Fishing baskets

An 18th century definition of a fisherman is "A stick and a string with a fly at one end and a fool at the other". As a fisherman for most of my life I'd tend to agree. My thoughts today are about fishing and how I miss the streams and rivers of Britain, yet I live within walking distance of a lake heaving with fish, but because they're not the right sort of fish, I ignore them, more fool me.

I've just finished a very good fishing book and I'm on a high, so the next best thing to sitting next to a river, in the rain, not catching fish, is to clean and inspect my fishing tackle. It's all contained in the willow baskets above. The small semi circular basket is a french trout creel, very pretty but useless for fishing. The large basket I've owned for about 20 years and is my current favourite. The small one on the right is probably older than me, I used it for many years from the age of 10, but it's retired now because it's got a wobbly leg.

Anyway, before you fall asleep, the point of this post is: Fishing baskets are great for storage, they're quirky, look good and can hide all sorts of things like dirty linen. There are craftspeople who still make them - look here - but they're expensive. If you keep your eyes open you can pick old ones up cheap. I bought the french creel 3 years ago for 4 euros!