June the fifteenth used to be one of the most exciting days of the year for me.  It was a day I would look forward to, counting off the days barely able to contain my frustration as March, April and may would drag. Then it would finally arrive. I would wake up with a big smile of anticipation on my face and could barely suppress the excitement I felt that the day was here. As a child if it fell on a school day I was off sick, as an adult I would be off work nothing could be allowed to interfere with my preparations.

After a quick breakfast I would fill a plastic washing up bowl with warm soapy water and carry it into the basement room where my brother and myself played endless hours of table tennis.  There would be no table tennis on this day, the net would be taken down and the table would be put to another use.  Laid out on the table would be all the accruements of a dedicated fisherman.  The table would be littered with all my well loved equipment.  All clean but nothing must be left to chance as I carefully went through and checked every item from the rings on the rods to the eyes on the hooks everything had to be perfect.

New line had been added to the reels, last seasons discarded lying coiled in the bin awaiting any other broken or cracked piece of equipment deemed not fit for purpose.

The bait boxes scrubbed clean awaiting the maggots and worms that would soon fill them.  This was the moment I had planned for months my tackle and bait were all sorted; my pushbike had been given a thorough check over new batteries for my lamps had been fitted.

The day would pass getting everything ready, a trip to the tackle shop to purchase bait and anything else I may have forgotten.  Early evening I would go to bed with my alarm set for ten thirty the same night. When the alarm went off I would jump out of bed and hurriedly dress.  With in ten minutes I would be cycling off in to the night to make sure that the spot I had chosen would be mine and mine alone.

No matter how early I would arrive at the lake someone else would always be there first.  Once at my chosen location with the aid of an old gas lamp I would set up my rods and keepnet adjusting my rests and umbrella mixing my ground bait checking the time continuously.  I was ready a quick coffee and in later years a quick cigarette before the stroke of midnight.  For at midnight it became the sixteenth of June the first and best day of the fishing season.  When the first cast starts off another season all the hard work is forgotten now it is all about the joys of catching fish.