My advice: don’t leave it too late
People who do not go fishing could be forgiven for thinking that ours
is a lazy man’s hobby. Sure it can be done in a lazy way, and there
is little harm in that, but some of us have such a passionate desire to
fish long and hard as long as our health allows this, and believe me it
can be one of the roughest and toughest of all sports.
Thank goodness I did not waste my youth. Though handicapped by polio I
climbed mountains to catch wild trout in remote lochs where human presence
was rare.
I crossed wilderness with boggy terrain and so exhausted myself that walking
was sheer agony for weeks afterwards, but I caught wild trout.
I rowed boats against gale-force wind on big waters until my arms ached
and I gasped for breath, but sometimes it paid off with good catches.
I fished through the night for sea trout on rivers when wading in the
darkness put me in grave danger, though it was worth it because sea trout
fishing in the night is fantastic.
On the coarse fishing scene I stayed awake beside the rod sometimes for
three days and nights in a row, or endured the kind of freezing conditions
that were once commonplace in winter seeking pike often from a boat on
Hornsea Mere in East Yorkshire.
I can no longer do these things, but I would never forgive myself if I
had left it too late and not fished really hard while I still had that
priceless gift of youth.
What I am getting at is, if angling is really important to you and not
just a pleasant hobby, you owe it to yourself to do the hard stuff before
it’s too late.
You need a job with hours that allow you a reasonable degree of time free
or, as many anglers manage to achieve, no job at all for one reason or
another.
I have had over 21 years of retirement myself but I put in the hours at
work before that even though, because of my obsession with angling, I
believed ‘work’ to be a four-letter word!
Seriously though, while you can manage some less strenuous ways of fishing
despite age and infirmity, the really intense kinds of sport can only
be done while you are still young and vigorous.
Don’t waste your opportunities or you will never cease to regret
it.