Zen and the art of fishing

Not that it's really got anything to do with it. I suppose that the meditiative state of Zen can be compared to the state of mind occasionally reached while concentrating on a small orange blob in the water.

More to the point, I am prone to wild flights of imagination, which I'll likely put here. I'm happy with the lightening forked paths of thought which seem odd to others and apart from a tendency to attract hippies, which I rapidly disillusion, it's not really a problem.

At the ancient pond
a frog plunges into
the sound of water.

(A translation of "Old Pond" by Matsuo Basho)

Zen

Once or twice elsewhere on this site I've mentioned "Zen moments" while fishing. What do I mean? Well there are times when for no good or discernable reason you know that something is about to happen. How so?

There is a need to be careful here. Most of us spend a lot of time at the waters edge, willing fish to take the bait, or bob the float or even for the alarm to bleep. Clearly when the bleep or bob happens, a good proportion of the time you were thinking it was going to happen just before. It's human to straight away forget all those times that you anticipated a bite but one didn't come. BUT:

There are those times, when you are lolling around not paying attention and suddenly you are. I find myself tightening the fingers on the rod, or picking ut one bobbin rather than the other. So:

Can I tell when I'm going to get a bite. the answer for me is sometimes, yes. I need to be relaxed for it to happen though. But can I prove it to you? Probably not. But I have with 4 separate witness gone form not paying attention to hand on the rod and fish on the bank for no obvious reason - and many other times without company. Once with regular visitor to me on Pike Pit - apologising for disturbing me and possibly the fish, I said no problem there wasn't one around, which is what I felt. And they 5 minutes and some inconsequential chat later, the sense tingled, I sat up, put my hand on the rod and said, "there's one around now" and hit the float as it went, landing a 6lb wildie a few minutes later.

This happened with "call me" Zen and also with an girlfriend of mine, also on Pike Pit, as well as recently with the siblet, where we both found ourselves overtly and intently interested in the right hand bobbin on my pod, shortly before it took off (I missed that one).

I'm not inclined to the mysterious (Physics degree) and toward a more rational explanation to these things. I am satisfied that the effect is there and I'll bet some share my belief. So what's going on? Imagine that someone asked you to calculate a 50 foot length parabola, based on an initial velocity (X) and a rotation velocity (Y) of the object, which is spherical, taking into account that the angular velocity of the object will affect the rate of curve of the parabola and the curve rate will vary as an inverse square of the speed of the object. Give up? OK, now kick this football so it curves around the goalkeeper and slots into the top right hand corner.

So if you pull this off, who does the maths? Consider also, that most of us would have to take a good few practise shots to get close (unless you are Beckham). Whirring away behind you conscious brain is your subconscious. It sees all and hears all if usually reduce to poking you with information when it thinks the conscious you needs to know. This is I believe the root of the feeling. Let's take an example:

You're float fishing in a light breeze with a 3BB antennae. The lines's sunk, the float is behaving. Suddenly you think you are going to have a bite. You do. What went on there? Have you ever fished a pole float? The pole float typically (for still water) has a bristle top and is shotted to within an inch of it's life. A passing gnat alighting on the top will sink it. Do you see a lot more float movement with one of these, than with a regular float? You should - not all of the movement is a bite though (as you'll discover when you strike at every twitch). Fish grub around by your bait, stirring up the water into eddies and swirls, all of which move the line and hence register on the float. Most fish will mouth a bait once of twice as well. Carp are really pesty in this respect and perch can drive you wild.

Personally, I think even with a less sensitive float, your subconscious is seeing the tiny movements that this type of thing generates and rings a bell to get your attention. Some of these movements will be tiny, but are perhaps out of sync with the pattern on the water caused by the wind or current. My own experience is that sometimes when float fishing the attention zeros in on the float which appears to be almost in a calm spot. I suspect that often moments before the float popping under, the fish holds the bait and the float movement (ripples induced) is paused momentarily. The id knows.

