The three stages
In his excellent book 'Blood Knots', Luke Jennings wrote:
"The late Bernard Venables, author of the classic Mr Crabtree fishing books, used to say that there are three stages to the angler's evolution. To begin with, as a child, you just want to catch fish - any fish. Then you move to the stage where you want to catch big fish. And finally, with nothing left to prove, you reach a place where it's the manner of the catch that counts, the rigour and challenge of it, at which point the whole thing takes on an intellectual and perhaps even a philosophical cast. I tried this out on a pike-angling friend of mine, the rock guitarist Rene Berg. 'It's like with women, then? he said thoughtfully."
I think that we could legitimately alter that last comment to "It's like with birding, then?"
"The late Bernard Venables, author of the classic Mr Crabtree fishing books, used to say that there are three stages to the angler's evolution. To begin with, as a child, you just want to catch fish - any fish. Then you move to the stage where you want to catch big fish. And finally, with nothing left to prove, you reach a place where it's the manner of the catch that counts, the rigour and challenge of it, at which point the whole thing takes on an intellectual and perhaps even a philosophical cast. I tried this out on a pike-angling friend of mine, the rock guitarist Rene Berg. 'It's like with women, then? he said thoughtfully."
I think that we could legitimately alter that last comment to "It's like with birding, then?"
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