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JUL/AUG 2019
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FISHING|
BRITAIN TO BEND: A FISHING LIFE
BY EDMUND WADESON
I recently traced paths across the globe to reflect back on
this life where fishing of one form or another has been a
constant thread, spanning roughly half the western hemi-
sphere. I have zoomed in on places that loom large in my
own personal history - down to the region, town, waterway
and in one case, to a specific bend in a river.
Fishing began for me decades ago in the ditches along-
side a narrow, rutted road that led through farm fields on
the outskirts of the small town of Ashby on the east coast
of England. As the crow flies Ashby is approximately 4,872
miles from Bend, but my own journey here followed a
much less direct path and took far longer than any straight
line would imply, besides, no crow could make that flight.
I was too small to sit on the seat of the hand-me-down
bicycle, so I stood on the pedals and tried my best as
the seven Wadesons, like an unkempt gaggle of geese
on wheels, cycled down Burringham Hill Road and out
through the fields, going fishing. Mum made nets for us all
out of bamboo poles from the garden with some wire for a
hoop lashed onto one end: she sewed a length of one of
her old nylon stockings around the hoop and tied the other
end around a small glass jar. Each of us had a net, and
Dad carried two large glass jars on the carrier on the back
of his bicycle. We would sweep our nets through the dark
waters and weeds of the roadside ditches then lift them
up to see what the small glass jar contained. We would
dump our catch into the jars on Dad’s bike and when
these were full, we cycled back home with our catch. It
was an adventurous way to spend a sunny afternoon. The
adventure continued when we got home and Dad dumped
the large jars into our aquarium. It was very exciting as we
all gathered round the fish tank to watch our goldfish go
absolutely mad chasing strange and fascinating aquatic
creatures around their domain. Inevitably there were weird
and interesting organisms none of us could recall catch-
ing. This was the beginning of the fascination for things
subaquatic that has transmogrified somewhat over time,
but that has remained intact and ingrained into my psyche
to this day.
From suburban Ashby - with its brick row houses and
walled gardens - we moved to the small village of Croft in
Leicestershire in the Midlands, a farming community with
what is now the largest quarry in England at its center. I
roamed the fields, lanes and hedges within a small radius
of our home and still recall the day I happened upon man
sitting on a wicker creel at a bend in the small River Soar
that flowed through a pasture near our home. He had a
long rod stretched out across the bank side reeds; just as I
came upon him he lifted his rod and there was a tremen-
dous splashing in the dark water. I watched as he lifted a
large fish over the reeds and deposited it on the grass in
front of me. The Perch was unlike anything I had encountered before. I can still see the
gold and green flanks, the pure white belly, the sun reflecting off its side, and the black
eye ringed with gold as it lay in the grass with its red fins waving. Dan Bills was the fisher-
man’s name and he knew my Dad from the quarry, “Well, that’s supper”, he said and then
he packed up his rod and creel and walked off with the Perch dangling beside him. I never
saw him again.
The image of that Perch lying on the grass remains etched upon my mind. As I walked
home across the pasture that afternoon, I knew I wanted to do exactly what Dan had
done. He had shown me that there were amazing fish in that small river, and I needed
to figure out how to catch them. Shortly after my encounter with Dan and his fish, I recall
grabbing a bamboo garden pole from a stack leaning in a corner of the garage. I bent a
small nail over in the work bench vise with a pair of pliers, tied a length of garden twine to
the small end of the bamboo and lashed the bent nail to the other end. I took a few slices
of bread from the larder and set off one Saturday morning back to the River Soar. Sitting
on the old stone two arch bridge across the narrow river I mashed bread around the nail
and dropped it into the water just a few feet below me. I was enthralled by the school of
small fish that gathered to eat the bread. I didn’t have any chance of actually catching any
of the tiny minnows eating the bread so eagerly from the nail, but what was important was
that I was having an encounter I had never had before; I had started to figure the fishing
thing out on my own.
Fishing became a past time of digging garden worms, infrequent train rides to the fishing
shop in nearby Leicester to buy hooks, floats, reels, lines, and plastic boxes of maggots.
With no one to teach me, I was left to figure out for myself how to fish. Saturdays after
my chores, I could be found along the overgrown river banks dropping hooked worms and
maggots into the dark water and watching for the cork float to tremble, then dive down
when a fish took the bait. A grainy black and white photo shows me in shorts with a rod I
made myself from two awkwardly joined bamboo poles, dropping an impaled garden worm
on a hook made from a bent pin from Mum’s sewing kit, over the river’s edge reeds. De-
spite the crudeness of my gear I occasionally ran home cradling a flopping Roach, Perch
or a Chub yelling, “Mummy, I’ve got one”. She would fill the bath with cold water and we
would watch the fish slowly revive and swim around for a while before becoming supper
that night. With these humble beginnings and infrequent successes my affinity for the rod
and reel increased, and each summer weekend the River Soar was my fishing school.
