The Legendry Swainer

There is a particular freedom that comes from disappearing for a week with people who know you well enough to insult you properly. Nobody needs to perform, nobody needs to impress and affection rarely arrives wrapped in sentimental language. Instead, it appears as somebody untangling your line, handing you a bait, laughing when you make a fool of yourself and then reminding you about it for the rest of your natural life.

For Trevor, Ian and me, another Swains trip was probably inevitable from the moment somebody raised the subject. Ian did not require much incentive to find water, Trevor was close enough to retirement to be thinking about the things he still wanted to do, and I have never been particularly skilled at walking away from an adventure once it has become possible. We had all been there before, which gave us memories, confidence and the dangerous assumption that previous experience would count for something.

There is something slightly fascinating about bringing a new person into an established friendship group. Trevor, Ian and I already have years of history beneath conversations that make perfectly good sense to us but may require explanatory notes for anybody else. Names appear without introductions, old incidents are revived without warning and accusations can refer to events that happened so long ago nobody can now establish whether the original offence occurred anything like the way it is remembered.

The idea of training for fishing sounds ridiculous until you have spent a day doing it properly. From the outside it can look like a man standing still holding a rod, but the boat moves, the gear weighs something, the sinkers keep coming back and the fish have an annoying habit of refusing to consider your age before they pull. I wanted enough stamina to keep going when the others were still going, because there are few stronger fitness incentives than knowing Trevor and Ian will be present if you stop first. Pride may not be recognised by exercise physiologists as an energy system, but among old mates it is capable of remarkable things.

Eventually the packing reached the point where further improvement became difficult. My suitcase would close, the fishing gear was organised, the trophies had somewhere to travel and the essential medical bits had survived repeated audits. I still had the persistent feeling that something was missing, but by then I had checked enough times to recognise that the feeling itself had probably become part of the luggage. There is only so much certainty available before a trip, after which you have to accept that whatever you have forgotten will identify itself at the least convenient possible moment.

The drive also allowed us to consider what Steve might learn from the crew of Big Cat Reality and bring back to Forster Fishing Charters. His own operation was already above average in my view, but a good business does not become worse by watching another good business closely. Big Cat Reality was perceived, and certainly priced, as the Rolls-Royce version of the Swains operators, so there would be value in seeing how the crew managed service, routines, guests, equipment and the thousand small details that made the experience work. Peter Merrett’s Wonderlicious explores that territory of service and human connection, and seven days aboard gave Steve the chance to observe it in an environment where failure could not be hidden behind the front desk.

Steve had by now adopted a description for the four of us that showed he was becoming far too comfortable. “All the gear and no idea” was his preferred summary, which was unfair in the technical sense but increasingly difficult to contest on evidentiary grounds. Between my tangles, Ian’s complete refusal so far to wet a line, Trevor’s encounter with seasickness and Steve’s own fish-finger Spanish mackerel, our opening performance had hardly forced the other passengers to gather around seeking professional advice.

That was the first genuine dose of reality the trip had delivered. We had spent months controlling everything we could control: rods, reels, line, hooks, luggage, travel, trophies, rules, clothing and enough backup equipment to survive the collapse of several international tackle manufacturers. Now the one thing we could not control had become the biggest influence on what happened next.

The irony was that while my body was protesting about the physical demands of fishing, my waistline was probably expanding. Heaven help the scales when I eventually got home, although that was one competition I was quite prepared to lose. For now, the only numbers requiring my serious attention were the ones attached to the leaderboard.

In both cases, failure quickly became public property. Lose a fish to a shark and three other fishermen could immediately explain your mistake; lose a hand of cards and everybody around the table suddenly knew which card you should have kept. The only defence was to win often enough to earn the right to provide the same assistance to somebody else.

It also showed how quickly the little society aboard Big Cat Reality was forming. Twenty-four hours earlier I had been a bloke standing beside somebody else’s card game; now I knew who was noisy, who was quiet, who understood the game and who was capable of punishing an error before you had finished regretting it. The same thing was happening everywhere aboard the boat, with fishing, meals, cabins and evening card games gradually turning a collection of passengers into people with histories, reputations and increasingly usable material against one another.

It may even have been the best result of the day, although I am reluctant to overstate that point while leading Trophy One by a considerable margin. There are priorities in life, after all, and on the eve of the final fishing day mine had become increasingly clear.