'The Wasted Winter

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22
Feb
2010

Passionate amateur angler Michael Burdett is one of 12 members of the Dodgy Scale Club, a group of disparate but talented amateur anglers whose liking for old fishing tackle is limitless. Between them, they have over 450 years of fishing experience, but this is mainly due to one of the members being very old. In his blog, Michael shares his love of his favourite pastime and his successes and frustrations on the hunt for fish.

"There is no point denying it that in fishing terms this has been a trying winter.

During the winter months, I am normally to be found after grayling on Welsh rivers or in a boat trying to search out a pike or two or tempting perch on worms and spinners.

But not this winter. This winter I have gone all fair weather with just a grabbed hour’s fishing here and there.

I have always lived by that seemingly sensible fishing epithet told to Billy Connolly on a fishing trip years ago: ‘There is no such thing as bad weather, just the wrong clothes.’

However, I am now not so sure. This winter I simply do not believe that the right clothes exist at all.

But this unusual break from my fishing has given me a rare chance to contemplate. And the question I have asked is: why do I fish? In particular, I have asked: is it some sort of obsessive compulsion that takes me fishing?

Here are some of things I have done since I have had more time on my hands.

1) I have checked my stamp collection. I am missing some early Hong Kong variants, which I have now located on an online auction site.

2) I have made sure that all the cans in the kitchen cupboards are turned round so that the labels are perfectly facing the front as you open the door.

3) I have at last managed to sew matching numbers into all of my black socks so that they are easier to pair up after they have been through the wash.

4) I have taken all of the little broken parts from all of my board games into the workshop and mended them. (The lead piping from Cluedo and the falling basket from Mousetrap both needed gluing, my Escalado and Scoop handles needed strengthening, and I repainted a couple of the bodies of my Subbuteo anglers.)

5) I have re-arranged my vinyl collection by spine colour. They look wonderful going from a shimmering white (The Faust Tapes) through to jet black (All The Kings Horses by The Legendary Pink Dots) via all of the hues of the rainbow.

6) I have re-arranged all of my albums back alphabetically because I could not locate any of my S Club Seven and Liberty X albums as I couldn’t remember what their covers looked like.

7) I have filled every line of every page of an A4 pad with the single hand-written word TENCH.

8) I counted out the hand-written word TENCH 25,643 times to find out how many times I had written it.

9) I have re-arranged all of my metal-detecting finds in size order rather than by historical date. They go now from air-gun pellet to car wheel.

10) I have re-listed all my friends and family in my phone book in terms of how much I like them, rather than alphabetically. (There is terrific logic to this as you are most likely to phone the ones you like, and they are now on page one).

11) I have re-counted my fishing rods and stored them in terms of date of purchase.

So, on reflection, quite simply, no. I don’t display any traits of a compulsive obsession at all. You can probably see that I am rounded character who just likes the outdoors.

Please someone make the sun come out. I am lost."