Country life
In a bait
Leanda de Lisle
Women have always been given the gross jobs: wiping babies' bottoms, getting the lunch, nursing the sick or cleaning the bathroom. 'Swallow hard' could be the motto of our sex. But before you get car- ried away thinking about how that might apply to you, let me specify the particular task I had a horrid time with yesterday. We all went fishing and I got the jolly job of squishing maggots on to metal hooks: red maggots, to be precise.
Maggots are sold dyed in all the colours of the rainbow, but those in the bag in the nursery fridge are quite plain, being either red or natural. We bought them from Ibstock Fish and Tackle at the same time as the fishing rod that was my youngest son's tenth birthday present. It's a strange looking blue pole that telescopes out to about 12 ft. We were told that it is very easy to use since you don't need to cast: you just shoot out the rod to its full length and suspend your line over the water. That's the theory at any rate. The practice has proved somewhat more complicated.
We set off from the house with high hopes and our big, brown labrador in tow. Two minutes later we arrived at the muddy edge of the lake at the bottom of the gar- den. Peter had already attached the line to the rod, but there seemed to be a lot of it about — especially around the dog. We unravelled the panting, eager beast and tried to make him sit a few feet away. He didn't appear keen to be kept at a rod's length, but as we started to shout and scream at him he became confused and sat down. We then weighted the line so that we could measure the depth of the water, as we had been told to do. Unfortunately, Peter then cast the weight and it flew away, never to be seen again. He promised to be more careful henceforth, and with scarcely a pause we decided that the time had come to fish. That meant that it was maggot time, but my younger sons refused to dig around in the bag for a suitably juicy specimen. That was, of course, left to me.
My lucky dip brought out a bright red specimen. I then had to attach my fat find to a hook. Do maggots wiggle or what? Wiggle, wiggle, wiggle, wiggle, while I dug the hook into my fingers time and again. Eventually I got the knack. As I mentioned earlier, it involves squishing. Once the hook has finally been pushed though the mag- got's middle you can drop it. It then goes on wiggling. 'This isn't cruel,' I told the little creature as it dangled before my eyes, 'it's democratic. The Prime Minister says so.' With that, Peter sent it up, over and down into the roach-infested waters. The black surface shimmered and swirled as we passed the rod to its owner. 'When the float goes under, pull the rod up slowly,' we instructed my son. Immediately, the piece of pink plastic disappeared under the water.
The ten-year-old jerked up the rod. There was a bright flash. A fish! But how to bring it in? The process was a four-man job: one to hold the rod, one to hold the dog, another to grab the fish and the last to unhook it. A task that was, let me tell you, simply revolting. The fish, clutched in the hands of my middle child, was a tiny little thing, no more than five or six inches long, and the hook seemed to be deep inside. Even with the help of an implement that looked like a crochet hook, but is designed to take out fish hooks, I struggled. Increas- ingly convinced that I would take out the fish's guts with the hook, or pull off a chunk of its head, I handed over the job to Peter. All right, so women do bottle out sometimes — and I admit he managed the business very successfully.
The unhooked fish was dropped in a bucket where it swam around. We admired its black and silver scales and brilliant orange fins for a minute or two. Then I swallowed hard and pushed my hand back into the seething bag of maggots.
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