But what of bite indicators or bobbins? The same thing applies - when I ledger I watch, if anything, the rod tips mostly. I use a good bite alarm, which you would describe as sensitive (but quiet, after foam rubber application). I have seen a good few tweaks by watching the line at the rod tips that do not register on the bobbins or the alarms. The sharper the angle between the rod tip and the line, the more of these you will get. Friction from the line passing over the tip ring does that. (A good reason not to Rod Pod, but to use bank-sticks, to line the rod with the line BUT only with line clips or bait-runners. If you get a good yank on line with no rod or clutch to absorb the shock the line will snap more easily than you think).

Bobbins will sway in the breeze (mine do). Seldom are they completely still. I think that the same applies - you pick up that one bobbin is out of sync. with the other’s movement in the draught, or that the movement is stilled. A tiny back and forth oscillation caused by a tiny pull. Twitches on the line or rod tip. And suddenly you are very interested in the left hand rod for no good reason...and then the bobbin whangs upward...

There are other manifestations of this cloaked calculating machine. Working out where fish are is a good example. Returning to a recent trip, we wondered around the lake and only at one point did we really think it felt "fishy". However some surface ice put us off. We then watched a later arrival pull three carp out of that spot. I have no hard evidence but it's probably as simple as a slight water colour from stirred up silt or possibly even seeing fish that don't quite register. Either way, next time maybe go where you think it feels right.

***********

So not so mysterious maybe. But I wonder about other possibilities. You've all seen that shark homing in on the buried flounder by detecting its electrical field alone. Likewise we are electrical beings and it's possible (I have no evidence, note!) that the electrical field of a large fish interferes with our own field and some part of the machine can detect this - and if you close the loop with a catch, then next time the id thinks it might be a fish.

If there is an electrical field type thing, then the effect would work at it's best when the fish (and your fishing) are close to the bank. The field strength of anything decreases with the square of the distance. So what might be "detectable" at 10 feet, is a hundred times smaller if you go another 10 feet further away. 30 feet away and your signal is a 100 times weaker. My experience bears this out. But, if small movements are the key, then you would also expect being close to the bite indication to improve the "Zen" effect. Which again in my experience, it does. I would add that I have had no "Zen" experience I recall from Pike - that could be for a number of reasons, but typically pike do not fool around with bait. They pounce on it, which is often your first clue they are there. Pike also sidle up to dead-bait before pouncing, with hardly any discernible movement.

Non of this is a good substitute for observation and experience though, you'll catch more fish if you examaine the waters you fish with care and pay close attention to whatever bite indicator you are using.

Does any of this matter a jot? Well no not really. But just in case my subconscious is working on my behalf, quite a lot of my floats have an extra black and white band on them now - I'll give myself the most chance of seeing any little movement, consciously or otherwise. Likewise a slight curve on the bristle of a pole float is no bad thing. It'll tend to curve away from the wind - and when it isn't, it might just be more interesting to look at.

Enjoy your fishing, that's the most importantly thing. If you reach any kind of enlightenment as well, then that's just a bonus.

Pronounced "Zen"

"Zen" (a Polish name, no idea of the actual spelling) was a fellow pike angler that I became friends with during the long 1993-94 season, by dint of the fact that for many of the long gray days I was out chasing Esox, he and I were the only ones on the water. It was a long pike season because I caught hardly any pike.

He almost invariably fished at the East end of Long Lake (a "hot spot")and I almost always ended up in the swim next door while we swapped pike stories, occasionally coffee (if someone had run out) and after a while, confidences. While I would swear that sitting in one place is generally less productive than roving [unless of course it's a very good spot ;-)], he almost always caught at least one and in my bad season, he often offered me the swim for the last half hour to try and break the run, an offer I usually declined.

He was an HGV driver and I think his wife was a receptionist at a local company. Later in that season, I came across him uncharacteristically pleasure fishing for any old thing in the third swim on Pike Pit ("Hordens Mere") and setting up my sweet corn wild carp rig, while his good lady wife delivered lunch, I had the good fortune to snag a wildie, to the delight of all three of us.

I very much enjoyed the company and it was a great sadness to me, that after setting a date for my nuptials and my pike fishing tailing off somewhat (that's the way of things...), I was unable to track him down to invite him and his wife to the celebration. I went to the lake a good number of times to find him, but I guess his piking had tailed of a bit as well.

