BOXING DAY FISHING?

Loud hints I have dropped, all the year,
About my needs, for fishing gear
They’ve been noisy enough, for all to hear,
Fly fishing expenditure, can be very dear.

I am thus hopeful, through all my shouting,
That Santa will call, on his next outing,
And on Boxing day, I’ll go trouting,
With my new rod, which I’ll be flouting.

Or has my lamenting, been in vain,
Though I made my rhetoric, simple and plain,
Will my Boxing day fishing, go down the drain,

A FLY’S UN-DOING

While sitting at my computer,
A fly flew though the door,
I hit it with the Daily Mail, and now that fly’s no more.

So I put it in my tackle box,
And when I took it out,
I fixed it to a size eight hook, and now that fly’s a trout!

NO SMOKING

A kipper, it is said, is two faced and spineless, and without guts,
I know a man like that, with similar traits, no ifs or buts,
His name surprisingly is Roe,
Another piece of anatomy the kipper has to forego,
But due to Mr, Roe’s need to smoke,
He smells like a kipper, and that’s no joke.

OLD HAMMER HEAD

What sort of mood was the good Lord in,
When he created the most vicious of everything,
In blue and grey with vicious sharp teeth,
Stealthy and streamlined and white underneath,
Voracious and cunning and fleet of fin,
Hunting and eating everything?

He surely paused for a moment or two,
And thought to himself, what shall I do,
To counteract this creature, dismal and dark,
Should I create a dissimilar shark,
And it came to pass, so it is said,
He created the laughable hammer-head.

Silly, daft and painfully comic
A creature of flesh and steel - bionic,
With eyes each side of its hammer shaped head,
Well It could have comprised a poleaxe instead,
And just think of the fright that divers would find,
If a shark like a poleaxe came up from behind.

OUCH

THE DEMISE OF BIG MAC

On our way outward to fish in the Bay,
Up stood Big Mac directing the way,
Who suggested a sweepstake for the biggest fish caught,
I’ll take him on, and win clearly, I thought.

But Mac was an angler who knew every ruse,
He knew where to weigh anchor and which bait to use,
And he never lost a solitary cod,
On that broomstick he called his perking rod.

One after another he hauled onto the boat,
Scoring out loud just to get up my goat,
Then suddenly a big’un he’d not bargained for,
Heaved him seaward, and now, Big Mac’s no more!

REVENGE AT LONG LAST
(ON MY SADISTIC SCHOOLMASTER - ‘BUGS WHISKERS’)

I often looked at Bugsie’s cane when used for sadistic pleasure,
I watched in horror as the spiteful man enjoyed his style of leisure,
And noted how he would bend it round until it was almost double,
Then bring it down upon a bum of a chum who’d got in trouble.

Once I dreamed I stole that cane to make a fishing rod,
It would be an ideal implement to perk for winter cod,
Then I dreamed I made a handle hewn from cork for extra grip,
And found the implement of torture had a test curve, giving whip.

Next, I found myself fishing from a boat upon the Ness,
When all at once a massive bite shook the cane inside its rest,
And I pulled the opposite end to which I’d fixed a quiver tip,
Guess what, - I’d hooked old Bugs Whiskers, just inside his lip.

And when I saw what I had caught, I could not believe my eyes,
So when I hauled the blighter in, he said “Now there’s a surprise”
Imagination, even in dreamland, was something I didn’t lack,
So I replied, “Here’s another surprise,” - and threw the bastard back!

THE HUNGRY WATER VOLE

I was visited last night by a water vole,
He just settled himself beside my pole,
Then sniffed around behind my back,
And eventually discovered my haversack.

He found what he had come looking for,
He took some biscuits, three or four,
His timidity gone for a moment or two,
But as soon as I moved, - off he flew!

So I laid wide open my haversack,
Hoping the varmint would clamber back,
And when he did the little beast,
Had brought his gang round for a feast!

THE DAY I WATCHED THE BIRDS COME IN TO LAND

“What on earth is all the fuss about” I asked an angling man,
As I walked towards the commotion, near the brook,
“I don’t know,” he said in bewilderment, with his rod and reel in hand,
So I ventured a little closer, to have a look.

There were ducks and geese and wild fowl, all cackling out of hand,
And people who were laughing, at the sight,
The brook had frozen over, and as the birds flew in to land,
They were sliding on their bottoms, half in flight.

A mallard duck descended, and turned, his flight-path clear,
His touch-down was a marvel, to behold,
As he slid a hundred yards or so, upon his feathered rear,
I thought I bet that mallard’s bum is cold.

He skittled over others, in his gangling attempts to stop,
And they too, were tossed about, like shaken dice,
A goose got up and shook himself, as the duck eventually plopped,
Through a hole at the end of his runway, in the ice!

Now I have become an angler too, so that I can sit and look,
At everything that nature, has at hand,
Like that angling man I met, beside that frozen-over brook,
That day I watched those birds, come in to land.