Untitled Story

I was sent the following story by somebody via e-mail and they didn't give me the name or the author of the piece. So whoever wrote it credit goes out to you.

The other day I suddenly thought of all the stuff that we as carp anglers take with us. Some of it is useful and some of it isn't,but we think that all of it is necessary. I realised that most of us carp anglers take stuff we might need but we probably wont. If the chances are that it probably wont be needed then why bother taking it with you?

I reckon that most carp anglers take too much with them and it makes for static fishing. The chances of an angler moving to a different swim if necessary (even if he sees thirty-five carp jump in half an hour somewhere else) are slim. All right, the chap who has gone fishing for the day would probably move, but the chap three swims down from him, who has just spent half an hour making sure that his satellite dish is pointing in the right direction, would not move. If he could, the bloke with the satellite dish would probably cast right down the lake over thirteen other people's lines, but he wouldn't move. It would be too much agro. All the gear that he has brought with him would mean that he wouldn't be set up again before dark and of course everybody hates setting up in the dark. Don't they?

I used to take loads of stuff with me. Years ago I had a motor bike and the amount of gear you could strap on that thing had to be seen to be believed. It was pretty worrying when going down the motorway in the wind and rain though, especially when one of those ruddy great artics steamed past at about four hundred miles an hour only three inches from your elbow. It always astonished me how much water suddenly appeared when these lorries went past; it's like going through a washing machine.

I even bought a wheelbarrow to fish one particular lake, partly because of the amount of gear that I had to take but also because of the amount of bait I wanted to use. It did however make an excellent chair, very comfortable, but it was a pain trying to get it in or on the car. I actually believe that the wheelbarrow made me more mobile than before though.

Anyway that's the point of my story. Now let's have the beginning. I decided to clear out my rucksack. Nothing-new there-we all do this sort of thing from time to time, or I presume that most of us do. I heaved the thing up from where it lives in my part of the bedroom. Notice I said 'my part'; if any of my gear wandered off to the wife's (now ex wife's) part there'd be hell to pay. Thinking about it though there's never much agro if she left her undies all over my tackle.

Somehow wandered off there; must keep my concentration. Right, now I have hold of my giant Abu rucksack, weighing in at approximately two and a half tons, and I struggle down the hall trying to avoid the kids' junk such as the roller blades that arrived at Christmas or that sticky stuff that the mother in law gets for them to play with. It gets everywhere and I'm pretty sure that she knows this, and when you consider that I'm the househusband (now single male mummy) I think I rest my case your honour. I've got past all that stuff and now its time to limbo the washing horse. I really don't know why they call these things horses unless its because they seem to move every time that you try to pass them.

At last the rucksack has been deposited on the floor of the sitting room. I need half an hour rest and a cup of coffee to stop myself from having a coronary on the spot. This is when the bright idea came, of taking out everything that I deemed unnecessary.

Well once I had taken out every single item that was in this skip of a rucksack the whole room was covered: you could not see the carpet or either of the sofas. I then cleaned out the rucksack before starting on what had been the contents. All the cobwebs and dried up maggots, old crisp bags and sweet wrappers were binned, the old bits of line were all cut up with any useful hooks or swivels carefully cleaned off and replaced in their proper homes where they should have been in the first place.

All the rubbish was now gone but I still had a mountain of stuff. I found that I had five tins of luncheon meat which I had carried about with me for over six months - the most traveled luncheon meat tins in the history of the stuff. I also found that I had a tin of leads. Now this at first sounds like an excellent idea but I weighed it and found to my horror that, including a few other leads that I had found in the bottom of the rucksack, it came to nearly a stone and that's not exaggerating either. I sorted out a few leads and replaced them in the bag, the rest could stay in the wardrobe. I also at this point put two spare sounder boxes and six spare alarms away. I had thought it necessary before to a spare or two just in case. There were five spare batteries as well, so three of these went in the cupboard.

Next I decided that it might be a bit much having a large tackle box and an ice cream tub, an old reel case and another smaller tackle box all filled to the brim with useful items like tangled up rigs, three hundred split shot, broken hair needles, seven marker floats, again probably just in case I lost one. I found all sorts of things in this part of my collection. There were hooks galore - I had at least five different makes with a complete set of each pattern. Altogether there must have been more than two hundred hooks in little boxes which you can never open, or if you do open them they fling the hooks all over the ground. This is even more annoying when they catapult themselves all over a muddy or twig infested bank-side.

I also found at least ten batteries. Now years ago you used to need a steady supply of batteries and very important they are too, but nowadays with alarms that only actually switch themselves on each time they beep or when a burglar tries to nick them they aren't needed in anywhere near the numbers that they used to be, so they went into the bin. Not that these ones were of any use as they were all dead ones anyway.

Now the pile was still pretty large but it did look dented. The next thing I chose to trim was my collection of forceps. I've got long, medium and short one, curved, straight and inbetweeny ones and I think I only ever use the smallest straight ones, so some of these were relegated to the cupboard. I also found that I had four different catapults of which three had broken elastics or pouches. Again I have my favourite, an old match one which is used for nearly all catapulty needs so the others were sacked on the spot. I also found a bundle of cable ties about two inches in diameter that even on a bad session I don't
think I could have got through. Two of the three torches that were in the rucksack went into the cupboard as well. I don't really think that you need a head, hand and rubber torch, one is quite enough.

The support for the back of my rucksack was made from an old bivvy table and that was the only thing it was used for so I exchanged it for a piece of board. Anyway to cut a long story short as they say (don't you love clichés - the rod hooped over, my mate wielded the net etc.) I packed all the really necessary stuff back into the bag and this time when I picked it up it wasn't too bad, only about a quarter of a ton but it should save my back next time. I didn't weigh the gear that had been removed but I wouldn't think I'd be too far out if I guessed it to be in the region of twenty five to thirty pounds (approximately 10 kilos for those of you who fish abroad).

Now when I go carping and I see fish jumping which are no where near me I can move reasonably easily if I want to. Its not how much gear that you've got, its what you do with it that counts!

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