If you read this mate, drop me a line - if you recognise us...

Luck

Luck. My maternal Grandfather used to say, if asked about his success fishing (or shooting for that matter), "I've had a bit of luck" if he'd caught something and "I didn't get any luck today" if he didn't. I liked that. It's why I don't say "tight lines", but rather "good luck".

However skilful and prepared you are, or not, luck plays a large part. All the skill and preparation serves to reduce the odds of a blank, but never entirely removes it. There are many apocryphal stories of the reverse case of the heavily encumbered and possibly over prepared angler getting nothing, and the lad turning up with a bent pin and string and banking a good 'un. Gramp used to chuckle at Jack Hargreaves pike fishing with no luck and a boy turning up with a worm and simple tackle and banking the Esox right of the cuff (I don't know it this is true mind).

Even in our more zealously stocked commercial fisheries, there's still a piscine lottery at work, with the right place and time playing a part. It's part of the fun.

So all that preparation, knowledge and tackle boils down to improving the chances of a catch or to turn it on it's head, decreasing the odds of a blank. Odds are a funny thing - it's always possible to blank, however well prepared you are. It might just be the fish never spot your bait. I mean, we're smart, but how often do we find a big bunch of car keys hard to spot? The chicken brained carp (smart for a fish we are told, certainly intelligent enough to train to eat certain things at certain times) could easily miss seeing a particle, even a big one (that's more likely than you think, which is why we use flavourings that travel - the odds of a fish not smelling something that wafts over a large area are smaller). It's one reason why the ever-visible yellow corn continues to work year in and out, it's easy to spot, even in deep water and by the more stupid than average fish. Which is most of them.

On larger ('un-stocked') waters, even if you have a plan, finding the fish at all can involve a good bit of luck. Like finding wandering shoals of bream or tench in a 5 acre, 15 feet deep lake. After a while you'll find the places they tend to turn up eventually. But will it be today? You've improved the odds by fishing a good few times and noting where and when you caught various fish, even if you are not writing it down and making a conscious decision.

This can work against you as well - you turn up, fish, catch and spend the next umpteen goes in the same spot or near it, when you might learn more about the water by moving around a bit, which would improve your chances in the long run.

Somewhere out there they may well be the fishing equivalent of Douglas Adam's "rain god" lorry driver ("Goodbye - and thanks for all the fish"), who despite all the best methods and application, simply doesn't catch. Equally of course there is the hypothetical angler who always catches whatever he does or wherever he goes…I digress.

It's a good way to evaluate any new idea or item of tackle or change in method.

Does it improve the odds of catching fish? Why?

Of course life's not that easy, with many ideas in angling being based on at least one supposition, so trying things out is often the only way to know for sure. If you have a tackle-based idea or theory, why not track down a "fish in a barrel" lake and use it to road test the method? I recently read of someone training their fish playing, by getting someone to run around a field and try to break the line, while you 'play' them. That sounds silly, but how often do you play exceptionally large fish? It's still not the norm but practising on the fish itself has significant potential for disappointment. Another thing you can improve the odds with.

It's why it makes sense to take that extra bit of care with the bit of the lottery you can exert some control over. That is to say your tackle - care and inspection of line, knots, checking the line hasn't whipped itself around the reel handle on the last cast. Will the hook take the strain? (And how do you know that by the way?)

Always have a selection of baits - I keep corn, hemp, pepperami and tins of mussels and various meats in the back of my car, so if my first choice bait doesn't work out I have a choice. Again, just improving the odds.

Likewise you can do much to avoid scaring the fish - I'm slightly sceptical of the full commando camouflage stuff I see, down to rod rests, torches and the ends of bleepers. But it is certain that vibration on the bank plays a part in scaring the fish and sudden movements and unnatural colours will startle any prey animal, above or below water.

Stick to drab colours (I favour musty greens), avoid short sleeved shirts (arms being easy to spot), a hat won't hurt, move slowly and with care and avoid clumping tackle box lids or hammering in bank sticks and similar. Keep your shadow off the water. Better still keep back from the edge and keep the rod tip only by the waters edge. If you scare the fish, you'll wait half an hour for their return often you'll just miss the chance of catching the scared fish at all. You'll never know, but if you are quiet you might be surprised (in a good way).

