Walton's Rucksack

  While some long stay carp anglers have bivvies more luxuriously appointed than my three bed semi, complete with mini TV, padded bedchair and goodness knows what else (I've even once seen a bivvy in which the angler, who was wearing slippers, had put some squares of rather posh looking carpet on top of his groundsheet!), most angling is done in relative discomfort. Sure, you might have one of those match fishing seatboxes with loads of gizmos that screw onto it, or a nice padded fishing chair, but at the end of most days of fishing, once you're past childhood, you find yourself coming home with, at the very least, a dose of backache. I've often fished without a chair, electing to remain more mobile, and sat on the lid of my bait bucket or an unhooking mat, or crouched for hours on my haunches, which isn't the wisest thing to do when your knees bear the "wear and tear" results of two decades of playing football! And then there are the insect bites, and the sti...

  Some forms of angling are more active than others. Lure or fly fishing involve constant casting, stalking carp or chub can involve lots of walking as well as creeping and crawling through undergrowth, and fishing for small fish can sometimes be a pretty frenetic activity, but on the whole fishing is a pastime that requires patience. Catching a 20 lb carp can require hours of sitting behind silent bite alarms and motionless bobbins, and fishing for specimen fish of any species tends to demand a lot of waiting. But patience isn't necessarily passive, nor waiting lazy. Sure, if you want to pull your hat down over your eyes and drift off into a stupor you can, but it's not the best way to end up with a fish on the bank. Waiting can be active. Tying rigs and making up PVA bags, scanning the water for signs of fish moving, altering your shotting pattern, thinking up schemes and plans to outwit the fish. Being a Christian involves quite a bit of waiting, too. After all, it's 200...