a lesson in concentration, ingenuity and patience

A bucket, a backyard and fishing practice

Now for an amusing blog entry, believe it or not the rest have been serious! Around the age of twelve or thirteen Denis and I became interested in fishing, angling, the sport of rich and poor, big and small, we were hooked by the time we were officially teenagers. Now as I have said before, we lived our lives in a very regimented manner. Dad was in charge, and what he said went. The fishing spots available for us were very limited, we could have fished in the murky waters of the Leeds and Liverpool canal that ran through Burnley, but that would have meant buying a licence from British waterways, or in this case two licences, one for each of us. That was out of the question. Licences were cheap, but dad was even cheaper and that was that as far as that particular discussion went. But all was not lost, close to home, maybe a two mile walk was Molly Brook, feeding the abandoned Lowerhouse mill lodge, (a lodge for readers not in the UK is an artificial lake for feeding the now disused mill steam boilers)

Molly Brook originated as far as we were concerned from a tunnel that ran from under Accrington road in front of the crematorium. It meandered for about a half a mile until it entered the lodge proper. Fishing in the lodge itself was private, but the brook was fished by all the kids in the area. The brook was divided into two halves, by a small stone bridge on Molly Wood lane. One side of the bridge was the lodge, and the other the brook that ran from the tunnel. Fishing on the lodge side was risky business, the fish warden was on patrol for kids fishing in the waters for which a licence was required, so we avoided that side, some brave kids fished it, and were often seen running, rod in hand over the fields to the safety of the bridge and the ‘free’ side of the brook. The warden and his dog in mock pursuit, he had no hope of catching fast kids, but enjoyed watching them run for their lives!



Lowerhouse lodge as it looks today, much smaller than
the lodge in our youth, but still peaceful, and full of fish!



Both mum and dad lived in mortal fear of us drowning in the brook, as a brook it was only a couple of feet deep, and maybe six feet wide, but they were terrified that one day we would be sucked under and lost forever. Mum’s warning that “the weeds will grab hold of your legs and pull you under” are still embedded in my memory, for many years I thought that weeds were like triffids and actually hunted young boys, luring them to an early, watery grave. But we could go fishing, as long as “both of you go”, “and stay together”, “and watch each other”, “and stay away from the water”, “or the weeds will get you”. Of course we had to be home by six o clock so that we could all have tea together.

Three facts that all fishermen know is that a) fish start to bite when it is time to leave, b) the evening is always the best time to fish, and c) being home by six means that you will catch very few if any fish. We were proof of the last point, we caught very few, in fact to be truthful, no fish. We were always leaving when all our friends were just arriving for their evening of fishing, “got to go home for tea” was all we could say, knowing full well that the hundreds of fish in Molly Brook were getting hungry at the same time we were.

It was decided that we would use guile and cunning to outsmart the fish, we needed to practice. Practice in all sports made perfect, Nobby Stiles said that on the radio, and he won the world cup in 1966, so how could it be wrong? But how do you practice fishing, we had no need to cast, Molly Book was only six feet across, but we needed to watch the float, that was it! Maybe we were missing the float moving, that twitch of the quill that meant that a fish was inhaling our worms that we got from under the flat stones on the way to the waters edge. We knew that we needed water, a rod, reel, and a float, but we had to be home by six, and the evenings in summer were long and bright, what could we do?



the bridge was where molly wood lane crossed the
Leeds and Liverpool canal on the way to Molly Brook



The answer was obvious and sitting in front of our noses, we had a bright red, plastic bucket, that bucket could be our water, our very own Molly Brook! We already had the rod, reels and line, we were in business. We filled the bucket with water, set the float depth (very precisely) and sat there looking at the float. For hours we practised looking at that float, mum humoured us, dad grinned and Kevin who had moved back home by this time said we were silly. But undeterred we sat there, watching for the merest movement of the float, pretending to strike the imaginary hook into the mouth of a non existent fish. Our powers of concentration were amazing and unshakeable. For evenings on end we watched in shifts, we watched together, but we watched. Mum was happy because we were away from the terrifying boy eating weeds of Molly Brook, dad looked, walked in the house and did not emerge again, and Kevin said we were silly and left us to it.

Many an hour was spent with that bucket of water, in the backyard of 134 Accrington road Burnley, looking back now it seems ridiculous, but then we were young, and both mum and  dad being much older than any other parents we knew had no desire to take us fishing after working all day. Our imaginations must have been amazing, and to this day my patience is the envy of many, and I can concentrate on anything (or nothing apparently) for hours.

A couple of years ago Denis came to visit me in late winter at my home in Flin Flon, Manitoba, Canada. Still fishermen, we went ice fishing, which involves drilling a hole in the ice, and using a float to fish, as I sat there at my hole, and he sat there at his, concentrating and watching for the merest movement of the float. I was in tears (no-one, even Denis has known this before now) as I thought back to the evenings in our backyard looking at a float in a red bucket of water. Sometimes life can be so beautiful and painful at the same time.