I was just tackling up for an afternoon's pike fishing, all alone at a wooded lake, when I noticed this strange oak tree 'watching' me. Is that a door in the trunk, I muttered to myself while the wind howled in the trees and the leaves whirled by.
My next mutter was 'what a load of cobblers, a door in an oak tree, get a grip man, you've got an overactive imagination!' Before I knew it the sky changed, it had got darker and the wind howled even more, the trees bent and swayed and leaves swirled past.
Had I upset the woodland gods? Herne the Hunter? The Green Man? A bad moment I can tell you while checking the woods over my shoulder, and guess what? I never caught or saw a single pike all afternoon.
Even a fellow angler carp fishing on the next lake left early, leaving me all on my own as darkness fell. I walked back to the car through the deepening gloom, the 'witching hour' as it is called, whistling noisily.
I blame the Hobbits and I think I'll find somewhere else to fish, that is if they'll have me. Three blanks in a row and I'm cursed, cursed I tell you...
The last of the deadbaits were thrown in the lake as an appeasement.