I remember sitting at the dining room table one day when Mum asked me, “Edmund,
would you like to go live in America?” “Oh, Yes”, was the fast reply, and so began undoubt-
edly the most significant event in my family. Within a few short months Mum and I were
standing on the deck of an ocean liner berthed alongside the dock at Southampton when,
late in the evening the loudspeaker announced: “All non-passengers and guests please
leave the ship”. Ropes were cast off and the distance between ship and shore gradually
increased. We watched as Dad waved from the dock while the ship slowly gathered mo-
mentum. Small tug boats nudged the ship along and gradually the lights of Southampton
faded into the distance across the black evening water. Morning found us in Cherbourg,
France after the night time crossing of the Channel. Shortly after daybreak the ship pulled
away from the French coast and aimed its black bows westwards towards an uncertain
horizon, the vast Atlantic Ocean and America beyond.
The first day was cold and grey with unfriendly looking waves that soon began the
monotonous lift and fall that continued for the next nine days. Within the first hour I lost
all the food in my stomach and retired to our cabin to lie down. Not long afterwards Mum
came and joined me and there we stayed for a week, she on the bottom bunk and I on
the top one. Occasionally we summoned the courage to stagger up to the promenade
deck, where we reclined in miserable sickness on uncomfortable wooden chaise lounges.
We watched 40 and 50 foot tall waves sweep unendingly past the glass windows, driven
by howling gale force winds under ragged grey clouds, resembling green and white foam-
ing mountains of water. For a week the relentless Atlantic surges continuously forced
the bow of our ship to climb ever higher, to pause and then plunge downward into the
oncoming face of huge mid-ocean swells, throwing gigantic sheets of white water and
foam upwards and to either side. The incessant side to side rolling of our temporary metal
home sent both our body and our minds reeling. No doubt about it, the Atlantic Ocean
is one watery Hell of a place to be in January, I couldn’t recommend it less. Nine days
after waving goodbye to Dad in Southampton our ship finally crawled into the ice choked
Hudson River and docked in a freezing cold New York, encrusted with several feet of ice
and carrying a cargo of French, German and British zombies.
We arrived in American that day to an amazing panorama of skyscrapers, unbelievable
traffic and more snow than I had ever seen before, plus a way of life and a culture I was
completely unprepared for. Cars drove on the wrong side of the road. Words like Varsity,
Sophomore, Chevrolet, pickup truck, diner, and many others were totally absent from my
understanding. Dates were something I expected at Christmas and came in a small tin
with images of palm trees and camels on the lid. This perhaps explains why the girl in my
math class was so angry at me when she asked me if I wanted a date on a Friday night,
and I apparently didn’t respond as she expected. I couldn’t understand why she was so
excited about a single date; I was used to eating them by the dozen.
In Hancock, New York, where I lived with my aunt and uncle while Mum worked in New
York City, the Roach, Chub, Perch and Gudgeon of Croft were replaced by Trout, Bass,
Sunfish and Bullheads - all of which, like everything else, were completely foreign to me.
A visit to my cousin and her husband later that year found me standing on the dock of
their Lake Skaneateles home, casting a fly rod under cousin Alan’s instruction. The first
thing I hooked was myself as I adroitly buried a barbed size 14 Elk Hair caddis dry fly in
my forehead. Mum borrowed one of Allan’s Wilkinson razor blades and had me hold still
while she cut it out. Naturally, the fly rod did not positively impress me at that first meeting.
Alan gave me the rod and reel anyway, and we drove away with it across the rear console
of Aunt Kitty’s Pontiac.
Hearing about the run of Shad up the Delaware river which flowed through Hancock
piqued my interest and I found pictures of shad flies in a sporting magazine. I figured I
could make something that looked like that. I found some sewing thread and number 10
Eagle Claw worm hooks, tore off a piece of tin foil from the roll in the kitchen drawer and
started looking for some kind of fur or hair that resembled the magazine image. My aunt
had an old German Shepherd named Bing with long hair. I knew she would take a very
dim view of me hacking clumps out of his hide, so I determined to be strategic about it. I
carefully cut some inch long strips of tan hair from the underside of his tail and stole away
to my upstairs bedroom to make the flies. After much frustration I ended up with three
very ugly shad flies. I took them out to the Delaware across town and commenced to
lashing the water with the fly line to no avail.
After some hours of fruitless activity I sat down on a midstream boulder and just let the
line float down stream and hang with the fly in mid current. All of a sudden the rod jerked
down river and a silver torpedo launched itself airborne at the end of the line. After a very
exciting tussle back and forth with this animated silver rocket, I brought the fish in and
unceremoniously bashed it on the head. I lay it on the boulder I had been sitting on and
admired its aerodynamic silver qualities before deciding to try that again. I threw the line
out and allowed the fly to hang into the current below me once more. Before too long I
hooked another Shad and landed it also, after another series of thrilling aerobatics. My
aunt and I soon found out that Shad makes a pretty lousy meal so I didn’t bring any more
of them home. I also decided that I was a pretty lousy fly fisherman and so I stayed with
the spinning rod and reel, and the worms and small spinners that were proving far more
effective on the trout that had become my main catch.
My High School years found Mum, Dad and me living in Larchmont, New York which is
situated on Long Island Sound. Fishing here is strictly salt water so Striped Bass, Floun-
der and Bluefish became my targets. On one occasion I was towed around Larchmont
Harbor in my small inflatable zodiac for almost an hour by an enormous Bluefish that
grabbed a yellow bass jig affixed to a steel guitar string I was using for a leader. My rod
and line were far too light for such a beast, but they were all I had on hand. When I cast
the jig into a writhing school of baitfish I had no way of knowing such a brute would grab