The sun slowly slid down, pouring golden honey coloured light onto our backs. Our shadows lengthened before us. A cartoon silhouette of two anglers in hats stretched and distorted before us and our floats danced as a big fish cruised by in the shallow water
“Must have been a carp”
A pause.
“Or it might have been a tench”
“Nah. Carp”
Longer pause.
“Bloody big tench if it was”
“Mmm”
“Probably a carp anyway”
Another pause.
A float dips suddenly and the resulting strike sends a shower of spray into the air. A rod takes on its full fighting curve, then… it’s all over. The water is swirling, bubbles fill the swim and the branches stop morphing and return to their usual spot in the space-time continuum. The fish had reached the safety of the jungle snags and had shed the hook. I reel in. A large scale is attached to my hook. I’d struck at a line bite and foul hooked it.
“Yeah. You were right. It was a carp”

I’d started the day with continuing a serious political email debate; trying to shame a far-right American politician into confessing his sins of supporting the oil lobby to the detriment of renewable energy supplies. Very heavy stuff, Now I was at the other end of the spectrum, muttering banal comments that would not seem out of place in an Oatabix TV commercial.

Fishing will do that to me. Any cerebral stuff goes straight out the window as soon as I’ve got a float to watch and a rod in my hand. The term ‘thinking angler’ wasn’t really invented for me. When I’m fishing in a really good place, my mouth opens a bit and drool comes out. I stop thinking about almost everything and drift off into some kind of meditative trance. People look at me and think I’m really concentrating. I’m not. I just dropped off the planet for a bit.

I have to be in a really good place though – somewhere where the air is clear and that special fishing magic is all around. Some places have this magic aura so thick, you think they must have been sprinkled with fairy-dust. Bury Hill Old Lake has it in spades - but to experience it at its best, you really need to get out in one of the punts. This old estate lake has to be one of the prettiest places in the South of England. On the north bank, overseen by the old stately home, a rolling green, field-sized lawn, flows down a hill until a dry-stone wall stops it from falling onto the bank. Here, ages old trees shade the fishing platforms from the harsh reflections of the fierce July sun. A horse with a female rider canters along the far side of the wall. This could only ever be England. The Polaroids keep the glare from my eyes and all is well with the world.

My punt partner today is Barmy Bill Rushmer. I have no idea how Bill ever came to be stuck with such a label as he one of the least barmy people I ever met. An ex science teacher, his head is in fact very well screwed on; when he opens his mouth he talks nothing but sense. I’ve known Bill personally for over 25 years and have been reading his angling words since the 1960s. Few people know their trade better than Bill, and regarding this lake, few know its moods better. Bill is a brick. One of life’s truly nice guys, married to a soul mate of the same persuasion, his wife Virginia. A very rare perfect match. And perfect company for a few hours out in a punt on the Bury Hill Old Lake on a sultry, sweltering late afternoon in July.

A welcome breeze briefly whispered though the bankside trees as our paddles dipped and rose, propelling us out across a mirror calm surface with large patches of tiny bubbles appearing every where. Tench? Maybe. Or bream. Or carp.
Oops. I’m doing it again, just thinking about being there puts my head in that ‘place’ where limbo land meets jelly brain. Relaxing stuff.

We paddled down to the Jungle. This has to be one of the most famous swims in the country and one of the most difficult to land a fish from. This is no place for lightweight tackle; hook ‘em and hold ‘em gear is required. The rule seems to be that the closer you fish to the snags, the more frequently a fish will eat your bait. The down side of this is that the fish will have you in the snags in seconds and you will never land the bigger fish. A much better ploy is to moor the punt further back and bait the swim in a manner likely to lure the fish out into the more open water. That six foot of open water makes all the difference between a fishy photo and another knot to tie.

Fishing large 8mm pellet on a size 10 hook over a bed of smaller 4mm ones is not a very selective method of catching fish. You really haven’t a clue as to whether the next bite will come from a 2lb bream or a 20lb carp. Neither of which were our target species by the way; this lake screams ‘tench’ and we were not disappointed with Bill taking a matched trio of around 5lb each. However on this day, I failed with the target fish and had to make do with landing bream and losing carp to provide my excitement, and there was plenty of that in those last couple of hours. Still, there’s always next time.

Everyone should do this. Take an old friend with you – someone you don’t have to talk sense to – and get out there on a hot sunny day with a float rod. You’ll think you have stepped back in time to a previous era; to a place where money worries and stress don’t exist and where catching fish is secondary to soaking up the atmosphere. Until the heat comes off the water that is, and the fish begin to move. When huge scaley backs push clumps of rushes aside and leave them waving in the air; when a patch of tiny bubbles start to move in the direction of that red tipped float you just spent the last two hours looking at. When you become part of the scene rather than just a casual observer of it. And when that patch of tiny bubbles reach the float, and it bobs, lifts and plunges under… Clamp down and hang on!

Geoff Maynard

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