Thank Heaven For Friends

A Wet Morning....

Having started a new job in February 2014, I have not really had much chance to get out fishing - in fact for the first half of that year I had one full time and two part time jobs and worked between 60 and 85 hours a week, for the second half I ditched one of the part time jobs but kept the other. I was saving for a big trip later in the year and had no holiday time remaining and not enough money for the trip yet, so I worked virtually every day, but I'm lucky that I enjoy my jobs. It was the holiday of a lifetime and I was going to work my nuts off to make sure we could make the absolute most of it, i was not going to sit on my backside now and regret it later. 

Anyway, more of that some other time,  but the outcome of all that work was that when I was invited for a day fishing, invited by my friend Phil and run on behalf of the Salmon And Trout Association I could not wait to get to the water's edge. Eighteen months since I had last fished - I was pretty desperate. 

Alas, the day dawned wet, very wet, and I was soakied before I had struggled into my over trousers and jacket. Remember those school swimming days when you tried to get dressed when still wet and your vest would get stuck halfway around your middle and you'd give yourself a Chinese burn on the back trying to pull it down, or your socks would stick so that the heal wouldn't go past your toes and the foot part would block in the front of your shoes causing you to hobble around like an old man..?

Like that, but at least I had my wellies so my feet were dry - nothing else was, and I pruned up badly during the day. 

But I was like a kid, I could not wait to get started, even foregoing breakfast to cast a line as soon as I could. It was worth it though, before I squelched back for a hot cup of coffee and a double bacon roll I had caught two fish and lost two others. The boy's still got it - I thought as I dripped all over the fishing shack floor, puddles forming as the recalcitrant ketchup bottle refused to give me more than a dribble of sauce. 

It was a good feeling; a hot, full tummy, a slight coffee buzz, chatting with old friends and the knowledge that two good sized, healthy looking fish were getting wetter on the bank next to my bag than they ever were while cruising around the lake. 

Naturally, things went downhill after that...

The rain and wind increased and the fish that were feeding off the top dropped down in the water making them harder to locate and the next two fish took the rest of the morning right up until one o'clock lunch to catch.

I tried nymphs, weighted nymphs and even toyed with the idea of an intermediate line for a while, but the occasional pull or tap told me I  wasn't far away from discovering what the fish were up to and eventually one and then another was taken on pheasant tailed nymphs a foot or two under the surface. 

I had a great day despite the rain, the company was good and still cheerful after a damp but wonderful lunch and I had caught fish - four of them in fact and lost three others - all was good. 

My four fish were a good size and although I had to leave after lunch for yet another pressing engagement, I managed to win the prize for heaviest bag - an added bonus,  for champagne and trout really is a good combination. 

Thanks Phil. 

Aesthetics

Beautifully made. 

Fishing isn't just about catching fish you know.

Oh, no - it's about many, many other things - including everything looking just right. I mean, you can have your trophy shots - and most of us have - but for many of us things have to look - well, perfect.  

My two favourite quarries are trout in the summer months and pike through the winter - though with a new job I'm afraid I've not been doing much of either lately. 

Trout fishing for me is all about naturalness. While my friend Harry hurls his fluorescent blobs of sparkling man made fibres whistling perilously close to my ears accompanied by gun like cracks as the line whips through the air and turning the water all about to foam  I much prefer the studied, protracted business of carefully inching well made flies through the meniscus. My creations are crafted from, fur and feather and come complete with eyes, elbows and arseholes as another friend, Kim once commented. 

Harry usually catches more than me. 

But, see, that's not the point, my fish mean more, they are caught aesthetically - with finesse and feeling, my fish have been duped by close copies of their usual food items, not angered into snatching at an invasive fluro green monstrosity that looks like nothing they've ever seen before. 

I don't suppose the fish care much though - they've still been caught. 

When pike fishing I love to use floats where I can, not just because they offer the best indication of interest but also because they just look so good. There's nothing quite as exciting when fishing to see the first movement of the float because you just know that something is down there! However, when the float is homemade with love, attention and time it just seems to make a difference. I don't know why - it just does. 

Cane! Now that's a whole other subject!

I came across the floats in the top picture at a clients house. She makes flies and floats and the ones here - which she very kindly gave me - are made out of natural materials; there's a quails egg, Kent cob nut, crows quill and pieces of natural wood, varnished over and over again before being carefully painted and then varnished some more. What a gift - made with patience and care and given with kindness. 

And I'd much rather look at a float than sit behind a bank full of matching rods with baits flung to the horizon in full ambush mode. It's interesting, it's exciting and there's always something to see. If you're waiting for alarms to go off - and there is definitely a place for alarms and gadgets - it's too easy to miss...well everything. If alarms are set then you can do other stuff; reading, watching TV (yes, really...), make up rigs and sleep. If you're watching a float you can't do any of that - you have to look, and when you look, well then you see. Bubbles around the float, signs of activity, signs of life - signs of interest....it's interesting! Using a float in all forms of fishing seems to keep the anticipation vital, real and ever present. Fishing with a float also keeps you active - and that's usually a good thing. 

