on water? Easy! I damn near ran across the surface of that river. As I jumped there was a noise of something jumping just as I had and when I looked round, I saw a cow that looked every bit as startled as me. I suppose my scream might have had something to do with that! Somehow it had crept up behind me, got its mouth a few inches from my head and coughed.

 

Lmao, cows scare me regardless of the circumstances, they are so timid and yet they could destroy me in seconds. They also remind me of Lenny from "Of Mice and Men".

[Vagabond]

All of a sudden there was a cough and a blast of warm air on the back of my neck. ......I saw a cow that looked every bit as startled as me. Somehow it had crept up behind me, got its mouth a few inches from my head and coughed.

 

Fishing the evening tide up for bass at Shepherd's Chine, IOW one night, I packed up and headed for the car up a narrow path that ran diagonally up a chalk cliff face. I could just about see the path in the gloom and was concentrating on where to put my feet. So did not look around me. Just as I reached the top, there was a blast of hot air on my left ear and something shouted PLUBBLUBBLUBBLE !!! into it.

 

Thankfully, I did not miss my footing despite a leap in the air. By the time I came back down again I had identified the noise. A horse, making that bubbling snort they do so well.

 

Unlike Chevin's cow, the horse was not startled at all - as far as I could see in the fading light, it had a smirk on its face

[The Hitman]

Not whilst fishing, fortunately. But I was setting up a few month's later when I met some of the area's 'finest'juveniles who tried to help themselves to some of my kit. I hit the biggest of them (who was still a fair bit smaller than me!) and the others ran off. Needless to say I packed up and went home without having wet a line.

 

I was having a few problems with life at the time and had lost a true sense of proportion. To this day, I don't know if I was OTT or not.

 

Nope, not in my book. If you're big enough to nick it, you're big enough to take it, if you catch my drift?