Tracy&James | Thursday, 26 March 2020
This week the weather has been perfect to spark early spring insect life into action, the river levels in the area are also ideal, yet the fishing has been scuppered by the announcement of a lock-down to combat the coronavirus. As such, Tracy and I will not be fishing for at least three weeks, in fact government advice is to only leave the house once a day for a spot of exercise. Obviously this instruction has sparked a lot of debate over whether going fishing, largely a solitary activity, is allowable or not. Being as going food shopping to the local supermarket with everyone else is ok, there is an argument that a day out away from everyone would be perfectly acceptable. However it appears that fishing is effectively shut down in the UK whilst the more stringent movement controls are still active, with most associations, fisheries etc. closing-up shop.
This whole episode makes me consider the fragility of life and, less importantly, the economy. After all, if you trace things right back, then it’s likely that tens of thousands of deaths and trillions of dollars of lost market capital are attributed to a bat. Yes, probably one bat that had a fairly common bat infection that mutated.
If a single bat can disrupt normal life almost globally then it’s fair to say that there are probably thousands of unknown unknowns (as opposed to known unknowns) that can bugger up your fishing in any given year. Therefore, once all this has blown through, I intend to treasure every day’s fishing even more than before. After all it could all be gone long before it should.
I hope everyone stay fit and well in the coming weeks,
James.