***********

[Brightly coloured tackle boxes, trolleys (bump bump), chrome fittings that glint in the sun (paint or tape them over), watchstraps and rings, none of these are my favourite things. Folk who clump around the bank in bright colours talking in loud voices ("Any good?" "Not now" you mutter to yourself, usually). I've had more than one dithering developing bite startled into stillness by a friendly approach. If you talk to someone on the bank and they seem a bit anti-social, maybe that's the reason…

Finally on this rant, if you should have the great luck to get a fish so close you can see it, DON'T look at it's eyes. If it sees you looking at it, it'll know something's amiss.]

***********

If you are very quiet, you'll often get a bite sooner than you think - cast in and then start sorting out your tackle or a cup of freshly brewed and you might miss the best chance you'll get.

Put up your landing net before the rest of your gear. It's much less unlucky than hooking a good fish and have to deal with it without the net… or put up a net one handed.

None of these things will make you a great angler, but doing them improves your chances of landing the great fish and the good fish - you still have the 'right place and right time' lottery to beat, but it's a good start. And the more of these things you manage, the 'luckier' you will get…

I know only one thing with complete certainty when I go out and that's that I don't know what I'm going to catch if anything, even on waters I know well and fish often.

As my youngest daughter said to me; "You have to enjoying fishing as well, because you spend a lot of the time fishing NOT actually catching fish". Exactly so.

Why would you have it any other way?

Good luck.

The 'buzz'

I've already have talked about the sudden knowledge that a fish will strike. It seems strongest when it's a carp but I have the same with roach, tench and bream.

It only comes when you are really relaxed and when the myriad inconsequential worries of life get on top, the buzz won't be there for you.

But when it is, the world shrinks to a small area around the float and there is the faintest shimmer or buzz. The closest I can get to a description is a combination of the slightest faintness you get if you stand up too quickly and the distant sound of the honey bees that nested in my chimney a couple of years running.

It's weird. Then you know.

And you are really angling then.

The reasons to use a float

I'm a float tart. This is say I find floats hard to resist. Consequently, I have well over a hundred and have no idea why I have some of them. At least thirty sit in an old tankard atop the bookcase and at least another thirty are foundlings. In use, I recycle a few sorts and do not even use all the ones in the tackle box, never mind the ones in my collection.

For instance, one season I almost exclusively used insert-loaded crystals, which seemed like a good idea at the time. I went through a spell of using pole floats with a carp rod for margin work. No reason. For the last 3 months I've angled almost exclusively with porcupine and goose quill floats of my own making. The sibling however, prefers to ledger all other things being equal, and sat in identical and adjacent swims with the same conditions he'll ledger and I'll float fish. I'm working on that.

I consider there are actually four principle reasons for using a float, but "separating float tarts from their cash" does not count as a real reason, so here are the first three:

1. Bite indication
2. Bait presentation
3. Something to look at while waiting for a fish

Everyone knows about the first two, although I've seen anglers clearly aware of (1) and not (2) …

(3) is why some use a float, but is that really all there is to it? The bobbin, tin foil or (whisper it) bleeper does the same thing, which is, letting you know you have a bite. Unless of course you're hair rigged for self hooking, then you're finding out you've missed it or hooked it already and a very lightly set clutch might work nearly as well, for less money and trouble.

There's more to it than just bite indication though and for me it's about focus and boundaries.

Floats generally move about a lot more than we give them credit for, even in still water. The water moves around a good bit as well and we are interested in the area above the bait. The float keeps us focussed on that. When things are truffling the float wibbles and dithers, often too slightly for us to notice in a conscious way, but the subconscious sees all and can tell something's afoot.

