Extreme Fish ! No Swearing!

Great day out Tope Fishing with
www.norfolkfishingtrips.co.uk

last Tuesday. 
Many thanks to the skipper Adam and crew Tammy.

 Unlike Mr Robson Green I hooked, played and boated the beast without an expletive. Oh! O.K.! One or two  "Why bless me"s!

Duly measured weighed and tagged, the fish was slipped back into the sea and swam off with vigour. 

Afterwards I fell to thinking about the effort of winding the fish in. The fishing gear had been provided on the boat. All of the best quality. What we today call a reel Izaak Walton, he of the Complete Angler, called a pulley. 

George Herbert, one of his fishing chums ( he also fished with John Donne and the Kenna who appears in the Complete Angler was Thomas Ken's half-sister!) wrote :

The Pulley

VVHen God at first made man,
Having a glasse of blessings standing by;
Let us (said he) poure on him all we can:
Let the worlds riches, which dispersed lie,
               Contract into a span.

               So strength first made a way;
Then beautie flow’d, then wisdome, honour, pleasure:
When almost all was out, God made a stay,
Perceiving that alone of all his treasure
               Rest in the bottome lay.

               For if I should (said he)
Bestow this jewell also on my creature,
He would adore my gifts in stead of me,
And rest in Nature, not the God of Nature:
               So both should losers be.
	
               Yet let him keep the rest,
But keep them with repining restlesnesse:
Let him be rich and wearie, that at least,
If goodnesse leade him not, yet wearinesse
               May tosse him to my breast. 

So here's a thought - God winding you and I in! 

Hard work, but joyful and no expletives!

I know myself to be thoroughly hooked and tagged.

By tagging the tope naturalists hope to get an understanding of their lives - their journeys and resting places.

It seems to me God has a complete knowledge of my life

O Lord, you have searched me and known me.
You know when I sit down and when I rise up;
   you discern my thoughts from far away.
You search out my path and my lying down,
   and are acquainted with all my ways.
Even before a word is on my tongue,
   O Lord, you know it completely.
You hem me in, behind and before,
   and lay your hand upon me.
Such knowledge is too wonderful for me;
   it is so high that I cannot attain it.

Where can I go from your spirit?
   Or where can I flee from your presence?
If I ascend to heaven, you are there;
   if I make my bed in Sheol, you are there.
If I take the wings of the morning
   and settle at the farthest limits of the sea,
even there your hand shall lead me,
   and your right hand shall hold me fast.
If I say, ‘Surely the darkness shall cover me,
   and the light around me become night’,
even the darkness is not dark to you;
   the night is as bright as the day,
   for darkness is as light to you.

For it was you who formed my inward parts;
   you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.
   Wonderful are your works;
that I know very well.
   My frame was not hidden from you,
when I was being made in secret,
   intricately woven in the depths of the earth.
Your eyes beheld my unformed substance.
In your book were written
   all the days that were formed for me,
   when none of them as yet existed.
How weighty to me are your thoughts, O God!
   How vast is the sum of them!
I try to count them—they are more than the sand;
   I come to the end—I am still with you. 
                                                        ( Psalm 139)