The Thinking Tackle Podcast.

Welcome to the Thinking Tackle podcast.

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Now, today for this rather special Christmas edition, I'm joined by Mr. Christmas himself, Neil Spooner.

I like that introduction.

You are probably the guy in my life that likes Christmas the most out of anybody I know. I'll take that. And I'm going to say it's started way before I had kids as well. Yeah. Oh, just always loved it. Christmas songs as well. Oh yeah, they've been on in my van. Heart Christmas started in about October. So it's been saved in. So if I'm not listening to a podcast there's a Christmas song playing

no I feel a bit bad because I don't have the Christmas jumper I should have brought one

shouldn't I we could just write Merry Christmas on there I've got if there's a Markopon we'll

do it right and we've also joined by don't say that I've got to over here yeah I'm not joking

the one thing you're probably known for perhaps perhaps even a bit better than your love of

Christmas is actually succeeding on fairly limited time.

Now, I know you're kind of full time these days and globe-trotting angler, but casting

your mind back to a time when you were a nine to five like the rest of us, no.

You did all right, didn't you, on overnighters? And I think that relatability of that kind of fishing is what I really want to get across today. Yeah, I did. I, um, in a weird way, I enjoyed the time restraints I had, if you like. It was often when by the time I started, I mean, Lakelands was probably, I'd done lots of overnighters over the

years, but from back when I worked in a tackle shop to when I sold cars, it was the only time I could

squeeze any sort of fishing in was to leave work, get changed, get to the lake, get the rods out,

and, you know, pack up and go to work in the morning. Started at Corder, got a ticket on Lakelands.

At the time, I was actually fishing the quarry, which has always been a very sought

after ticket in Essex.

Back in the day, it was quite an exclusive syndicate, and it was almost like a last

parting gift from when I left the tackle shop, the guy that ran it coming to see me.

I managed to get my ticket, but went into selling cars and I'd never had so little time to go

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