Against The Clock
How do you balance your work and family life with carp fishing in practice, week to week?
It never ceases to amaze me how much fishing people think I do. It’s understandable, I suppose, but I like to look at things with a bit of reality. For a kick-off, I fish in the middle of the week, something which can give me a huge advantage. Secondly, I only fish two nights a week. Many believe I live on the bank, and I could think of nothing more boring and uninteresting! There are those who do, of course, and fair play if this is what you want from your life. For me, there is still a world to enjoy and take in, so that is what I spend most of my downtime doing.
The one thing this does, is make me keen whilst I am on the bank—notice I didn’t say whilst I am sitting behind my rods waiting for a bite. In essence, my session begins as soon as I start my van, invariably at some ungodly hour on a Monday morning. I clear my mind and think of the venue I am heading for. The choice of swim is never on my mind—selecting a plot even before you have opened the gate is a recipe for disaster in my book. I generally think of things from the past, and as soon as I get where I am going, it’s on with my peaked cap and polarised glasses. The chase has begun, and it won’t end until I have packed up some 48 hrs later. At least in that time I will have operated at my best, not letting time dictate the rules, leaving me thinking, I’ll do that tomorrow.
If you think I have always been this lucky, then think again. For 22 years I served in the Army, and I can assure you there aren’t many jobs which can restrict your time as much as that! If I did six nights in a year, then I was on a roll, so in essence, I had to make the most of things on very limited time. Did I crave for more time? Yes, I did. But it taught me all I would ever need when it came to catching a carp. I looked for hours, until my eyes bled, I learnt where and what the carp did, and sometimes I got to feed them and fish for them. Richard Walker once wrote, ‘One hour in the right place is worth five in the wrong one.’ For me, those words meant everything, and if I looked hard enough on one of my five-hour sports afternoon sessions, I normally landed one in the end.
Carp fishing should be a pastime which takes us away from the real world and any realities it creates. What we achieve as an individual, should be what drives us on. Unfortunately, in this high-tech ‘want it now’ world, it becomes more about what others think, and the 15 minutes of fame on the Interweb. If family requires your time, then make a realistic plan for your fishing. Use others as a guide, and now and again you will find someone or something which can drive you on. But in the end, it’s about what you want, and your desires. The sad part about carp fishing is that you never really get told all the details about what actually happened, how many days and nights the captor had, how long the swim was baited and roped off for the filming, or when a bait boat was involved. If people told the full facts about such things, then we can gauge what we achieve with a more realistic outlook. It may sound a little odd, especially from someone who has lived the last 25 years in the public eye, but I have always danced to my own tune, fishing for the carp I wanted to catch and angling on the places I dreamed of.
In the end, we are all different, and driven by different things. However, my only advice would be, don’t be driven to have a life on the bank, because in most cases, it is unsustainable, and life has so much more to offer!