Sadly for Id, it only has the voice of a cotton-wool gagged otter, so can manage only a muffled "squeak", so all we get is a hint that a bite is coming without knowing exactly why. It might be the float moved out of sync with the passing wave front, perhaps it's leaning ever so slightly against the wind, maybe that the water around your float has gone a tad smoother, as something riffles the oil out of your hemp or luncheon meat. Likewise the slight curve on a crow quill is no bad thing. It'll tend to curve away from the wind - and when it isn't, it might just be more interesting to look at…

You'll not spot these things on your bleeper or if you're not looking for any reason. The float keeps your gaze where it needs to be.

Then there's the boundary thing. Mankind has long had a fascination for water and we've been chucking stuff (and some less fortunate folk) into water for a long time and there is some evidence that water was once seen as a boundary between two worlds. Certainly none of us really know what it's like living beneath the surface. Even if you don a tank and wet-suit, you're still breathing air. You can't feel sounds and subtle differences in temperature as the inhabitants do. It's a mystery still and from this side of the frontier, it's like looking at something on the far side of a frosted window - if you are up close you can see through pin holes of clear resolution and from a distance a vague overall picture, but never both at once.

A lake I know will go absolutely gin clear in winter if the cold stops all fish feeding. The clear spring-water feed keeps it that way and then I'll take a whole afternoon to walk around, fixated on the detail under the surface I never normally see - subtle ledges and variations and clear trails in the leaf litter laid out on the bottom showing where the fish regularly pass. Those trails change little year to year and those small ledges in otherwise uniform patches of the bottom, perhaps etched by the same fish in successive years, give you better results come the spring even if they are nearer the bank than you thought would be best. It would be too good to be true for all waters to have that one clear-water day each year. A brief freshly wiped window into the world below.

The rest of the time, the water's surface is a gateway into an existence we get glimpses and flashes of, through the shimmered looking glass. It connects the piscator to the elegant and mysterious world below. A keyhole though which we spy, with our float, in the hope of seeing something we otherwise would not or should not.

This sense of mystery is why I and the similarly afflicted like deep waters better than the shallows. You can hide bigger monsters in the opaque depths. Knowing you have 15 feet of water under your feet generates more awe than 15 inches. It's why the saucer shaped commercial fisheries do not work for some of us. No depth, no variation, known stock, no enigma to unravel.

On a trip to Oxford with my family, we took lunch behind the botanical gardens, where a thread of the Cherwell curls around a corner on its way to Old Father Thames. Water in channels will run straight and true (subject to chaos), but as soon as you get curves in the course, the water zig-zags, coursing from one bank to the other as the bends hurl the current back and forth, like passengers in a rollercoaster. The river was in spate and the water on the bank nearest us was a writhing muddy snake, spiralling as the water rebounded off the opposite bank from the last curve, before rebounding again by my feet, twisting up from the bottom and over by the bank, off the next curve and downstream. Opposite me was a small oasis of smooth stewed-tea coloured calm, sliding under a small overhanging bush and I watched that rolling glass tabletop while eating my pasty, imagining a grayling-bobber skittering under the bush for an imagined chub. That image stayed, fixed, until on the point of sleep that evening, I imagined the cast and float gliding towards and under the bush and the bob and plunge pulling me through the surface, down into sleep...

The bob, that sudden dip and dart under the water, or even better, the slow but deliberate down-and-sideways slide of the float, is a moment quite on a par with the frisson from that moment in the evening when your companion lets you know you don't have to go home, when 'maybe' turns into 'yes'.

The float's movement is a thrown switch, the pulse of electricity on the line connecting you to the other rod-length distant world, normally only sensed. Then there is the pull of the possible monster on the other end. In that instant it could be anything, Grendel's mother even, still yet still seeking revenge for her son.

This brings us to the fourth reason for using a float:

(4) It provides a way through the border between this world and a more interesting and mysterious place.

That Odd Perch

We've all had this experience on a long colourless day, almost pre-destined to be a blank. A small and sudden movement of the float then a sudden dart under and there is that perch. It's often, but not always, around 1-3 ounces, with an over sized gob and all Tod Sloan, which perch never usually are and this is a bit odd. But for that odd perch though, you'd have blanked. Let's face it; the fine line between 'a blank' and 'not a blank' is often only a technicality and even so we've all blanked. But that single perch has saved me from a significant number of blanks and this has bothered me for some time.

