10 New Year's Resolutions that won't make it until 31st December 2020...
Number 4... definitely not!
01 Eat more healthily on the bank
As you squidge your second chin to your chest and peer mournfully down at your Christmas gut, you will doubtless resolve to eat nothing but lean chicken, steamed veg and fresh fruit on the bank in 2020. Until that two-for-one pizza text illuminates your phone.
02 Plan a campaign
If you haven’t, in the grim, dark days of January, fantasised about an epic campaign in the year ahead that challenges yet rewards you - and ultimately never bloody happens because, well, these things are hard - you probably aren’t a carp angler.
03 Go fishing more
A perennial favourite of resolution-makers. There you are on New Year’s Day, nursing a hangover and daydreaming about a successful year ahead. Three nights a week from April till October? Yeah, definitely do-able. Then you remember the Euros are on this summer, and the fact you’ve barely done three nights a month before.
04 Go fishing less
You’re in a bit of a minority if this is one of your resolutions, but we cater for all tastes here. Some weirdos will actually be contemplating dialling down their fishing and learning new skills to impress the opposite sex. Such as ‘using an oven’ and ‘socialising’.
05 Have a bootsale
Clearing out your tackle is always a thankless task, made slightly more bearable by the thought of boxing up your unwanted kit and imagining the pound notes it will make during a summer boot sale. You’ll be thwarted, of course, by a) not wanting to part with anything even remotely useful and b) not wanting to get up early on a weekend for anything other than fishing.
06 Stick to your target water
Other sports have unwritten codes of conduct. Don’t come off your full run up to a young batsman in a friendly game of cricket. Or wear gloves in Sunday-league football. In fishing, don’t slink off to an overstocked match venue and fish it with three rods and alarms if you can’t get a bite on your main water. But you will…
07 Keep detailed notes
Keeping a detailed record of spots, sessions, successes and failures can provide you with an invaluable record of information that will help shape future trips and aid your quest to sort the wheat from the chaff. But it takes a bit of diligence and the chances of you completing for a whole year are slim.
08 Get your mates into fishing
Like all resolutions, this sounds like a fantastic idea. New blood for our beloved sport, a great weekend away with your mates and a whole heap of laughs and memories. In the pub over Christmas you’ll promise to introduce them to carp fishing ‘when it gets a bit warmer’. But kitting them out, finding a suitable venue and the thought of a million stupid questions will probably stand in your way.
09 Moves swims more
The best anglers are the most adaptable and the most mobile. It’s quite simple. But you’ve just put your bivvy up without any creases and you’ve already spread a million and one bits of terminal tackle over your bivvy table, so it’ll be a mission to move. You’ll just stay and convince yourself the fish ‘have to come past here at some point’.
10 Stop caring about what you see on social media
In 2019 you got a temporary Twitter ban for swearing at an angler you once idolised. And then you got kicked out of that day ticket group on Facebook because you and your mate thought your in-joke was hilarious and no-one else did. So you’ve decided to count to 10 before you post in 2020. 1, 2, 3, wHeRe…4, 5, 6, iS yOuR unhOoKinG mAt?! Bugger. Try again next year.