Though I have to say when I recently fished the Kennet I appeared to have forgotten how to long trot - out of practise I suppose. But if you've ever seen an expert with a float - my friend Crump and his centre pin instantly spring to mind - it's a joy to watch.  But I caught my mid double pike on the day by leap frogging with two rods and watching the floats and the morning just flew by. And because I watched the floats I saw the activity which presaged the take. I saw the fry leaping away from the marauding pike; I saw the water move, bulge as the fish below shifted its own space about it. I saw the float bob, dip and dance; and I knew exactly when to strike, when to lean into the fish as it turned the bait and moved off because I knew exactly what was happening.

A home-made float seems to make the catch more...well, valuable.

Aesthetically, floats are wonderfully pleasing, but they're also effective too. So too are my flies when trout fishing. Hairs ear, rabbit fur, pheasant tail, peacock hurl, duck feather, partridge, squirrel tail and deer fur - all have their place in fly tying. Using these natural - ingredients, if you like - not only pleases me but also interests the fish. Those little bits of barely seen fur, feather and hide make realistic and effective baits, lures and attractors. I do know that fluorescent colours have their place, but I do love catching fish with natural materials where I can. Sometimes it takes more perseverance - much more sometimes - but if catching fish isn't the only aim, the only goal, try using realistic flies, try using floats and try lure fishing for pike with baits that react naturally (a whole other subject in itself) and see if it adds to your satisfaction. It might, and you might see and feel a whole lot more too.

A small, beautiful fish - but that's a home-made fly, that is..

River Kennet

It's not often one gets a chance to fish a chalk stream to catch as many brown trout as you want. In fact, more brown trout than you want. I once read that a definition of hell would be a fishing venue where you caught fish all day long. 

A beautiful specimen........

The Kennet most certainly is not hell - it's a magical, meandering, pretty little river with miles of inlets, side streams and cascade pools to explore and we turned up to be greeted with bacon rolls and champagne lovingly prepared by our host Phil Sharnock under whose kind auspices we were invited today. 

Sparkling sunlight...

It was crisply autumnal, golden leaves glimmered in the low morning sun which reflected cleanly off the clear chalk stream water in beams of crystal light.  The trees were hanging on to the last of their russet and rufus leaves, the grass sparkled with a light frost and our breathe whisped around our mouthfuls of hot buttie as we swapped our thoughts about the day to come, spitting bread crumbs around us in a champagne spray of enthusiasm. 

We all had different plans; fly fishing for trout and grayling, feeder fishing for chub and roach, but I wanted to have a go at my preferred quarry in the winter - the pike.  I had brought along a couple of deadbait rods with some sprats, mackerel and smelt and I walked with my gear to the back of the estate, towards the old part of the river. 

Magical, meandering, pretty...

There were pike in the system but as the sun began its year end quickened journey to its highest point, they were proving hard to locate, the leaves ceased to crunch beneath my feet, beginning to whisper as the frost melted away before I saw any sign of a striking fish. But then it happened - a fish I thought to be around five pounds or so struck on the surface, scattering fry in its wake. I cast out the float fished sprat into the area and gradually drew it back towards me in short pulls, allowing the sprat to rise and sink enticingly as it moved.

Nothing. 

I cast again to the right this time thinking the fish may have turned and suddenly the float bobbed, moved sideways and began to sink away as if it had a life of its own. I leaned into the fish which certainly was not a jack and it powered away with a strong surge. It fought well for a few minutes then gave up completely until the net was seen then it started to fight again, but it was on the bank soon enough. 

My youth came back to me in a flood - Hythe Canal in 1973 - a frosty, foggy day and my first deadbait caught fish on a sprat bought that morning from the fishmongers. They're often overlooked due to their diminutive size, but my wife had bought these recently and they shimmered in the low sun as they were cast across the stream. I've had a couple more on that bait since that day in '73 but not many. It was good to get another, and a nice double too. 

I did catch some trout in the afternoon after a tasty chilli lunch and more wine, ending a wonderfully bright, successful day with a wistful moon and a sudden chill in the air as Winter reminded us of its proximity. 

Another trout....

Many thanks to Phil for the day, to Sue his wonderful wife for the chilli and to John for the lift and good company. Some men love their fishing so much that they can talk about it for hours without it seeming at all boring - John is one such enthusiast and he made the journey both ways seem short. Great company, good fishing and a bright autumn day - now that is heaven. 

Pretty brown trout...

