Booking fishing

The fishing club that I belong to has a very efficient web based booking system. It is all very slick. You log on with a password, tick little boxes, and when you are done it sends you an automated e-mail. Very functional.

But back in the day, we had to deal with people!

One club had a truly dear lady, whom one phoned at set times in the evening. She chatted away, and got to know each of the regular club members, at least in an “over the phone” kind of way.  As a high school kid, my car owning friend obliged and the two of us fished every single day of the holidays, booking the next day’s water in the evening , just after getting in off the water. Each day as he dropped me off at the farm house we had a ritual in which we had to decide who was going to call her. “ you call her” “No, I called yesterday, you call her” and so it would go.

We referred to her by the most dreadful name you could possibly give a lady, but never to her face of course, and our appalling label was  hardly befitting of such a gracious and friendly soul. I guess it was a macho schoolboy thing, fortunately conducted harmlessly between the two of us, but mention of it here brings the memories flooding back.

Another club up the road had a booking office that you called at. I remember holiday season up there. We would stop by in the morning, eager to locate the best beat, find out what had fished well the day before, and generally fuel up on fishing lore.

But the old fox in the booking office, albeit being friendly enough, had a sour disposition. We would scan the blackboard behind him, running our eyes down the list of farm names. Each one we paused at and enquired about would bring on remarks of “full of bass that one”, or “you will get stuck on that road for sure”, or “choked with weed”. So it would go, until inevitably there were none left from the list, and we would return to the water where we had blanked the day before. Our enthusiasm and eagerness in tact only because we were fifteen years old.

Thinking back on it, it was not unlike that classic John Cleese skit, in which he calls on the cheese shop, and tries unsuccessfully to buy just about every cheese known to man.

Then there was the time that I phoned ahead to book camping and fishing at Highmoor. Of course the phone line is strung feebly up a mountain pass, and there is a lot that goes on between town and Highmoor along that line, so it was crackly.

When we arrived at that tiny office, fully loaded with gear, my wife and I were alarmed to hear that it was fully booked, and that there was no place for us. I politely asked to see the booking register, where I discovered that my name (Andrew Fowler) had been morphed in a label that I am still referred to at times, “Hundry Sowler”. I politely corrected the good booking man, and turned to speak to my wife, but she was gone: she was outside in the garden sobbing with laughter!  

You had to be there.