Category — Thoughts

I’m feeling in a particularly contemplative and reminiscent mood this evening.. I say evening, but it’s 2 in the morning and I’m fed up of working. I just dug up some old photos and video clips, back in the days when it didn’t rain every day and I actually went fishing.

One trip really sticks in the memory. It was July 2006, and my brother and I went on a three day fishing extravaganza in the south of Scotland. We fished a nice river (didn’t catch much), then a remote wee hill loch, with a simply gorgeous wee outflow burn. I have one video clip in particular which brings back a crystal sharp memory every time I watch it. My brother had gone ahead in search of a nice pool further up the burn whilst I fumbled about with a map or a headtorch or a piece of string or something similarly useful. As I came around a bend in the track I noticed his bag, but not him. I crept around the large boulders at the top of the mini-gorge, and found him crouched down at the side of the most stunning pool you could imagine.

The sun was shining, the water was ever so slightly whisky-tinted, and it gurgled and bubbled and slipped over the rocky pool head and into the main amphitheater. As I watched, he flicked his leader gently towards the pool inflow. Despite its bright deer hair wing, it was impossible to see the sedge among the bubbles and white water, and my eyes darted maniacally around the riffle. Suddenly there was a mini explosion, like a passing bird had dropped a stone (or something else) into the pool. He tightened the line, and a trout flew four feet back toward him, before summersaulting back into the pool. Somehow it had stayed on the hook, and he quickly played (hmm…possible pushing it there) the golden spotted brownie back to the net. The idea of a net might seem a bit absurd (it was), but it did allow us to sit back for a few moments of infantile jubilation whilst we gawped at the beauty of the trout. It was about 5 inches long. But in the setting it made our smiles at least that wide.

Thinking back on that day, I’ve come to the conclusion that it defines almost everything that is good about fly fishing. We were in a stunning setting, deep in the southern uplands, surrounded by sweeping hills that glowed green in the warm sunlight. The sound of the burn was like a thousand tinkling wind chimes, all singing together a song of quiet contentment. Trout darted around the pools at the slightest shadow, but with a few minutes rest regained their innocent confidence. There was nobody else there, just a couple of brothers sat ogling in disbelief at the simplest of things, a tiny fish shining in the rippled water.

I’m under no illusion that all of fly fishing is like that day, with its zen calm and eery silence, shared brotherhood and wild smiles. I don’t even think it should be, for if it was always like that I think I’d be bored before long. But I do think there was something in those moments that, if lost or forgotten, would spell the end of a truly lasting enjoyment of the whole thing. I have the strongest of inklings that the day I loose the excitement of those hours, a pounding heart at the sight of the next pool, is the day I need to stop fishing.

One of the first things I bought when I started fly fishing was a fishing vest. After several hours of careful deliberation over three separate visits to a local tackle shop I settled on a Ron Thomson jobbie at fifteen quid. That last line reveals more about my personality than I’m sometimes willing to admit. It also gives me a wry smile now, a few years down the line. I remember thinking something like “hmm… all the fly fishing heros I’ve seen seem to wear one of these vests, so I’d better get one. With lots of pockets. And a D-ring on the back for my net. Oooh yeah, I’ll need a net too, for all the nettable fish I’m going to be catching down the local trout sewer…Ho hum..”

My Ron Tommie was a lovely dull green colour, and seemed to be made from the kind of cotton left over after some factory in deepest China had finished making Y-fronts for Asda. Flimsy would be polite. The zips looked to be the same as those you find on really cheap purses for sale at Saturday markets all over the country. Great as a last minute mother’s day present, not so great for the brutal treatment of a manic young fisherthing, crawling through thick urban undergrowth to get to hidden bits of river. The first one went after a few weeks, but despite my unkind comments most of the others actually held out for a couple of years.

Upon arriving home with my Tommie-vest I proceeded to enthusiastically fill up as many of the pockets as possible. Plans were made for all eventualities, including famine, nuclear holocaust, rampaging mongeese and long fly-sucking tree branches. The only problem was that once I’d distributed all my flyboxes, floatant, tippet, permits and suchlike, there were still a couple of pockets which didn’t threaten to split open at any moment. Obviously I wasn’t carrying enough flies, so a further trip to the tackle shop was required. A couple of new fly boxes and a few dozen loch-style flies later and things were looking and feeling decidedly heavy (except for my wallet..). Heaviness of tackle is next to manliness of course, so I was all set.

A feature of the Ron-Tom I was particularly proud of was the patch of fluff stuck to one of the pocket flaps close to the left breast. Over the following two or three years this became the very hub of my fishing world, as more and more of my flies seemed to migrate from the neatly arranged boxes and into the party on the patch. Rather than carefully scan rows of carefully organised flies in plush fly boxes, I began to develop a slightly crooked neck from sticking my chin into my chest to examine proceedings on the patch. I really do have good intentions when it comes to fishing organisation, but things just seem to get out of hand.