One grey quiet day at Pike Pit the mystery perch saved me, when I had poled up and got fishing while the sibling was still thinking about it. I may have overstated the value of being first in the water - well it would have been rude not to. I was almost driven from the bank by the fusillade of bets returned in response. The most fish. The biggest fish. The largest bag overall. The best specimen. The most different species. The first fish. Probably even the best-dressed fish. Each punt a pint of Tetley's Best, to be consumed that evening at The Chequers.

Tweak. Plunge. There was my 2oz perch, first cast, inevitably the first and last fish of the day. The brother of course claimed he extracted all the evening beer money from the fruit machine anyway, so it didn't cost him a penny. Of course mate, whatever you say.

Then, there was the solitary 6oz perch one cold day in Cookham, the only fish either of us caught. The sole perch I had on a grim day on Long Lake. The single perch last September on Breech Pond, the only thing between me and a blank. The one and only perch caught on the Thames at Marlow when the line was freezing in the rod rings. The small and gobby perch, the total catch on a horizontally windy day at Trout Stream, when not even an eel could be pried out of the bed-stones. You've got other examples, I'm sure. I did an informal random survey (I asked Bob in the office) and it's happened to him too. There are simply way too many 'one perch' days and often when you'd swear that no fish were within a mile.

Then I remembered a distant beer-based conversation, when someone had mentioned the Wheeler-Feynman insight - this is the one that suggests that all the electrons in the universe may be viewed as one electron that is continually jagging back and forth in time as it weaves the fabric of cosmic life. You can't prove it isn't, but I suspect that with Richard Feynman's sense of humour, this may be the whole point.

But what if there is just one perch, nipping back and forth in time around the Northern hemisphere, whose purpose is to alleviate those otherwise fishless days? Of course it couldn't do every blank day, even time is finite (eventually) and good company, pleasant weather or a really good cup of tea will redeem some blanks. But the first trips of small fisher folk, those drawn out sombre days that sap the will to fish, they need assistance.

Is this then, the purpose of the mystery perch, to materialise briefly beside your worm or maggot, snatch at it and redeem the day? It would explain several things; the "what, again?" look that one-off perch have, the very definite (only) bite and also the odd way that solitary perch get 'slightly foxed' as they get bigger. My lonely perch on Long Lake took a single maggot and surrendered gently, a shade over 2lb, and seemed to have an air of resignation as well as fins that had seen better days…

It might be of course, that the peripatetic Perca understands its quest, a near eternity of passing baits and blurred skyward propelled journeys. Then on release, slipping out of existence, propelled along the weird of the Nornir, the three Disir fates; that-which-is, that-which-is-becoming, that-which-should-be; on towards the next dent in the fabric of space, with a moribund angler hunched at the nadir.

Could it be aware of the relief it brings, making it content, while the world streams past? Or much worse, a cursed and wailing soul condemned to eternally being caught, its only sustenance for the journey placed on cruel steel hooks. Perhaps a punishment for some transgression against Njörd* the Norse god of Storm and fishing, a slight to one of his ten daughters maybe, three of which now gleefully control its destiny.

Nowadays the blank-saviour perch is less in demand; now commercial fisheries have made fishless days a thing of the past (if it pains you so much to have one). This is perhaps a good thing for our small spiky helper, as the journey is long and wearing, however carefully managed. But there are, will and should be occasions where just the one perch helps, even in these over commercial times.

So just in case, slip that only perch back with care. For your prize it could be a small moment of satisfaction or a short period of blessed relief, but either way, it still has a long way to go and it may yet save your day again.

* Njörd, the Norse god of fishermen, seafaring and storms had 10 daughters, three of which are the Nornir, the three Disir Fates of Norse myth known as Urdhr, Verdhandi, and Skuld, and representing the past, present and future; Urdhr (that-which-is), Verdhandi (that-which-is-becoming), and Skuld (that-which-should-be) who shape the turnings of Wyrd through the worlds.

Albert's Time

There exists, therefore, for the individual, an I-time, or subjective time.

This in itself is not measurable.

Albert Einstein

But if you're an angler, you already know that.