Is It Worth It - Tony "Pieater" Balfour

Time is 04-45, The sun is nowhere to be seen, the sky is black as coal, wind is averaging about 60 MPH, and the rain is being driven sideways, I’m looking out my bedroom window and thinking bollocks to this for a game of soldier’s, I’m supposed to be going fishing, Yeh right I am, you wouldn’t turn a dog out

in this, that reminds me. 

I wonder if my mam let the cat in, no bother bloody moggy always seems to find a dry billet somewhere .

Anyway where was I?, oh fishing in this weather is crap, I look again out the window and wonder if it will brighten up any  and then look back towards my bed, I can see her curlers poking out the top of the quilt , if I play my cards right I could be balls deep before she knows what’s happening, there is nowt as nice as catching um with a full bladder in the morning, tell you what I’ll go make a brew before I decide on bank or bed, but i think my mind is already made up.

I suppose I’d better start explaining myself before I get the Mad Mick treatment from my favourite Mod and start getting deleted, so what am I rambling on about? , well if you will bear with me I’ll explain all, I’m an avid reader of anything fishy I can get my hands on, and a while ago I was sat in the throne room doing my unmentionables and flicking through some old fishing diary’s, yes I used to be one of those unfortunates that filled in a diary after every session, at my age now, I can’t be arsed but that’s another tale, and in these said diaries from one of my more successful seasons i noticed quite by chance that most of the better fish that season had come between late morning and mid-afternoon, and when i looked further into this i realized that of my top ten fish only two were caught in this dawn/pre-dawn time of day, with two caught mid-morning one caught at night and FIVE  (that’s 50% or half ) afternoon caught fish.

So what in the name of Torak’s teeth have I been doing getting out my nice warm pit before the sparrows have even farted, by setting the alarm for an hour before I’ve even gone to bed, don’t get me wrong i love this time of day when it seems like everybody and everything is still asleep especially if you get the weather right and watch the weak winter sun climb slowly over the horizon, it’s a magical time of day and anglers usually get to see this because nobody is daft enough to be mooching round the fields and woods at this ungodly time, but my point is, is this really essential in helping you catch fish, fair enough I know you will have your choice of swim and be set ready with your traps out for when its light enough to see,  and these reasons alone may be enough for some of our keener pikers, fishing is a personal thing and you should do what you enjoy doing if that means living out of a bivvy for a few days that’s fine by me , if you only go for a few hours on a Sunday , again fine , do what you do and balls to the rest of um.

For reasons of my own making I’ve done very little fishing over the last couple of years and to be honest I’ve not missed it that much as my heads been well and truly stuck between my buttocks, but finally I can see a bit of light at the end of the tunnel, so the lumby’s will be dusted off and I might get to wet a line, will I be out at first light?, course I bloody will old habits die hard, but these days if the weather is crap I’m getting back into my flocks, ( go on Mr K , tell um what flocks are ) talking of my bed I’m off before she goes to the bog.

Tony

"Warts N All"

    Wart's n all

Reading some of the article's in the magazine's and book's etc, it seem's to be just me that disaster's befall, you know the type of writing i refer to , got to the swim at first light in time for the feeding spell that i had predicted would happen according to the moon, the pike god's and the way my shit curled to the right when i took a dump last night, had a couple of 20's then home in time for a full English breakfast and a romp round the bedroom with my Kylie Minouge lookalike missus, Yea right you did!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

A couple of recent event's have made me reconsider my position as king of the ball's up's and i no longer think that I'm on my own as the Frank Spencer of the piking world, it would be fair to say that I've had my fair share of misfortune , both fishing at home and abroad, let me try to enlighten you to the type of situation i get myself into, First trip to the Ebro in Spain and after a weeks fishing, my departure date was unexpectedly put back because of the ash cloud,and spent the next 30+ hours on Barcelona airport floor, now i know i can't do a lot about volcano's but the fact that, of only 2 flights that were allowed to leave , one of them was Webbo's flight to Doncaster, which was a kick in the plums, but c'mon Fekin Doncaster I didn't even know Donny had a bloody airport, another trip to meccy saw my passport going walkies and my flight home on the Sunday departed without me as the British embassy didn't open till Monday , the kick in the spud's this time coming from my missus for being a couple of days late ( i did get a 139lb fish on the sunday i was supposed to be home ,and the piss-up that night was a cracker, one of them piss-up's were you have a proper piss and sh*t in your under cracker's so all was not lost ) .

