I’m not one for being competitive. I don’t try to catch bigger and better fish than the good folk sharing the bank or rocks with me.
If anything, I wish them all the luck in the world. As long as I get my catch, I’m a happy chap.
There’s only one guy who can bring out a streak out in me that makes me somewhat difficult to fish with.
He can spot a chink in my armour and exploits it. When one of us catches, the other congratulates through gritted teeth. That pat on the back is a little harder than it should be.
You might be wondering why we even fish together. Fishing aside, we have good fun laughing and catching up.
But once the lines are in the water, that bit of needle appears, casting up sore memories of the ones that got away.
I’m still happy to remind him of the biggest brownie we’ve ever seen throwing the fly back at us at the net as he huffed and puffed in anger.
He was back in Scotland after working abroad for a while, so a charter day out was in order.
He was sure he had the killer set-up – he’d had lots of time to plot my demise and read the Sea Angler over the summer.
"Loser gets the chippy?" he asked.
Well, I never bet against trusty baited hokkais and I was determined to win so, with a game face on, I nodded in agreement.
I took the lead with a little pollack and he soon equalised with a nice cod.
A couple of pollock each kept it tied at 2-2 going into the last hour when bam, I hit into a shoal of coalies – 3-2, 4-2, 5-2. I was running riot and he was raging.
In desperation, he edged his cast closer and started fishing shoulder-to-shoulder into my spot, hitting the shoal.
Drawing close on numbers, I should have sensed what was coming – we were going to get in a tangle.
But while concentrating on beating him, I didn’t notice and struck into what felt like a monster on the end.
"Oh aye! Quality and quantity!" "Aye, you’re right" came the reply, knowing fine well what was in store.
He turned away, hid his smile and applied a bit of weight to my rod to make me think I had a battle on my hands.
If you could bottle and sell the feeling when your pal finds out the beast he’s played to the boat is nothing but two rigs fighting in the tide, you’d be a millionaire.
I enjoyed the small victory in numbers while I could. You lose as much as you win in this game.
On this occasion, he got the chippy and the bragging rights to boot.
