Chris McCully discusses your good old reliable fishing hat. Below he give us food for thought……..
A few years ago I’m afraid I wrote a two-part essay about fishing hats. Someone had to do it. One of the things I was trying to get at, indeed inveigh against, was the monotonous ubiquity of the bloody baseball cap, which is in my view about the most pointless, impractical, ineffective and ridiculous bit of headgear ever invented…even for baseball players. Recently, however, Ken has sent me a suggestion for the perfect antidote: these splendid Chinese fishing hats (they’re made from wicker, it seems) are apparently de rigueur in China if you are an Angler with Aspirations.
In my view they’re absolutely splendid (particularly that little red streamer-type-thingy on the apex of the pyramid). They’re light; they won’t – indeed, can’t – crush; they will win you friends and confidantes on long aeroplane journeys; you could recycle your hat into a nice garden sofa; and you could also use it in emergencies to light the Kelly kettle. A further and decisive advantage is that since the wicker is laced with bamboo you could in slack times during the fishing day cut off a sliver from one of the bamboo shoots and plant it, thereafter returning to the same spot annually to collect more bamboo grown from the original sliver. In that way you would be able to grow your own fishing hats, which strikes me as a pretty sensible idea. Many thanks to Ken for animadverting this idea and indeed this splendid photograph above, which he took recently in China while approaching this gentleman from behind with a pair of secateurs.
Compliments of:
Chris McCully