Radio Head

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December 15, 2013

If an experienced fisherman wants to figure out whether it may be a good day for fishing he might start thinking about the way the wind has been blowing, recent changes in atmospheric pressure, rainfall patterns which might affect water levels, and that kind of thing.

Real experts go a little further, factoring in fluctuations in solar wind, subtle changes in the earth´s orbit and the possible distortions to the fabric of reality resulting from the curvature of space time.

Personally, I´m to dumb for any of this and so I rely on a relatively simple method of figuring out if it is going to be a decent day for fishing. I just listen to the radio.

In this neck of the woods we only get decent reception for Kiss FM and, thankfully, they tend to drop a lot of the DJ yapping and get on with the business of playing music. All is well with the world if they play Dire Straits, or Eric Clapton or something equally easy on the ear.

But if they are in the frame of mind to play, say, Wham, or the Pet Shop Boys or Madonna or Culture Club, it becomes immediately clear that things are simply not going well. So the music on the radio has become a kind of barometer of fortune and indicates whether a day is going well and has the potential to get better or is heading downhill fast. And this goes for fishing too. A selection of good songs augurs well for any proposed fishing venture but if you end up with a lousy song selection you might as well stay at home, throw a few logs on the fire and put your feet up.

Yesterday I started thinking about sneaking off to the river around lunchtime. At the time I was driving Leo home after he had some tennis coaching. It was likely that people had other plans for me, but the sun was shining and the river, as I imagined it, was seductive in the gentle breeze. There were good fish flashing their flanks as they turned in the current.

Would the fishing be any good? I listened to the radio to find out. Kiss FM was playing one of those annoying Christmas tunes that are designed to mislead you into thinking that a whole pile of joy is just around the corner. Normally this would be a sure sign that the fishing was going to be a waste of time. The river might have dried up, or become a raging torrent or that all the fish have had been poisoned. A song like this is a portent of disaster.

But then a funny thing happened. I resisted the temptation to switch the radio off and Leo and I listened to the song together. It was such a classic of the “let´s make a few quid out of Christmas” genre and was so cheesy and awful that we began to find it, somehow, brilliantly entertaining. And so we cruised along the road between Marbella and Coin with the radio turned up high and the car resonating with cracker pulling, family-loving, carol singing, fire crackling, merriment. Suddenly Leo´s father, known in the family as a miserable bastard at this particular time of year, was full of the joys of the season.

That settled it. The fishing was on! And it turned out to be pretty good too. All the fish took a little nymph fished under an indicator but the takes were so quick and tentative that sometimes no movement of the indicator was registered.

I managed to find a way of changing the position of the indicator pretty easily. The indicator is a piece of coloured foam with the leader threaded through with a needle. A couple of slip knots are tied either side of the indicator to allow it to be re-positioned. I must remember that!

The fishing was so good, in the end, that I had to drag myself away from the river and get home in time to dress up to go out for a formal dinner bash with the other teachers and the sixth form.