Week Fourteen The Clocks Just Stitched US UP!

UGH! How I detest the ‘˜Spring Forward’ day. I like to sleep but I also love being about of an early summer morn and a Tench-fishers’ dream is to awaken in the grey of a May day dawn-gloaming, to a swim fizzing having attracted greeny-bronze Tincas with golden eyes with your prebaited corn. That requires getting up in the morning, all right. And to have got there in a car with all mod cons is a cool plot, too. I have this deep-seated urge to design the Ultimate Fishing Campervan. I have all the help I need.
A big thing in specimen-sized fish-hunting, though, is to stay overnight in a ‘˜Bivvy’ to awaken bankside, or leave the rods out with alarms on them for carpfish. Now, ‘˜bivouac’ was always a word I understood to mean a temporary, single night tent for emergency use. A fishing bivvy, however, is the single most advanced and complicated bit of camping kit there is and top of the game is about five hundred quids’ worth after a discount!
And oh my word the 12V kit that the average posh long stay angler can take! Lots may have a tinny tranny radio honking away quietly about the day’s sport but others have solar panels to fill a battery to run the TV and there is a series of kart-type tackle-carrying trolleys that have mobility-market power and even USB outlet sockets to charge ‘˜Pods, Pads and Smartypantyphones. I have even seen a satellite dish on a stick above one of these ‘˜tents’. If the dude is using a bait boat, then his kit can have cost enough for a pretty decent car!
Now that the days are getting longer, I must get out and do a day’s angling-rally to get fresh pics and video of fishing venues. I used my new Manfrotto fluid video head in the Amy Slade clip – not that it shows much, as I go handheld in the car as ever – but I am yet to use the new ‘˜Frottage sucker-mount for sticking a video camera inside the car, motoring-TV style. Yes, pure sad look-at-me kit. I mean, who hasn’t pretended they were doing driving-telly sometimes, like we saw Ian Pinder do on MTV that time
Oh, was it just me? Ummmm.
The new season is kicking off and I am in Portsmouth tomorrow night for the Sextons Pompey JL Audio open evening. Still time to ask, I reckon, if you are interested in JL kit and in the area, by calling the Portsmouth boys on 023 9273 8262 and saying ‘˜The Fat Man Sent Me!’ Or just asking to be included.
We are talking free Pizza.
Adam Rayner On Line Editor