anybait.com)
“I don’t think I’d been a fisherman before my son was born and when he was we had no money so we got in an Ikea tub which was not ideal and would never have been able to afford any other equipment, so I tried everything I could to make it work.”
“Even now I’ve got plenty of fish gear, but it’s all the cheap, cheap equipment that I bought at the time. It’s probably only lasted four or five years now.”
Lakeman’s fishy friends soon got into the act.
As did some of his colleagues at work. A number of them took up fishing for the first time because of a video of Richard explaining how to make a pole for fish, so he was invited to the company away day.
Some days he ended up in the office fishing with a colleague, other days he spent in the pond, with members of staff there.
It started to lead to a number of interesting workplace meetings.
“Someone would say, ‘I can’t catch anything with this rod, let’s change it’.
“So they’d set up a meeting with the director of operations, then two members of staff would end up at the meeting. There would be seven or eight people there, all having a go at making the best fishing pole ever.”
(Image: James Loveridge Photography)
Lakeman even got invited along to a workshop with the local police to help them start making fishing poles for the officers, and the idea snowballed from there.
Before long the pond was overflowing with fishing enthusiasts and there was a fish pond club.
Fishing and fishing lore became a bit of a hobby in itself, with an annual fishing festival in May.
The fishing community continued to grow to the point where it has become the main cause of Lakeman’s weekends, and it has made him feel welcome within the area he is living in.
As he put it, some days are simply better than others.
“I’ll start off as soon as I get up because I never know when it’s going to happen,” he added. “You never know which pond it will be and if you can’t get there right at the top of the morning it’s always the one at the bottom of the hill because you can walk up the bottom bit.”
“I think the reason we all got into it was because it was a hobby that didn’t cost much and we didn’t need much gear, we just used what we had.”
“That’s why we never went down the expensive fishing route. It’s been a life-changing hobby, but it’s all come from me being a bit of an idiot and trying to get to the bottom of something and it snowballed from there.”
If Lakeman is feeling overwhelmed by the hobby, it certainly doesn’t show in his enthusiasm or dedication.
He has gone on to turn some of the fishing community he has built up into a website that helps fishermen get tips, new methods and much more.
“I wanted to put the information out there so others could benefit from it, especially the more local communities, because there’s a lot of people with the same problems as I had.”
What helped him was a mixture of determination and encouragement.
One of the keys, he said, was to keep a positive attitude and keep coming back, whether it was fishing or anything else in life.
And that’s what he wants other people to take from this:
“Everyone who wants to do something needs that inner conviction to keep doing it.
“You’ve got to be dedicated. I don’t take a holiday, it’s something I put my mind into, otherwise I’d go to the cinema or on holiday or something else.”
“When you spend all day, every day trying to do something, you’re naturally going to get better at it.”
The key is not giving up if you keep getting it wrong, or frustrated by failure.
“Don’t give up, it’s just part of the process, something that you need to get used to, but it’s not the end of the world if you don’t get it right first time. It’s not always going to be a roaring success and there’s always going to be days when it’s not. It’s the process of trying and failing that’s really important.”
“If you’re into fishing, the same applies, it’s not going to be the fish of the year every day and you have to learn not to get disheartened when you don’t.
“You learn from the failure as much as the success. I don’t know how many people have told me they started fishing because of me, but they also might tell me they have given it up because they were disheartened. That’s something that I’d never want anyone to go through.”
One of the most important things about Lakeman’s experience, he said, was getting back to normal life after the novelty wore off.
That doesn’t mean it’s all fun and games. He has endured his fair share of problems with fish to deal with too.
He admitted that “people often think fish farmers are soft” because they don’t have to go fishing to get their food.
“We’re not soft people, but there’s some great challenges to this hobby. You need some thick skin to get through it, which is one of the reasons it’s taken so long for me to write about it. You need to be strong willed and have a bit of character, as well as a lot of dedication.
“We don’t have a lot of money so when we go out fishing we put a lot into it. If you don’t go fishing, it’s an expensive hobby. If you have two or three fish or a couple of pounds worth of fish, you’ve got to get a lot of people to go out with you so they can get a few in the freezer or something like that. You’re spending a lot on fuel and equipment.”
“If you get frustrated with that, it’s very easy to think it’s not worth it, but what would happen if you didn’t go fishing and got frustrated by the weather and the situation you find yourself in? It becomes part of you. It changes you as a person. It gets ingrained into your life and that’s what happened to me.
“It got embedded in my life, which is the best thing about it really. It got to the stage where I felt like I wanted to get back to my roots.
“It’s a way of