Belgian Buns and Bewl Boredom

This was supposed to include a whole Bun...but..you know...

It was the Annual Harry and Mikes' Birthday Bash, but it was just into the second week of October - the vicissitudes of working life have kept us apart - but the weather was wonderful! Blue skies, late teens temperatures, and a light corduroy breeze rippling the lake and gently rocking the boat as we ate Belgian Buns. Yep, I know - shock, horror - Belgian! 

No, really - it was a beautiful Indian Summer Day and it was such a pleasure to be outside. It's been a fantastic summer, long and warm but for the mild temperatures and sunshine to cascade into October is a real blessing. 

Just as well really - because the fishing was a disappointment - apart from the first half hour. 

Expectation was as high as the weather front, although the latter was due to change within 24 - 48 hours and the former before tea time. Fish had been caught all week, trout love the back end of the year as the fry are feeding and if the weather is warm, insect life can be abundant - thick even -  and trout are eminently catchable. Naturally, something went wrong today - but that's OK, the company was as welcome as the weather.

As I mentioned, it started well. We edged out into the bowl and I had a Daddy Longlegs on the point with a black peacock hurl Diawl Bach kind of pattern on the dropper. After about 20 minutes I had a hard fighting rainbow of about a pound and three quarters on, which had taken the Daddy on a slowish retrieve. I sorted that out and bagged the fish, re-cast and immediately had another on the Daddy again. I suppose we could have been forgiven for thinking that we were going to need a bigger boat for all these fish, but alas, the breeze died, the temperature dropped as the forecast low made its presence felt and neither Harry nor I had another fish - or even a touch until late in the afternoon when Harry had a tug, on a damsel, I think.

A Rainbow shining in the sun...

It's like that sometimes - the fish had dropped deeper, moved away or stopped feeding altogether - who knows, but my Birthday gift of a fishing trip and our get together certainly turned an odd afternoon into a pleasant event, and we didn't stop trying, although at one stage Harry said it was almost a thoughtless process - a robotic method of cast and retrieve, cast and retrieve - we had to remember to think - to consider what we were actually trying to achieve, to dispel the boredom and put some effort into our machinations to fool, the trout.

And of course the Belgian Buns were lovely....for something Belgian...thanks Harry.

Indian Summer...?

The River Tay

A Typical Tay Brownie...

The pretty town of Kenmore lies at the eastern end of Loch Tay in the heart of the Highlands and we arrived here just as summer was ending with a late, warm flourish as if to give us a final reminder of how lucky we have been with the weather this year. Temperatures soared all over the country, but in Scotland that just makes early September just a little more special.

it was a mild, still morning as I drove through the village at 6 am towards the river which runs out of this end of the loch towards Pitlochry further east.  The baker was parked outside the hotel, but apart from a lone dog walker, the village seemed sleepy and slow. The sky was a pale pink in the east as the sun began its gentle ascent into the Scottish air and I struggled to see the fishing line in the early light as I threaded it through the rod rings, but within five minutes or so I had squeezed myself into the chest waders like too much sausage meat in too little skin - but they do still fit after all these years - just, and they don't leak either - and was headed towards the river Tay and a few brown trout, I hoped.  

It was a calm day, but the river is wild and fast in places so I carefully eased my way from the bank and, as always in these times, my main concern regarding the inevitability of my falling in was the welfare of my iPhone - a sad indictment of how these small items of technology have become absolutely indispensable - in fact as I sit here writing this blog on my iPad, my laptop is loading up some Show Of Hands CDs we bought at the Folk Festival last weekend in order to add them to my iPod and my iPhone is buzzing next to me as my e-mails start to come through - and I'm in the heart of the Scottish Highlands using Paul's dongle to connect. 

My father won't have understood a word of that last sentence!

Technology.....

For an hour or so I tottered around the river striving to remain upright, casting across the river and allowing the flies to drift to pretty much no avail. Time for a rethink.

I sat on the bank and re-tied my leader with brown chameleon, which was much finer and darker than my previous line, tied on two smaller flies - a nymph on the point and a pennell on the dropper. I wobbled and slid my way back out into the flow and cast diagonally into the centre of the river and on this first cast I hooked a trout of about 10 inches in length - I love it when a change makes a difference - it makes me believe I am thinking like a real fishermen....

I had three more in the next 40 minutes, one fish slightly larger and two smaller, on both the point fly and the dropper - this latter fish giving a startling, splashy take that almost caused me to topple over backwards - so the re-tie was a useful exercise in the end. It was time to drive back to home made bread and a bacon and egg breakfast in a wonderful house looking down on the placid loch and with two dogs trying to stare me into submission of my sandwich....

Early morning stillness...

High Days and Holidays

Kids love the outdoors...

