Bottle that intense yearning to fish - Dom Garnett

There are infinitely more important concerns than fishing right now but when angling of any sort is off limits, the very thought of casting into your favourite swim seems like a delicious, forbidden pleasure. 

Even just taking a ride along the canal near home (if you’re still allowed to by the time you read this!), you might be forgiven for feeling like a recovering alcoholic walking past Oddbins. Never mind an all-day session in the local hotspot, I’d give my left arm for just a solitary hour in a duff swim right now. 

While a global pandemic will always be more important than filling a keepnet, a degree of frustration is understandable. Alarmingly, the reaction from our more vocal anglers has been rather like the classic five stages of grief, from denial – “Fishing is exercise, they can’t stop me!” to anger – “How dare they tell me what I can and can’t do?” – to bargaining – “If my neighbour can go cycling, why can’t I fish?”      

Acceptance is now the only way forward. But weird as it sounds, rather than just grumbling and turning on Netflix, we should try to bottle that intense yearning to fish. Once things return to some shade of normality I believe we will treasure our freedom to get out on the bank like never before. Far from bringing bitterness, a forced absence from fishing should make us more grateful than ever for the riches we have. Because the plain truth is that we take so much of it for granted. 

We just assume we can go fishing for whatever we like, whenever we like. We have one bad day at a fishery and decide that it’s rubbish. We get so fixated on catching massive fish or winning matches that we miss 101 other joys along the way. We whinge freely about problems A to Z, but spend far less breath celebrating all that is good in our sport, not least all the amazing work done for us by angling clubs, fisheries and volunteers. 

Well, perhaps now, at long last, more of us might gain some perspective on what angling really means to us and our communities. 

Never mind catching every fish in the lake or smashing PBs, just being out in the fresh air and going fishing in a safe, free country is a great privilege. 

Regardless of what we catch, won’t that first session back feel amazing? We should make that first cast not only with happiness and relief, but a sense of deep gratitude and a renewed appreciation of just how good we really have it.