Never trust a poet (with unknown angling credentials)
Posted: Mon Dec 02, 2019 9:08 am
With high hopes, buoyed by a half-remembered bit of verse about the North-East wind making pike lunge hungrily, I set out to a club pike match yesterday.
Two pike were caught.
The verse was googled this morning, and turned out to be this:
"Jovial wind of winter
Turn us out to play!
Sweep the golden reed-beds;
Crisp the lazy dyke;
Hunger into madness
Every plunging pike."
- From Charles Kingsley's "Ode to the North-East Wind".
Further googling reveals Kingsley to have been a kind, Christian, bigotted, Odinistic, racist bundle of contradictions... not the best source of advice, piscatorial or moral.
Maybe I should re-read Ted Hughes' "Pike" next time; or possibly not.
Two pike were caught.
The verse was googled this morning, and turned out to be this:
"Jovial wind of winter
Turn us out to play!
Sweep the golden reed-beds;
Crisp the lazy dyke;
Hunger into madness
Every plunging pike."
- From Charles Kingsley's "Ode to the North-East Wind".
Further googling reveals Kingsley to have been a kind, Christian, bigotted, Odinistic, racist bundle of contradictions... not the best source of advice, piscatorial or moral.
Maybe I should re-read Ted Hughes' "Pike" next time; or possibly not.