Is there anything better than a good English Summer? When the days are long, the weather is fine and warm and the whole country seems to resonate with music - festivals, local outdoor events and garden music systems; the air is filled with the aroma of barbecued food and the roads are rammed with patient traffic edging towards the coast.

This summer seemed to be quite long, the days have appeared to be endless and the nights warm and short. This is the benefit of bright, sunny skies for weeks on end during the middle of the year, and I hope that we have made the most of it. I certainly have fond memories of this summer and my January 1st holiday in Madeira not only fired me up to make the most of our garden this year - vegetables and flowers, but I have been able to see the benefit. Unlike last year, we have been dry and fine for almost all the summer. The lanes have not been waterlogged for the entire summer, the vegetables have had more than enough sun and the grass has been cut at least every week, often every 5 days. We have been able to walk in the woods at 9 o'clock in the evening and still see all around us and also at 4 in the morning - had we wanted to!

Bumbling bees fumbling in the foxgloves, tractors kicking up the dust in the late summer sun or sunlight sparkling off trout dimpled waters - these are a few of my favourite summer things.

late evening sunshine....

We had a wonderful evening filled with music, food and good company and raised some money for Frankie's niece Anna who needs a new communicator, in the process, that is a memory that will stay with me for a long time; the darkness slowly sneaking under the marquee, candlelight gradually taking over from the late evening daylight as the singer/guitarists stood and kept us entertained with music that seemed so apt for the occasion that it folded over us like a warm, comfortable blanket.

An evening of music, food and good company

The fishing has been affected, naturally, the trout staying deep and, whilst not uncatchable, difficult to locate and tempt to the fly, but longer evenings mean later rises of dry flies and this last minute, late light flurry can be fun and produce one or two welcome fish.

Summer walks were spectacular...

Winter seems far away, but Autumn is just around the corner and I love that Season too and I look forward to all it brings. But I will not wish away this summer, I have spent hours upon hours outdoors and although my garden - reclaimed woodland at best - will never look cultivated, be weed free or win any prizes, I have been very pleased with the outcome of the slow start in a very cold Spring, I have loved every vegetable, every flower and every sunny, blue skied day - long may it last - but I'm not afraid of the year's end, just happy to look forward to a new beginning.... 

Tractors kicking up dust in the late summer sun...

Heatwave

The thing about Facebook is that you have to put up with quite a bit of inanity. Throughout the Winter people were freezing and moaning about the protracted coldness, the lack of sunshine and the snow. Now, naturally the same people are complaining about the temperature and that it is too hot and stuffy. It's a British thing I suppose to whine about the weather, and in fact an American colleague of mine was recently complimented on her acclimatisation to all things English with the comment that she could "discuss the weather with ease". 

Wall to Wall Sunshine

It has been warm, about 5 or 6 days of 30 degree plus temperatures, and over two weeks of upper 20's. The skies have been clear and my vegetables have been gasping at the end of each long, languid day. I love it though, it reminds me of my childhood in Germany, riding our bikes and playing out all day and the last really hot summer of '76 when I had just left school and worked on Ron Joy's farm for a couple of weeks before starting my brief, 6 year career with National Westminster Bank. With hindsight I would have enjoyed the farm work far more. 

I have to say though, that trout fishing in a prolonged warm spell is not an easy pastime to master; the trout are deep, their appetite limited and their location difficult to ascertain.  And so today proved. We tried a spot of drifting but the wind was just too strong and the fish were at least 15 feet down. We found we were catching up with the flies too fast to reach the depth at which the fish were, especially with the fast sink line. We hooked up to buoys out in the main bowl area and fished with deep, even jigging the team of buzzers in various depths. Eventually, and with some luck I wrinkled out a rainbow on the retrieve at about 15 - 18 feet down, but try as we might, neither Harry or I had another touch all afternoon and evening. It was a tough day, but such is fishing at times - I certainly won't moan about the weather - but I'll probably leave the trout now until September....

The fish were down, the moon was up...

Keeping Score

A flash of  cobalt in the late afternoon sun.

Most anglers can tell you, pretty much instantly, the weight and capture details of their largest fish. These details are embedded in the memory as strongly as the birth of a first child or the last winning of the FA cup by one's football team. (1980, for mine, sadly). Some anglers can go further - telling you more details of their most memorable catches, the dates, home and bait particulars.  Occasionally one finds an angler who can pretty much instantly tell you what he caught on 15th November 1978 and what he had for dinner afterwards. Most pike anglers know who I'm talking about. 

I used to keep a pretty strict diary with all this data itemised, but then I enjoy writing. Nowadays I'm happy to use this blog to capture the essence of the day more than just the bare bones of the results. It has become more important to me to look back on the memories of the day rather than just the statisics. Many anglers would say that angling is more than just catching fish, but sometimes it can take an inordinately long time to figure that out. I really used to enjoy writing about my social trips - especially Scotland - a country that is easy to romanticise and depict in writing. 

