Lost on the Whistle Brook

I'm lost on the Whistle Brook. Barely two hundred yards, this stretch, but it's enough for the purposes of losing myself, or perhaps for finding myself? A time for reconnecting - it's been a funny old year after all. So I slipped out early, unannounced, a couple of hours before work. But now it's already lunch time and I still haven't shown up. Good job I'm the boss. Good job. Must have a word with myself. 

Earlier this morning I met a five legged grasshopper. I carefully scooped him up, noticing that one of his rearmost legs was missing. Just as I began to ponder the nature of his disability, he sprang off my hand with an electrified click, up, up into the stratosphere, fast as bullet. You just can't keep a good grasshopper down. Take the hand you have been dealt, pick it up and run with it. Or in his case jump. A lesson for us all, by Jiminy.

I had planned to pass by the Whistle Brook and go straight to the old mill pond, but some chub (a fine baker's dozen) bask in the sun and it seems rude not to cast a crust at them. So I'm hiding in the cow parsley, hoping to gain their confidence with a few free offerings. Yesterday I'd laid some slices of fresh white bread out on the rear parcel shelf of my old jalopy and they've dried out a treat, positively dessicated in fact, which is good. Now I can hook them securely so that they don't fall off too easily on the cast. 

The first half dozen or so freebies are attacked with gusto by the bigger chub - it's such fun to watch them turn on the little floating targets. Time to cast out a baited hook I think. But I know that with one glimpse of my rod over their heads the chub will scarper back under the leafy far bank. So I formulate a cunning ruse by creeping back from the brook and laying my rod down on the grass. I pace out the distance I think I need to cast, plus a few more yards, then pay out an equal measure of line from the centre pin. The farmer is laughing at me. 'Caught a perch?' he says with a mischievous grin. I'm after chub I tell him and he says Monday is their day off. It's not really that funny but his laugh is infectious and I join in with an involuntary snigger. He spots my reel. Isn't that for fly fishing he asks? I tell him it's an old style reel - a centre pin. 'Ah, you're traditionalist then?' Well.. I shrug.. 'depends what she looks like aye?' he laughs, and yes that is actually quite funny. Now he's off to check on something or other. I like the farmer, he's a good old salt.      

Creeping back into position with the rod and line (the line now outside of the tip ring) I fire my hooked crust towards the shoal with my catapult. It works fiendishly well, and now my crust floats just in the right place and I'm picking my rod up and carefully tightening the slack just as king chub hurtles toward my bait with that big ol' mouth open wide. My hearts skips, but at the last second it's mission-abort and my fish veers way, spotting the line, I'm rumbled. Why, oh why didn't I mud-up the hook length? Because I'm rusty that's why, never mind. Another day, if the Gods will it, I'll get lost again on the Whistle Brook, and I'll hold a brassy chub for a moment or two. Just don't forget the mud.