The only thing I caught out fishing was my own nipple!

Double Vision with Charlie Adley

It has to be said that I am a spectacularly bad fisherman, which is a great shame. As a pastime it would suit me down to the ground, as that’s where I like to be: on the ground.

Nothing pleases me more than time spent out in the open air, wrapped in verdant surroundings, glorying in the natural wonder that is the West of Ireland.

Fishing tempts me because it supplies an excuse to indulge myself in my favourite sport of spacing out, letting my mind go where it will.

Over the years I have dangled lines in all manner of water. I vainly cast a line into the sea off New Zealand’s Coromandel peninsula, only to watch 6 years-old boys to my left and right pull up fish after fish with their hand lines.

I fed the trout of Lough Anaserd, when I lived on its banks in Connemara, and as a teenager, I entertained the roach, bream and perch of Northwest London with my pathetic and fruitless efforts to catch them.

Whilst living in a house not 100 yards from the flag iris banks of Mayo’s Cloonaghmore River, I watched trout leap ostentatiously high in the air, not two feet from me. Once again I let my optimistic nature get the better of me.

How could I possibly live there and not fish? An hour later, with a bright orange float resting in the upper branches of a tree, I wrestled with hundreds of metres of tangled, knotted line. The hook had landed on my T-shirt and – ouch! – no, it was worse than that. Somehow I’d managed to hook my nipple.

Great. Loads of dosh spent on fishing gear, long chats with the local experts in tackle shops to discover that I need this particular kit for my neighbouring stretch of river and while the fish take the piss by jumping and laughing, all I’ve succeeded in doing is polluting this bucolic environment and – OHMIGOD that HURTS so SO so much! – pierced the hook into one of my most sensitive bodily bits.

Even better, the Snapper chose this particular moment to come down and see how her He-Man was getting on with hunting dinner.

Fishermen in the village pubs had made it clear that I needed to start with a simple, cheap rod and reel. It was a matter of paying my dues, but I had my doubts.

You see, I used to sell industrial chemicals for a firm that gave its salesmen ‘promotional giveaways’ to bribe customers. The more you sold, the better the ‘giveaways’ allocated to you. Needless to say, I sold only a paltry amount, and my ‘giveaway’ kit comprised a few broken bic biros and a half-eaten chicken sandwich.

To read Charlie’s column in full, see this week’s Galway City Tribune.