Non fishermen often ask what you think about when you're fishing; life, problems, philosophical dilemma, but all I ever usually think about is fishing. How to catch, what on, where. Harry and I pretty much chat about these things all through our sessions together particularly the where, and it's usually late in the day after a few fish have been caught before the topic turns to ' how's the wife?' or 'work ok?' Sad, but true. It doesn't mean we don't care, of course we do, but, well,  we're fishing and that's pretty important too. 

I do tend to keep a mental tally of "Fish versus Mike" as the day goes on. If I catch a fish, well that's one to me, if I get a take and miss it or the fish comes off before I land it, that's one to the fish.  It's not because I'm bored and have to keep my mind active either, it's just an aberration; I've always done it so I always  do it.  It's a funny thing but it keeps my mind active I suppose. 

Maybe I'm weird.  

Harry thinks I am. 

By the way, today's score was 3 - 2 to me!

Baffled, Bemused and Bewildered at Bewl....

The first, and only, Rainbow

....but not because I didn't catch fish - I did!

We were advised on arrival that hand fish were tight in to the bank and about six feet or so down. That didn't make sense to me, as tight to the bank would be very shallow in most areas and in the weed zone. If the fish are close in, they are invariably chasing fry - this time of year the fry are small and usually hidden in the weed.

I decided to stick with my original plan which was to have a floating booby on the point and two flies on the dropper - a bibio and a hare's ear buzzer. This means that a the flies are on or very close to the surface - certainly not 6 feet down. Andy Lush from the Friendly Fisherman always advocates shallow fishing on this reservoir, and he's fished here for centuries!

Harry and I let the boat drift as close as we could and very soon I had a take on the bibio fairly close in to the trees and I finally landed a strong, feisty 2 pound rainbow - the only rainbow trout I was to catch today. I didn't feel the take, really - the line tightened and that was about it.

My leader was trashed so I put on a new one, with only one dropper this time - the bibio - but with my favourite pearly pheasant tail nymph on the point. This fly might sink to perhaps twelve inches or so, but not much more. We were drifting along the bank, but about twenty or so yards out when I put the rod down to pour a welcome cup of tea. As I reached for the flask, the reel screamed as a trout took the dropper again and pulled my rod towards the water. I grabbed at it and eventually landed a nice Bluey of about 2 and a half pounds. These fish are a rainbow trout variation with turning the back of the fish a dark cobalt blue instead of the usual greeny hue and without the rainbow coloration around the gills. 

Easy, this fishing lark. Two fish and not a clue as to how I caught them...

We stayed in the area for a while longer but without success and so we moved a couple of times finally ending up in the Bowl area.

A Bluey...fat and chunky

As we began the drift I saw a fish which appeared to be feeding on the surface; I cast over towards it and as I began the retrieve I had a solid take and another Blue Trout was leaving the water in its attempt for freedom. These fish really are strong fighters, leaping from the reservoir 6 or 7 times during the fight. I nodded apologetically towards Harry, who mentally shrugged his shoulders. We know how it can be; fishing partners rarely catch together - either one or other has a better day than the other. I fished here three times in a row last year with hardly a take or a fish to be seen while Harry netted his limit each time. 

About an hour before it was time to pack up, I had my last fish of the day, another solid, chunky, hard fighting Blue Trout of around three pounds. There wasn't much of a breeze, hardly any fly hatch that we could detect, yet these last two fish had taken the point nymph barely below the surface.

 I think Andy Lush has got it spot on..

Me? I still don't get it!

Fish on....

Miserable March?

Harry has a fish on....near Arctic conditions in March

The coldest March for 50 years? Snow throughout the month and disrupted travel again this weekend - the 23/24th? Perhaps. All I know is, it's been about 11 months since we had a prolonged spell of warm, settled weather. In fact, March and April 2012 were warm, dry months with higher than average temperatures and a drought in 5 or 6 counties. We went for almost six weeks without rain and we were all confident of a long, hot dry summer. I showed pictures of Bewl Reservoir at its lowest ever level - you can read that again HERE if you want to remind yourselves, and the Water Authorities were concerned about future supplies and low water tables. But, as we all know, from mid April on, we had the wettest Summer ever, with floods all across the UK, waterlogged fields, impassable roads and some communities suffering flooding, in some cases, three or four times in as many months.

Work on the new pond shows the amount of water lying on the fields...

