outdoorsmanstories

[outdoorsmanstories]

The one that got away

Fishing

Fishing as an activity and sport is full of story telling, exaggeration and deception, all in good faith and never used maliciously but still potentially ego boosting and not pure honesty. I find no fishing story can be more exaggerated than the fish that got away. A fish so big that the line snapped with the slightest tug, a monster jumping clear out of the water and creating a splash like a boulder falling from a cliff into the ocean, a 40lb monster that would have easily doubled the size of any fish you had caught in that spot and a personal best that you would have taken a lifetime trying to beat. When in reality you had a kink in the line and it just broke because it was weak, or the splash was no more than the noise a pebble would make when you plopped it into a pond only exaggerated by the commotion you were causing at the bank hopping about in the shallows creating all sorts of splashes and noises, or a 5lb fish that just happened to put up a good fight and got lucky and slipped the hook.

The beauty of the one that got away is that maybe you didn't see the fish at all so it could've been anything, you could be float fishing with a maggot and size 16 hook and if one gets away and you didn't catch a glimpse of it then it could've been a whale or a shark for all you know, not likely but the imagination makes it not unlikely

I have personally done this many times, in fact I did it just last week at the time of writing which is the 28th of June 2022. I was fishing for carp which is not something I usually do, I had my bait sitting about 10 foot from the bank in flat area about 20ft in diameter its a shallow part of the river which is caused by the bank being eroded by grazing cattle, the small shallow patch is encircled with reeds and carp regularly come in to the open area to feed and sit in the sun.

The story of this particular fish is that I'd crawled on my hands and knees to get close enough to the open area to just slip the bait in, the bait I was using was a square chunk of potato and 1 piece of sweetcorn on a hair rig on a size 8 hook. I'd recently spooled new 20lb line on my reel and it wasn't quite sitting in the spool right so after I got the bait in the swim I was faffing about with the line and had the drag completely off so I could take the spool off the reel, as I was trying to adjust the line my bait was picked up by a carp and I had to quickly and panicking get the spool back on the reel before the fish bolted, after I managed this I set the hook with a single smooth strike and the fish was off, launching itself out the water, pulling line off the reel as if I'd hooked a motorbike, at the time it was huge, a monster, Instagram photo worthy. I managed to get it under control and had it coming towards my net, got the head in the net, the line went slack and pinged into the air and the fish turned and sped off, the bloody hook had bent out which taught me to use a new hook every time I start a new fishing session because if you've snagged a branch or rock it'll damage the hook and cause you to loose a fish.

At the time in my mind this fish was the biggest carp I'd ever seen and I'd never seen one bigger, it was at least 20-30lb, but now a week later looking back at it I think it was probably closer to 15lbs which is still a respectable fish and especially so for a first time carp on old world baits.

I always enjoy having a story behind my catches and my achievements in fishing and the outdoors but I can't help but feel that the story of this fish is purely as exciting to me because I didn't manage to catch it, had I have caught that fish I would have still been over the moon but that sense of mystery that creates the desire to go back for more and go a step further to try catch the so called monster would have disappeared just like the fish did.

I love fishing and I think I always will, the anticipation of catching some beast from another world is addicting and you forget all your problems and troubles no matter the scale and severity of them, you just stare at the water waiting for your chance to be the lucky sod who gets to catch something for your dinner or something you get to release back to be caught another day by another hopeful angler, fishing is truly satisfying and the stories that did and didn't happen are what makes it that way.

Author

Henry Heagney

[outdoorsmanstories]

The blonde bunny

Wildlife and hunting

Rabbit populations in the UK like most of the world are constantly up and down, whether its from disease, over predation, lack of predation, abundance or lack of food or even just one person’s opinion because their plot of land or local park is covered or baron of bunnies.

This is not the actual rabbit I've been seeing, I haven't been able to get a photo because it doesn't hang around long enough for me to get a good enough snap with my phone

2022 has turned out so far to be a good year for bunnies on the farm I work on, I have seen more rabbits this year than ever before and every day I’m seeing new litters of rabbit kits hopping out the hedgerows to brave the buzzards, foxes and air guns for some grass. I personally found that 2021 was a poor year for rabbits mainly caused by mixomatosis and in one stretch of woodland on the farm I was the likely a cause for low numbers because on particularly windy days I could walk the section (which was only 240 meters long and at its widest a pathetic 20 meters wide) with my 12 gauge over and under ATA shotgun and get upwards of 8 in one walk (a little joke by the way, I doubt I had or ever will have any impact on the population).

3 good eating size rabbits shot within 20 minutes of each other on my morning work break

Colour phase wild rabbits can be quite common however I had never personally seen one until May 2022, most rabbits have a brown, grey, brown colour which allows them to blend in perfectly with low brush and hedgerows however then can stand out quite a bit in a patch of grass. Most colour phase rabbits occur when either someone’s pet had done a runner and found a nearby warren and went to town before being snatched up by a fox or the neighbours cat. Another way colour phasing can occur is through increased wild genetics, if there is a large number of an animal it is more likely that genetic anomalies will occur. This is second theory is what I believe is at play when it comes to my blonde bunny, I’ve seen it daily on a small patch of land that the farm rents on the outskirts of a village. Every day I enter the field to feed and check on the 6 month old calves I can look to my left and see the brightest sandy blonde blob in a patch of green with similar sized greybrown blobs around it. There is a possibility that an escaped pet had something to do with this but I think it’s an increase in population as there is only one of this colour and its companions of a similar size and likely from the same litter are all greybrown, also there where no reports on the villages Facebook group which is usually very quick to announce anything at all whether it's moaning about cars parked on the highstreet or someone cutting their grass wrong so I would expect there to be a full feed dedicated to someones beloved but missing pet.

Normally animals that stand out more such as albinos, leucistic and melanistic are picked off by predators as they are easier to pick out and lock onto, hence why I believe rabbits are doing well in my area this year as its surprising to see such a brightly coloured animal surviving the odds. There must be such an abundance of rabbits that the predators aren’t struggling to lock on and fill their bellies and I know for a fact that I’m certainly not struggling to get my share and cook up some delicious fried rabbit which I guarantee gives the biggest fried chicken restaurants around the run for their money.

Author

Henry Heagney