The vest had a proud life, witnessing all of my fishing exploits up to the end of the 2006 season. She saw me catch a huge river trout, a huge river grayling, fall in (multiple times), blank (multiple times), fall in (some more) and hugged my shivering torso as I watched lovely summer sunsets (after falling in). I’ve thought about it a lot, and I can’t think of anything that would have been gained by spending an extra 50 or 100 quid on a flash-vest. Ok, perhaps a Simms, Orvis or suchlike would have lasted a decade instead of half that, but seriously, fly fishing doesn’t have to be expensive and blingy (some people may disagree).

The green wonder now lies at the bottom of my wardrobe, carefully folded and sucking up the lovely flavour of the surrounding pinewood. One day I will dig her back out again and go fishing. I’m hoping the relationship will still be workable, for I’ve since been unfaithful and moved on to modern rubbish. Perhaps the glory of the woody smell will have done the trick, like a nice bottle of perfume.

Indeed, a day came when it was time to move on. My gear carrying device has since been altered to a chest pack. Note I say altered, and not upgraded. I do now find a chest pack to be a superior all-round system, but I refuse to say that anything is an upgrade of my humble vest. Indeed, while the old vest did lend me a certain ‘elderly’ quality, I occasionally have to refer to the chest pack as a ‘man-bag’, in order to reassure myself of its suitability for a testosterone-packed individual such as me. This has not been helped by occasional unthoughtful comments from people who shall remain nameless.

I suppose any piece of fishing gear can become precious. Fishing for hours on end wearing the vest it becomes part of your fishing mindset, something that is just there. It was a strangely uncomfortable experience making the switch to a new pack, and I didn’t feel comfortable at all for a month or so. Of course all of this talk is pretty much total unadulterated bullshit, because in the end you go fishing for reasons other than pathetic sentimental memories of a fifteen quid piece of Y-front, but that’s what blogging is here for. The only exception to this cutting sentiment is the Hat, but that’s a whole other post.

Believe it or not this post started out as a review of the aforementioned chest pack. That post is now in the pipelines, so watch out over the next few days. It’s one of the older William Joseph chest packs, and it’s a beauty. The review will be in the reviews section soon(ish)…

Last week I really got into a fishing groove for the first time this season. A full day down at one of my usual spots proved to be very difficult, as did the next at another big-fish river. The bright sun and suddenly scorching weather seems to have left the fish thinking they’re all in Barbados, and don’t need to worry about olives and my flies any more.

On Thursday I managed to sneak a few hours at one of my oldest haunts, a place where one glorious May afternoon saw the capture of my largest brownie. It’s also a place not far from where the Spring Submariner lived last year, and my thoughts were of running into one of his relatives. I parked the car and walked close to the pool, stringing up the slightly stiffer 4 weight rod in place of my usual 3 weight matchstick.

Upon arriving, however, I experienced one of those strange, uncontrollable magnetic attractions to walk, walk.. I walked past some really nice water, all the while thinking “that looks nice, I’ll just get in down at the next pool..”. But I kept walking and musing and ho-huming in the bright 11am sunshine. No fish seemed to be showing, and something about the next run drew my attention.

I finally arrived at the run, glorious and full of small seams, rolling boulder-rounded water and a final silky flat. Straight away there was a rise in a seam near the head of the pool. I waited for several minutes, creeping up to the bank edge on hands and knees and peering in to the lightly Jura-stained water. Another fish rose in another seam. Hairs stood up on my neck for the first time this season: finally some trout at the surface, feeding and making me smile. I wondered why the fish in this pool were back from Barbados. Looking around it became pretty obvious, as the sun flitted down from behind a huge wall of trees: shade! The whole pool was bathed in shadow, creating that wonderful kind of crisp spring light that tells of warmer days to come, but reminds you of the cooler days not long past. Perhaps it was just the sheer intensity of the May sun that had caused all the problems on the other rivers, and the real secret was to hunt shade first, and then trout.

A few olives and the odd brook dun were coming off, though I felt that I was actually at the tail end of the morning rise. I should have spent less time in the village shop getting my ham salad baguette made up and more time making like my father’s wind and down to the river. As I glanced downstream I spotted another couple of rises in the rolling water of the mid-run. They looked like better fish, but I opted to try for the wee rise in the head of the run and purposefully tied on a deer hair emerger in a scruffy size 14. After a bit of wonky casting in the stiffening south-easterly he rose nicely to my fly, and a quick tussle later he was in the net and sparkling in that shadow-light.