Yet Harry and I ventured out into the 2 degree, end of March weather, with a cold, North-Easterly gale making it feel more like minus 5. We are a hardy lot us anglers - are we not? The good news is that Trout like lower water temperatures and are happy to feed when other, naturalised species are not. So although we were dressed like Explorers of the Frozen North, trudging our way up the hill in layer upon layer of thermal and waterproof clothing, like over-burdened advertisements for Michelin Snow wear, we at least didn't have too many problems contacting with the fish which wanted large, showy flies, shunning anything smaller than a size 10. It took me an hour or so to work that last bit out, actually; Harry had two fish before I changed flies from a small-ish nymph pattern to a large gold head olive damsel. The cold must have slowed down my thinking.

It was good to be out, but better still to get home to a wood fire, hot tea and supper, roll on Spring and at least a slightly higher temperature - double figures would be nice...

A silver bar of light on a cold day  

Nadine, Honey - Is That You..?

Having spent the weekend working in The Wirrall, Monday was supposed to be my day off to recuperate and go fishing at Bewl with Harry. Unfortunately, the tattered remnants of Hurricane Nadine chose the weekend to hit the UK  like a steam train, with gale force winds and skies full of rain causing flooding, traffic chaos and general disruption.

This made our journey back from Liverpool incident-filled, long and frustrating. That notwithstanding, Monday dawned warm, misty and oppressive. The rain started again about mid morning leaving winding rivers running down the middle of roads and trees dripping a melody of water music. As that cleared away around lunchtime it was followed by huge gusts of wind that bent reed beds horizontal, shook trees as if they were shrubs and clattered telegraph wires on their poles causing a  disconcerting threnody of rattles and whines like a wheezing old machine of uncertain maintenance.

Nadine...

We went fishing anyway - hardened as we are and inured against the British weather as all serious fishermen must be. Naturally, we started with cake! Having avoided the vast expanses of Bewl we arrived at the Lodge at Brick Farm in time to see the hopeful sun nudging its way through the bullying clouds and in fact we didn't see the rain again that day.

Trout and Ragwort

We caught though - me on a floating line and Harry on the intermediate. The fish seemed to be as wary of the weather as we were and stayed deep coming to goldhead damsels and Scottish hairy wet flies, perhaps resembling drowned daddy longlegs or other wind blown insects. 

And Harry was right - it was good to get out, the wind blew away all the cobwebs of a busy weekend and the fresh air brought sleep in front of the hot wood fire, red wine remaining in the glass as I drowsed in front of the TV....remembering a long forgotten lyric...

Nadine, Honey - is that You?

Mike and Harry's Birthday Fish In.

Fishing Chum(p)s

My good friend Harry is older than me - by 4 days! It might not be much, but at my age, I'm starting to care about such fine detail. Like my hair, opportunities to be younger than someone in the same vicinity are beginning to thin and as my 55th birthday approaches I become more circumspect about these things.

We try to fit in a fishing trip each year sometime around our birthday week if we can and although most of our trips involve cake of some kind, it jumps higher up the priority order for this particular day. So we arranged to meet at a local Trout Fishery in Herstmonceux where they have a small, but very nice Lodge Cafe within the complex. We relaxed over a nice cup of tea and a slab of Coffee and Walnut sponge while we caught up with each other's lives, ruing the intervention of work and family life into our fishing time. We're both Grandfather's now but I don't think either of us can believe that, I certainly don't feel as my perception of old age tells me I should - I feel fit, healthy and just as broke as I was in my youth and Harry is trimmer and fitter, but also better off than me! I, however, have more hair - for the moment. Yet we can't chat for very long as the water beckons and trout are waiting to be fooled with the fly.

Usually.

Not today.

Four, nearly five, hours later, we both found ourselves with one trout each.

If only the trout had been as greedy...

You can always tell when the fishing has been difficult. Open up any Fisherman's Fly box and it becomes obvious. If he has done well and caught with relative ease, there will be regimented ranks of matching flies, each correctly positioned in its own sub section; nymphs, dries, buzzers, hoppers and wets - and of course, by colour. If he has had a trying time, as we all seemed to on this afternoon, flies will explode like furry, feathery snow as the box is opened, nothing will be in its place and the sodden, intermingled lures will be a sad testimony to the increasingly frenetic search for "The Catching Fly" as the afternoon drew on.

Harry takes care with his Fish

Such was this day. The sun was warm for September, the breeze stiff at times, sending clouds scudding across the skies and casts into reeds, trees and bankside water mint. The high temperature kept the trout near the bottom away from floating lines and  light flies and thus were unable to see our crafily concocted wonders of natural pheasant tail and hare's ear fur. But the company was good, nobody showed us up with a bagful of fish - we all struggled equally, and, of course, there was cake.

Birthday Cake!

The "Catching Fly"?

A perfect evening for fishing, but not catching....

Sometimes it just doesn't matter; how can you complain when the company is good, the weather benign, the conditions perfect, but the fish absent?

It's Bewl; it's the way it is; the reservoir is a favourite venue, but, for Harry and I, it gives up its fish reluctantly.

