10 New Year’s resolutions for 2016

1 Lose weight

How in pity's sake are you going to lose weight in the winter? Following a hard day of angling there's nothing better than returning home to a freshly-tossed salad is there? Or leaving the Coleman at home to binge on fruit, leaves and that cardboard bread munga? Leave it until the summer mate and wax-fat on suet, red meat and deep fried produce while you think about your target weight (mid-thirty normally). 

2 Save money

Save money? In this day and age!? Pffft. While there's money to be saved by shopping around with the utility bills, walking to work and eating less (see above); there's rigs to be stuck-up trees, bait to be sprayed and carbon to rest endlessly in expensive bankside hardware. And what are you supposed to do when you're waiting (what our sport is based on after all)... Drink water? Nicht! Treat yourself to goodies to within a hair's breadth of your means, like we all do!

3 Do more around the home

Now, despite the best efforts of James Dyson I have to ask, how the hell did he get a knighthood? As we all know brothers, that Hoover doesn't push itself and Sir Jim has done everything with your second favourite sucker in the home except making one that does the job itself. We all have to woo, cajole and basically pay a sit-downer to do the job for us. So raise your glass to the good lady... and then your feet so she can do under the settee.

4 Fish floaters more

It's ninety degrees, the heat is pushing you back onto your bedchair, sweat drips endlessly into your eyes, the lager is so cold the can's welded to your palm. A black shape idles past. Instantly you spring into action. You reel in a rod to re-spool. In seconds you slide on a controller and whip a gossamer line to a size 8 hook. Effortlessly, you attach a Mixer to your hook and punch the whole ensemble past the fish, accompanied by a pouchful of dog food. The fish carries on, leaving you squinting into the sun, reaching back for your now-warm lager. 

Without the paragraph above you'd still be sunbathing (what you pay Thomas Cook thousands for) and enjoying a beer before a gentle doze. What's it to be?

5 Move onto fish more

As you test a pop-up in the margin, you see a fish leap out of the corner of your eye. Half-a-mile away (around the crowded pit), a fish has belied the fact it's there. Everyone has seen it. Like Lee Van Cleef in a western you eye the far bank... No one has moved. It's now the simple task of packing up the tea gear, cooker, tangle of tackle, six rods, nets, buzzers and sticks, bedchair, bag, clothes, two-man bivvy, groundsheet, luggage, trolley, food, bait and your good self and running the distance to get there first. But was it just a moving fish? Was it cleaning itself having finished a meal? Were you hallucinating? Anyway, someone's already in there now. Never mind. 

6 Fish for other species

While there's huge merit in the lady of the river, the Grayling; the bullet-like barbel; the doctor-like tench and even the dustbin-lid bream... Oh alright, I'm pushing it now, it's not a carp is it? It doesn't take three tons of tackle to catch does it? You don't get to dress as a soldier do you? Just catch one by accident and claim it as 'targeted' in the Angler's Mail and count yourself an 'All-Rounder'. 

7 Take more exercise

Either adopt resolutions 4 and 5 for exercise, or start going to the gym (which makes you thirsty and peckish).

8 Quit smoking

Like it or not, our 'sport' (like snooker and darts) is entwined with the worst of the worst habits... And smoking. What do you do when you've returned a whacker? What do you suck when you're stalking (now, now)? How else do you look like a cowboy when turning up at the fishery gates? Wear a poncho? Naaaaaah. 

9 Read more

You could expand the old grey matter by reading more. A paperback beside the bedchair is always a sign of an intelligent angler. The subject of said book is always a giveaway. War-related material is always the favourite of the Armalite-sporting tackle tart. Self-improvement books are always the sign of the man in the furthest swim from the car park (as are top shelf magazines). Cookery books are the books of the man at home and thrillers aren't really anyone's cup of tea. And fishing books don't count do they? If they did, I'd have a forehead like the Rock of Gibraltar (minus the monkeys). 

10 Stop maing resolutions

There's always next year, bud. 

This article was taken from issue 107 of CARPology magazine. For the very latest articles and best deals subscribe to CARPology magazine.