I waded back to the near bank and started to skulk very slowly down the edge of the river. I felt a little naughty as this kind of wading seems to be universally heralded as the ultimate in fish-spooking, but again that magnetic draw made it hard to concentrate on anything other than the twinkling river surface. Then there was one of those rises that really makes the hair on the back of your neck wake up. Fins and tails wafted in the surface as the fish sipped emegers. In my experience only the better fish ever rise like this, so I immediately got out of the river and took a huge detour downstream by a potato field and slipped in at the head of the next pool.

Wading slowly across to be well under the shade of the trees I saw another couple of rises, which suggested at least three good fish in the run. It was one of those slightly confusing situations where you aren’t sure if there’s one fish or ten, and you’re afraid to wade any further in case you spook any of them. It’s also difficult to judge where to cast, so in the end I spent a long time waiting up to my waist in the water until something rose just a couple of rod lengths away. I speedily covered the rise (DHE no. 14 again..) and had an instant, swirling take. I struck and he bolted off across the river, jumping clear of the water and twisting between rocks. At first I thought he was foul-hooked as he really made a meal of things, jigging around and dancing merrily. He eventually slid over my net and looked truly fantastic in the last moments of the morning. He wasn’t a real leviathan at 16″, but after a long winter without any grayling or trout, El Beautio was like a shark and really made my day.

I quickly phoned my dad to break the news. He was fishing for carp, bream and roach down in Cambridgeshire with my uncle, and it turned out he’d had a great morning too. Nine fish including a nice bream against my uncle’s blank. Bizarre really, as my uncle is a fine fisherman and often helps my dad get set up at the start of a day. I munched away on my (rather superb) baguette, followed by a delicious slice of tiffin, and eyed the pool for further action.

Nothing much seemed to be happening. Perhaps the capture of El Beautio had spooked the pool, but I actually think I was lucky to catch the tail end of the hatch and rise. After half an hour of pondering, a couple of splashy rises suggested things might be happening again. I crept back into the river from under the trees and assumed position in the lee of a particularly large branch.

A fish rose in the water ahead of me, right in the middle of the river. After neither my DHE nor DHS turned up any interest, I started to get confused. I tried a small dirty duster but that didn’t work either. When my usual absolute-winner-super-duper-never-fail CDC dry didn’t produce I got desperate. The fish kept rising occasionally, but my staple dries seemed to be useless. I dug around in my box of lesser-used flies and my gaze was quickly attracted by an old badger-hackled red tag. As I moistened the knot I became oddly confident that the fish was actually munching terrestrial bugs, and so the old fly might in fact be a perfect choice. Second cast down and the fish aggressively took the fly. Despite his slightly disappointing size, it was a pretty satisfying conclusion to the days events and I headed off back upstream and towards home.

In other news, I found out during proceedings that it is in fact possible to cast a size 6 long shank woolly bugger on a stiffish 4 weight rod, even if you look like an Olympic javelin thrower doing it. Watch this space..

One of the great things about writing a fishing blog is that it gives you a near-permanent record of the season’s fishing exploits. I often scroll through my old blog posts recalling trips and thoughts. It’s a funny process really, a bit narcissistic, but it’s also very enlightening. It’s possible to ‘chart’ the evolution of one’s fishing life, with all the highs and lows, the glory and the disaster.

The only problem is that it’s actually quite a bit of effort to keep a blog updated (eh…), and so inevitably one doesn’t record all a season’s trips. The real nitty-gritty detail of a trip is also lost on a blog: stuff like the atmospheric pressure, the temperature and the colour of my socks. I’ve been thinking about this quite a bit lately: there are bound to be some hidden jewels of fishy information in those lost and under-reported trips.

I think the solution is the Diary of Future Past. A concise, all-encompassing record of every fishing trip I make. We’re talking hardware here folks, the real stuff, not just 1’s and 0’s and digital trickery. It’s the kind of record the real folks of old used to keep, the kind you can carry around and flick over whilst on the bus. I’ve been meaning to do so myself for the past couple of seasons, but it’s only now that I’ve discovered the secret to making good such ambitious intentions. Preparation, preparation, preparation.

In my old folly I thought a simple notebook would suffice. A few ruled lines, a ballpoint pen and a little determination. But the time folks, oh the time. I am really just as lazy as the next man, and it just takes too much time to start a fishing report with a totally blank sheet of paper. I need a little prodding, and the Diary of Future Past prods nicely.

There are lots of commercial fishing diaries out there, but the ones I’ve seen are rather expensive, not very good and full of advertising. So I decided to make one myself, using the glory of JFig, my printer at work and the lovely folks in the graphics and photocopying wizardry department of the University of Edinburgh. The lovely thing about making your own diary is that you can include precisely the empty spaces you want. There are also no adverts, dodgy photographs or deeply inspiring quotes from Robert Redford. It’s a diary without the fat and cholesterol, streamlined to sharply prod me into faithful adherence.