Bewl has introduced an "Any Methods" policy. Why, I don't know, perhaps the season's dampness has caused a drought of hardy, all-weather anglers; perhaps the Bewl water powers that be have changed a decades long ethos in favour of an elite clientelle, to an all encompassing, catch-all product brought about by the contemporary fad to dumb down as much as possible as often as possible. Maybe.

Anyway, be that as it may, Harry and I couldn't shift a fish. They were rising later in the evening but neither he nor I had a single take on the fly. Now, we're not by any means experts here, but not to have even a touch is very, very strange. We tried up until 8.45 and we tried just about everything. But it was such a wonderful afternoon and evening that we couldn't complain too much.....could we....?

My First Scottish Fish

I had recently started my trout fishing life in Kent, with a friend who patiently taught me how to cast and had the inspired notion of ensuring that I caught a fish by teaching me in a place where it was easy to do so – a fish farm. My first Rainbow weighed in at around two pounds, fought like a locomotive and – because you paid for each fish you caught – cost me about eight quid!

Fish Farm Trout

But of course I was hooked too. There is something so simplistic, so condensed about turning up at a water with a rod, a small bag and a net. No bait, no seat, no rigs or weighty bombs to cast at the horizon – it seemed so pure, so refined and so light! It was apparent that it would be easy to become snobbish about the virtue of this inherent simplicity. And of course you could always leave the bag behind too because fly fishing is the only time in life that grown men could and should wear a waistcoat. I have seen some older gentlemen sporting “gilets” while boarding aircraft or strolling along the promenade at Brighton –sometimes it’s almost a uniform in the checkout at Heathrow - but it really shouldn’t be allowed. I blame the wives of these safari gilet wearing warriors for permitting them to leave the house in such attire – waistcoats are for, and only for, fly fishermen.

Waistcoated

I eventually left the fish farm once my casting was sufficiently capable and approached the smaller, stocked fly fisheries that could be located in the Trout Fishing magazines. At these waters I learned the various ‘arts’ of fly fishing; drifting, intermediate lines and fast sinking monstrosities that hooked up on everything that littered the bottom of the lake; buzzers, nymphs, sparkly lures and the ubiquitous Montana. I also caught a few ‘novelty’ fish like the golden rainbow and the blue; some insipid looking brown trout which were anything but the expected “currants, raisins and cloves” described by Henry Williamson, being rather silvery fish with stubby tails looking poorly and limp, and I even caught tench on the fly in one Estate Lake in Kent.

Golden Trout

I went on to fish a local reservoir; a vast water with depths of up to 70 or 80 feet but where the majority of the trout are caught near the surface for most of the year, only becoming unreachably elusive during the extreme heat or the severe cold. I loved the splashy rise, the gentle sip or the “roll over” as the flies were taken and, for a while became adept on the bank and in the boat – by adept I mean that I occasionally caught a few of these ‘wilder’ fish and my casting improved. I enjoyed the solitude of these larger waters, though of course, the fish were still stocked; on the borders of Kent and Sussex, wild trout are, rarely, found in one or two locations only, so if one wishes to catch a trout one must necessarily travel or put up with stockies.

I came to appreciate the art of tying my own flies, always preferring to use natural materials, or at least natural looking flies whenever possible. Much of my writing about trout fishing traduces the “lure” – that flashy imitation of nothing earthly - that angers a fish into snapping at your “fly”, rather than taking one that it has been fooled into believing was a nymph or midge lava or even a fry. Yet although I have used lures, especially on the ‘dog’ days, when fish are reticent, deep or sleepy, I’m not very adept at fishing them and feel less satisfaction catching with them – I am very definitely a nymph man at heart.

But in 1990 I ‘discovered’ Scotland. I arrived in Glencoe at 4 o’clock on a darkly glowering, crepuscular November afternoon and seemed to feel the enormous weight of the mountains around me, their very mass barely discernible in the heavy, wintry dusk, as the attenuated light leaked from the landscape.

Scotland hooked me too. I was captivated by its history, its forthright, sometimes dourly pragmatic inhabitants, its cheerful national optimism and its gloriously diverse and enchanting landscape. From that November accident (we started in Bath and just kept driving… ) began a consanguineous affiliation that adhered to my Celtic descent and forced a return, time and time again, sometimes two or three trips a year. It would take me chapters to attempt to explain why I was so entranced by a country that most people think too damp, dark or hard to reach, and in the end it’s such a nebulous concept – a love affair with a country – that it would be too difficult to define anyway.

Naturally, the love of fishing and the love of Scotland would coalesce, but it took a year or two for them to do so – I had separated them in my mind as perhaps one would a mistress and a wife – never conceptualising the union of the two. But of course it did happen – I was asked by my partner at the time why I hadn’t taken fishing tackle with us on our Scottish trips and I could give no valid, believable explanation, mumbling something about ‘not fishing on holidays’ an obvious piece of fabrication as it hadn’t stopped me Marlin Fishing in Gran Canaria or Bass fishing in Cornwall. Thus the two loves – a country and a sport - were combined.

