When To Catch Them

ja

dick walker's two bites a day sounds optimistic this week: red moons and north east winds, right raspers making the fleece feel cheap. fingers too numb to turn the pages of dave steuart's classic to see if there's a "when" chapter still left to write.
sawdust & halibut pellets, sounds like the lucky dip at the village fete. bob says they leave the bushy gates open at night for "security reasons" to give emergency services easy access. crack-heads who fall on broken gin bottles. lock the gates, let them repent as they bleed to death.
you & me, we're slaves to different ends of the day. i'd probably catch more if i fished a morning. you might if you took a flask of afternoon tea and sat till the gin was delivered on that red moon tray.

so dave steuart's still outside the gates. o for the days when writers had their own tackle shops. instead of selling it they get given tackle now and they should be ashamed to have their names on it. soon as you put some sponsered cunt's name on it it'll break, snap, leak, twist or disintegrate. is dave the steuart of the grey plastic tackle box? well, they last 40 years.

gin moons or not, it was tuesday after tea at penelope pit. the sawdust were there too, all fishing from their car boots. one drawback with the sun; the fairweather drive-up pellet-heads. they were all on the calm end, backside of the wind. i set up on the chilly bay right in the teeth after gathering a dustbin's worth of 3 euro groundbait packets and throwaway red worm tubs from last sunday's recreational litter-bugging dance. it wasn't looking good, i re-tied the rigs a dozen times and fussed over where the leads fell. but i left one under the bush on the right, another with a 3-bait stringer 40 yrds into the bay out front on some stony ground.



the pellet-heads were packing up as the run came to the long-rod; fought till last minute of extra time, the golden goal, 1-0 to me, pellet-heads gutted:



yesterday the same wind still cut mustard on the nogent pit. same fuss, same doubts, but i put the left-hander into 20 feet of water and the other a pop-up in the weed bed a yorker's length out.



first dark and listless carp on gin winter-warmers rolled in the gutter as the red moon made the water slicken like oil and the dew felt like a freeze-up. i was packing up when i hit one bleep on the deep rod and found it snagged. same snag i had when you were there, remember? i was pissing in the bushes and you saw my rod go twice round the moon in the rests. this one came loose too, like a sailfish blown into the shipping lane:



i'm baiting your swim in any case. "one true void" is published by two ravens press in jan 08, but i should have a copy by november, when your rodrests will be pushed onto the mud, as you will be if you don't make it to mike walker's two-meals a day lake. in the meantime, you'll have a bushy common on the third day, i'm sure of it, in time for the fry up. bob's on a golden duck there too.

skinhead moonstomp on the turntable

dp