You ever gone fishing for a quick afternoon and ended up sleeping in your car because your mate left the radio on for six hours?
We didn’t mean to. Honest.
It was supposed to be a short one—pop down to Embalse de Mequinenza, chuck a few lures, maybe spot a zander if the water was feeling generous. Glenn promised to pack light this time. “Just the essentials,” he said. I don’t know what he thinks essentials means, but his boot looked like the backstage area of Glastonbury for one.
Anyway, by the time we set up and cracked open two cans, he’s already fiddling with the Peugeot’s stereo, playing some ancient Genesis CD he found in the glovebox. By sunset, we’ve landed nothing. I blame the stereo. Fish don’t respond well to Phil Collins.
Then—click.
Dead. Absolutely, comically, stone dead. The car battery. We tried everything. Praying. Swearing. The little dance Glenn does where he opens the bonnet and stares into it like he’s summoning a wizard.
No signal either. Two bars, then one, then searching…
So we slept in the car.
Now, I don’t know if it was heatstroke or the questionable tinned lentils we ate, but around 3am, I saw something move on the water. Big. Long. Way too graceful to be carp. Glenn was snoring, one foot wedged in the cupholder, so I crept out with a head torch and nearly tripped over the frying pan.
And there it was. Or wasn’t. A ripple. Then nothing. But the air changed. You know when a storm’s coming? That tension? Like something’s watching. My granddad used to say there were pike in certain waters that outlived men. “Old spirits,” he called them. I always laughed. But I wasn’t laughing then.
Next morning, the sun was up, we were stiff as boards, and the car still wouldn’t start. A guy on a quad eventually gave us a jump—Spanish farmer, didn’t say a word, just nodded, hooked up the cables, and left us with a single tomato and a thumbs-up.
We didn’t catch a thing.
But Glenn swears he had a dream about a giant fish circling the car. And me? I’m not saying it was a ghost pike, but… next time, I’m bringing garlic. Or at least a working battery.
Moral of the story: check your electrics. Pack extra water. And maybe don’t laugh off what your granddad told you about fish that live longer than logic.