When I'm fishing away from home for some obscure reason my arsehole seems to go on strike for a few days and all the beer, kebab's and other stuff you consume when away with the lads, backs up like a blocked bog, now this particular morning I'd woke up ready for a bangin shit so bog-roll underarm off i went to release the bowel movement that was brewing , after finding a suitable tree to rest my back on away we went and as is custom it was thicker than a babies arm and i was soon in danger of a bit of backlash when i decided to nip it off and move to the next tree, anyway before this story gets anymore disgusting all i will say is a two foot turd and wearing crocs is not recommended, it took days to get it from under my toe nail's.

A lot of my misfortune of late seems to stem around boats, and i maybe started with a trip to one of the lakeland water's and involved my first boat a mayland 14ft with cuddy , the weekends fishing going rather slow which is nowt new with me and the early bath in mind, we headed home but a shortage of fuel had me pulling into the service's on the M6 only a few mile's from home , a few quid in the van and as we pulled away from the pump, a loud bang and the scraping of metal on concrete saw the brakes applied and a trailer wheel rolled past the van , bounced up the kerb and into the kiosk wall with no damage done as me and my mate watched opened mouthed, i suppose we counted ourselves lucky this didn't happen while we were doing 60mph.

It was this incident that saw me sick of make do and mend and from now on i was going to do it properly, and spent a gazillion quid on a brand new 16ft boat with matching 60hp 4 stroke Suzuki and brand new trailer, i then spent another wazillion quid kitting her out GPS, fishfinder, leccy engine the full monty, nice new shiny boat,nice new shiney mitsubishi warrior to tow her and i was the dog's danglies, up to the biggest loch i could find in SW Scotland only to be told to piss off back to England and come back next week as i'd forgotten to bring my proof of insurance ,i tried begging and pleading offering a few quid even offered him my arse but no way was he letting me fish, i think he thought i was the heathen bastard descendant of Edward Longshanks and he was William Wallace's brother, anyway back again  the following week for 3 days all was going to plan with a good few fish coming to the boat until day 3 and the rain started and the night to be spent on the bank being the easier option rather than sit out in the rain all night with the rods out, the boat was tied off to a convenient tree stump in over 2 feet of water, while we had a meal and slept blissfully on unaware of what was happening outside, when we awoke the drumming on the bivvy told us it was still raining and with thoughts of the boat being washed away with all the water we quickly got dressed and went to survey the damage, only to find the boat completely on dry land, some bright spark(told you that Bobby Davro lookalike bailiff didn't like me) had decided to open the sluice gates and reduce the water level by about 4 feet, last night she was sitting pretty now she looked like beached white whale,

What about the time a weeks fishing was booked on the Norfolk Broads, a couple of days into the trip all was going well until the temperature fell rapidly overnight and she was frozen solid in the boat dyke completely encased in ice.

What about the time we had been tope fishing out from Fleetwood and recovering back onto the trailer only for the winch handle to shear off, with a 10mph wind going one way and a 5knot tide going the other things went from bad to worse rather sharpish the boat being tossed about like an empty crisp bag in a tornado the crunching sounds telling us the hull was coming into contact with the concrete slipway and barnacle covered mooring posts, she still bears the scar's

What about the time the locking catch on the winch failed while reversing down a shingle beach on a big lakeland water and the boat sliding off the trailer onto the gravel and another battle scar

What about the time the bonnet flew up on the car on our way fishing , that doesn't sound to bad until i tell you we were doing 75mph on the M61 ( though that wasn't my car)

And don't even mention camera's and batteries

What about the time !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

God I'm an unlucky bastard, and i wouldn't change a second of it for all the tea in china

Tight line's and be lucky

Tony Pieman