Milk, Trout and Karma

publication date: Feb 12, 2008

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author/source: Steven Murgatroyd

By Steven Murgatroyd

In an old ex–GPO Morris Minor van still painted pillar box red, Mike The Milk and I under cover of darkness, followed a tight and twisting track deep into the Welsh hills. With unfamiliar tackle, no rod just waders, a landing net and a torch, the destination remained, at least to me, unknown.

For the last quarter mile and despite the fact that he was blind in one eye, Mike The Milk dimmed the vans lights and, for what seemed an age, we cautiously edged our way down an old farm track before finally killing the engine. The new silence revealed the sound of a stream close by.

Few words were spoken. Mike The Milk led, I followed. We made our way through the damp grass and on to a gently sloping shingle bank and then into the stream. The icy water gripped my legs and the darkness filled my heart. The torch was only switched on once the riverbank obscured the horizon.

Shadow upon shadow we slowly waded upstream, Mike The Milk heron like, probing the water with the thin beam of light. Suddenly, he stopped. There in the watery glow was a trout! Mike The Milk held the beam on the gently undulating fish. The trout seemed oblivious - almost serene – unaware of its close encounter with, and pending abduction by aliens from another world!

It was only when, with one swift movement of his net, Mike The Milk scooped the fish from the stream, that the trout came to life……. Briefly!

Recently I revisited the area and was saddened to learn of the death of Mike The Milk the previous season. Sorry to have missed him I ventured out once more to the stream where he often said that he felt most alive and where his ashes were now scattered.

It was late in the day and, as the sun sank towards the horizon, both dusk and I crept over the landscape. A fish rose where years before we had poached. Despite numerous casts my fly was refused until a sudden gust of wind caught my line and deposited the fly on the other side of the fish. Immediately the trout took it!

After a short fight I netted a young brownie. As I turned the fish over I discovered the reason for the earlier refusals – the fish was blind in one eye!

I left the river with the uneasy feeling that for Mike, his spirit and the trout, the karmic wheel had just turned.