As far as Scottish fishing is concerned, there are so many famous places and rivers. The sea at Malaig and Oban, the lochs of Leven, Lomond, Ness and Ken, the rivers Tweed, Spey, Dee, Tay and Don and a myriad of smaller rivers, burns, lochs and lochans – even one lake. There are towns whose names are synonymous with the sport, Dunkeld, Beauly, Kelso and Thurso and the entire country is veined with meandering watercourses and potholed with glacial lochs of vastly differing sizes – it is a veritable dream country for a fisherman.

It was in a marginally famous river that I caught my first Scottish and truly wild, brown Trout – the Blackwater.

It’s namesake in Ireland – the Munster Blackwater - is probably more famous, starting in Kerry and flowing out through Youghal harbour in County Cork with some magical salmon and trout fishing beats in between. I have fished that river too, now. As we walked down towards the falls of Rogie from the car park towards the Scottish Blackwater near Contin, salmon were showing everywhere, splashing in pools as they fought their way up-river in the inevitable battle against contour and elements to spawn. I was persuaded by my girlfriend to fetch my gear from the car and have a go, so I did, to some extremely disgruntled looks from the Salmon Angler opposite. I tied a small red tag stick fly to a four pound point fishing as I would in a fish farm stew pond back home – not knowing any better - and cast it into the pool.

 It felt like a momentous occasion that first cast, almost ‘heavy’ yet I felt lightheaded; my hand tremulous, my breathing fast and light. I didn’t want to catch a salmon – Heaven knows I wasn’t ready for that yet – I just wanted to ‘fish’ and I wanted to hold a real, proper wild, brown trout in my hand and just look.

It was perhaps three or four casts later that I caught my first ever Scottish Brown Trout – a tiny, dark peaty fish of maybe six inches or so. I was like a small child on his first ever minnow fishing trip, amazed and filled with awe at the cascade of colours on these predominantly green fish, but with so many swirls, whorls and blotches. I counted several other colours and, surprisingly, not much actual brown. Only six inches, but that first trout from Scotland could not have been more welcome or more life changing for me. A few seconds after releasing the first fish, I caught another, slightly smaller trout and then another.

The first 6 inch Brownie

It was a wonderful moment in time; the very slight pull on the line - sometimes like a breath of gossamer, or as if a slight breeze had caught the material of the fly - would cause my hand to twitch the rod a fraction of a second later, yet often that fraction, that slight hesitation between sensation and brain impulse was eons too long in trout time, the fish had already realised its mistake and spat out the coarse imitation in disgust. Yet I had fooled it for an instant. I had duped the trout into thinking that my size 16 twinkle midge was a real insect, a genuine item of food. It didn’t matter that all the fish were small, what mattered was the moment, the whole short episode of time, the period in which everything around me tunnelled in on those few fish, that short, magic spell of catching ones first truly wild trout.

By this time the surly salmon angler had moved downstream and I was inexorably drawn back to the ‘real’ world by a loud splashing and sudden movement on the opposite bank. I watched entranced as he played and then lost a large tail-walking salmon. The fish was there one second and gone the next, the line sagging towards the water like a broken washing line as the water of the pool resumed its slow, washing-machine tumble. I would have been completely distraught, raving and stamping around, throwing my rod in the bushes and chewing through the nearest tree trunk, but he just stood looking blankly at the water, still for a moment, then seemed to give an inward shrug before retying his cast. No doubt his fate was different to mine; he has probably caught many salmon each season and one lost fish is just another episode in his ordinary, daily life.

I felt that it was time to retreat. The tranquillity of the pool had been transformed into an angry, brooding entity, the benignity had gone, the still quietude banished. The dark, rocky shelf surrounding the pool was now a forbidding presence, a malevolent gaoler rather than a welcoming gatekeeper.

Another wild Brown Trout

As I climbed the hill back to the car park it occurred to me that I had been blessed with some nice fish as a gift, if you like, from the river, and this feeling has been prevalent from time to time over the years. I have learned to react to the changing character of rivers, lochs and lakes, when I am astute enough to feel these imperceptible nuances of character shift and to accept the gifts when given with thanks. Sounds daft? Well ok, I can accept that in the here and now, but I will still watch for those mood changes and I will welcome them as gifts or warnings as appropriate.

Scotland had presented me with a gift and has pretty much kept on giving since. There have been many wonderful trips, an amazing amount of magic moments to write about and to commit to memory. I still go back to Scotland as often as I can – I just can’t keep away. 

Beautifully clean