It seems to be a national sport here in Wales, fishing. Well, not only here of course but since we have been travelling again, I have noticed that the sport, I believed to be dead, was still very much alive and kicking!
Let me start by telling you that I truly know absolutely nothing about fish, fishing or the paraphernalia that go with it, so I’m sorry if I don’t use the right “lingo”. It looks to me that a fishing rod is to fishermen (people, I’m sorry) what a car is to a car-enthusiastic. You seem to have shiny, lightweight rods and old, rusty, heavy ones and all that lies in between. It is starting to look like the way you fish is becoming less important, and the type of equipment you use is THE way to catch a fish nowadays.
Most people say that fishing is a way to relax and become one with nature but they sure as hell didn’t see the two example fishermen that we saw…
The first one I would like to call the 12-second fisherman. We were watching him from the van as he set about with his flashy, shiny (what looked to be) lightweight pole to catch some fish in a river running along a national park. At first he didn’t really catch our attention, but after a while we were both looking at him in utter disbelief. He was throwing his line out into the river, waiting, for 12 seconds, pulling it out again and walking 5 meters further down the river only to repeat it all again. At that point, I knew that fishing was a mystery to me, but I hadn’t quite been sure how big a mystery really! The fishermen I had seen in France were standing on top of a pier in the ocean, threw their line in the water and waited for what seemed to be hours before they would pull it back up with a fish attached to the other side. The 12-second fisherman seemed to display a totally other technique and we were utterly fascinated by it. We started speculating if it was because he was fishing in the river, or if it was because he was stalking one fish and he wasn’t interested in any of the other ones. In the end, our boot-wearing athlete gave up his hunt for the perfect fish, got in his car and left.
Our second relaxed fisher athletes are up until now, still not doing anything that looks remotely like fishing. We have been watching these guys for more than one and a half hours and they haven’t touched any of their fishing equipment yet…. You might think: “well what have they been doing all this time?” They have been trying to set up their ultra modern, lightweight, flashy fishing tent! As I’m typing this, they did manage to set it up, although it looks a bit wobbly, and they are having a celebratory cup of tea.
So you see, that in my mind, fishing isn’t relaxing at all, but only utter stress! We will stick to travelling in Peanut, at least that way we can come inside when it starts raining so we can laugh with the modern fishermen who are apparently still trying to figure out where the last do-hickey from the tent belongs…
It’s not nice to make fun of other people’s hobby, even though I do agree… 🙂
Een vers viske uit de carrefour dan maar? 😉
haha, zoiets ja!
deugenieten !!!!!
Ha ha! There are different kinds of fishing! The 12-second man was almost certainly fly-fishing. That means that he is casting out a tiny handmade lure designed to look to the fish like a delicious insect/fly. His quarry is probably trout. A good fly fisherman has studied the habits of his prey, and knows, for example, that trout like deep, cool water, usually in a pool below a little rapid. Often if there is some sort of overhanging bank, or a log in the water, they will be there, out of the current (saves energy) waiting for the current to bring their dinner insects down from upstream. The fisherman casts his fly into a good spot in a pool, and if the fish is there, and things go right, the fish will come up to the surface and take the fly thinking it is his dinner. If you make several casts without result you may assume the fish are not interested just then, and so you move to the next likely looking spot and begin again. Oh, and I don’t know about Wales, but in England and Scotland, I believe the streams and the fish in them belong to the landowner, along with the fishing rights. You would have to have permission from the landowner to fish, perhaps even paying a fee for the privilege. There is also fishing for other kinds of fish (other than salmon, trout, and char, the “game” fish) called “coarse fish.” For them a fisherman will use some kind of bait or a lure. Bait can be worms, fish roe, cheese even!
Hi John,
Thank you for clarifying this! We learned a lot with your comment, thx!