This is a guest article written by a friend of mine, also I'm sure a friend of yours without being presumptive, the cheeky little chappy who we have all encountered on the banks, a birds eye view of fishing but not as we know it.
Hello my name's Robin and I like anglering, yes that's not a typo and to practice anglering to it's full potential means an easy meal and a satisfied belly. Come with me on my journey through the foliage where I look for you anglers on a daily basis, some of you may not even notice me doing it but many of you know full well whats going on, for it is an art form and one that I have mastered.
My patch includes some woods and a footpath but most important of all my little river. All twists and turns it has many spots where the angler can angle away to their hearts content. More importantly I can easily angle for them. They are a good bunch here, they rarely leave any litter and on the most part are quiet, unlike my old territory upstream where this is not the case. Maybe because this place has it's own gate it keeps out all the riff raff, all I know is when I hear the first jangle of the padlock being opened my day's anglering is about to start.
So upon hearing the gate close I head off in pursuit although it is a short one given my target quarry is setting up by the car park, why do you humans always do that? Plus how long is this guy taking to set up and does he really need all that stuff? Looks like he's called Drennan as his name tag is over all his gear, there used to be one called Shakespeare too but he hasn't come back - I think he got bard. By the time Drennan got his gear sorted two others have arrived and headed up river, I bet the missus is on to them already yet i'm still blanking here.
My missus is cheeky, she'll often perch on the edge of their bait tub but I don't like doing this as they always seem to reach for a camera when I do, I think it's so they can report me for stealing or something, I don't know, anyway I always land in the bushes next to them and let them know I'm there, if they have maggots they'll often throw them to me, sometimes they'll reach for the camera too but I'm often too quick for them.
We both like maggots, sometimes they come in different colours and the missus once said she saw over a hundred in a tub, I suspect there was many more than that and she would have counted better were she not stuffing her beak so readily. Sometimes you get little pink maggots that almost seem to glow in the dark and we both agree that the mix of colours is fun although we're not sure about those green ones.
So now my anglering has finally succeeded with Drennan by landing on his rod, this made him feed me, it's a cunning trick I learn't watching a damselfly land on the orange floaty thing. I like the anglers who have the orange thing on the end of their rod as the middle bit makes for an ideal perch for me to get maggots, whilst they use maggots to get perch - work that one out. However many of them now seem to use those little brown pellets that look like rabbit poo, whenever I tell Rabbit that she always laughs.
This leads me to my associates, I don't call them friends as this is my territory, they are welcome though. I'll start with little Jenny Wren - She's a loudmouth who often scares the breast off me when she turns up the volume, where she gets her voice from nobody knows, but she is always helpful when letting us know that Mink The Merciless is on the scene, as we can be off in a Flash! Then there's Harry Heron - Now he's a right case, he reminds me of the pterodactil pictures I had in my Fledgling Book of Dinosaurs as a chick, a cantankerous old so and so when disturbed. Finally there's Kingy, always dashing about showing off his halcyon blue, never seems to hang around for long, I'd love to know where he's off to all the time, that brill blue blur - You try saying that with a beak full of flouro pinkies
I'm now off to do another bit of anglering as Drennan has fallen asleep, where's Jenny Wren when you need her? Two more chaps are chatting downstream so I head there, I hear them discussing whether the river is spelt Lea or Lee, for heavens sake it's only three letters long how hard can it be? (It's Lea in these parts by the way, even Rabbit knows that) I hear one of them is called Robin, ha ha named after me no doubt, now he has to have maggots, although I'm not sure about that camouflage hat, I'll land on his net to find out.
Turns out he's another one of those camera guys so I quickly take a few maggots and I'm of to have nap like Drennan if only to sleep off whatever spices he put in them. No wonder the old fella who is with him pretends he can't hear him. I'll do more anglering when the afternoon fishers come, I'm doing ok today but I once angled 8 in a row which was a new pb for me although I followed through on someone's giant green umbrella I was so bloated, but what a red letter day that was or should I say red maggot day.
After my lunchtime hiatus the river is now busier with many walkers going down the footpath, they always seem to chat when they are moving much like geese. I spot a family fishing and have a gander, it's nice to see the human woman fishing as well, my missus is just as good at anglering as me after all. They have children so this is an easy meal as they love me turning up, the little ones always point at me and give me loads of maggots, I like to think I am training them so that they are easy for us to angle when they are grown up.
On the nearby pond there's a couple more, Fox and Korda who have a green tent and their rods make a beeping noise much like Kingy does when he's had too many minnows. I'm not sure about these guys as they are talking about a Tutti Frutti Snowman Pop Up. I can tell you there's no chance of any snowman popping up today as it's far too warm. Also Rockin' Robin was a much better song than Tutti Frutti as it was about me, what do you expect. I get nothing here as the round balls they are using are much too big for my beak, they do smell nice though.
I'm almost done for the day but there's just time for one last feed off a couple of lads who seem to be spending much of their time on their portable telephones, apparently the younger ones are starting to tweet each other now, I always knew our language would catch on.