I think I’ve included the most important stuff: empty spaces for the date, details about the weather, the general hatch and trout activity, notes about the flies I used and plenty of space for meanderous wanderings. The Diary is A5 size, so it’s nice and portable, with a stiff cardboard backing and clear plastic covers. Each report has two pages: one with the writing, and a second on the back available to stick in wee photos if desired. Book one has space for 83 diary entries, which should see me through a season or two. I reckon it should be possible to file a report in about ten minutes, which fits nicely into my morning turd regime. No more excuses.

It was one of those sunsets tonight. The light crawls right through the cooling air and onto the skin. No longer was I a passive observer of a distant photograph. The light fell onto me and everything around. Deep orange and red, oozing across south Edinburgh and coating everything. It’s the kind of sunset impossible to capture on film or pixel, for the light is everywhere except inside my camera. I snapped away gleefully, but I hope the feeling will last longer.

People say: “they don’t make stuff like they used to”. I say this, my pals say this and my dad certainly says this (though I secretly think he’s referring to people as well…). It was rather nice this evening to see that in some quarters, at least, they actually DO make stuff properly, like they used to, good and hard.

I’m always on the look out for a hook to turn a bad situation into something positive, and hopefully something to write on the blog, and this momentous event certainly falls into this category. This afternoon I bought (or rather, WAS bought) a rather cracking bottle of fine single malt whisky. Having taken a good while in the shop carefully sifting through a few malts, I decided on something I hadn’t tried before, from the west coast of Islay. It was a Bruichladdich, and mighty fine she was too.

As I climbed out the car this evening, I put the shining silver case on the roof of my car. Unbeknown to me it was upside down, so after locking the car and turing to gather the whisky and other faff I hoisted her briefly into the air only for the bottle inside to quietly slip out and roll off the roof. I’m sure the scene was comical: a bottle of fine malt careering off the roof, with a stupefied punter moving in comical slow motion to try and grab it whilst simultaneously grasping a large potted plant and two cameras.

The bottle hit the deck with a bone crunching, slightly eye watering `ting’ before quietly rolling up against the pavement. I dashed over, picked her up and cradled her in my shaking arms. Unbroken, just slightly chipped. That is some hard-ass glass man shit. It’s nice to see something made good and proper.

I raised a quiet toast this evening to a fine malt, a solid bottle and good the old fashioned tough stuff spirit. It’s important for fly fishing too, of course. Not long to go now…

Long hours of quiet meditation. Days of ingesting inordinate quantities of super-curry. With-holding toilet use for three days. There are many things we can do to try to change ourselves. I tried to change, I tried to be a Tuesday-night-tier. I tried to set targets and to stick to them. Ten muddler heads a week, how hard can it really be? Sadly, it just doesn’t work.

I’ve since come to accept that my erratic fly tying behaviour is probably a reflection of something rather unchangeable and hard-wired into my brain. I’ve heard it referred to as ‘personality’, and it ain’t half an arse at times. My newfound zen-like self acceptance means that some kind of permanent solution has had to be found for the issue of fly tying gear transportation. The Stand of Majesty just wasn’t going to cut it on the road, not with all those bobbin antennae. What was needed was a way to transport everything I could possibly need for any possible situation. Fluff, feathers, bobbins, the whole shebang. The system needed to be hardwearing, reliable, small and most importantly, easily transportable. Ladies and gentlemen, allow me to present to you… the Far-reaching And Ridiculously Tenacious fly tying System (FARTS to you and I).
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Nine days of fishing. For anyone less than a guide or a professional trout bum, it’s a good stretch. For the first few days it’s a novelty, then it begins to feel strangely normal. Casting becomes more natural, presentation more consistent, fly choice oddly instinctive. It’s almost like finding an activity that draws on all one’s spirit, slowly moulding everything together to fit some kind of focussed purpose. When a ‘normal’ day involves nine hours at a desk, it’s a deeply satisfying purpose to feel, even if it lasts just a few days.

The North is really about the lochs. There are thousands of them, scattered all across the land and each one with a particular character. It’s probably a good analogy to imagine the landscape as a giant bowl of curry. There are endless chunks of onion (the ‘typical’ lochs), punctuated by the occasional tomato (the ‘better’ lochs), and the odd rare and prized piece of tender lamb (the ’special’ lochs). As with curry, it’s no use having just one ingredient: variety is truly the spice of life and the huge variety of Scottish lochs provides hope for a lifetime of interesting fishing. Lochs brim-full with pretty wee brownies desperate to eat a fly are sometimes exactly what is called for after a day fruitlessly chasing after the tenderest lamb. But on the days when the butcher is kind, a lifelong memory can be found in the glistening bronze flank of a 2lb belter. It’s all in the mix.
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I have a strange relationship with fly tying. On the one hand it has helped me to get more out of my fishing. I love seeing a trout sup down a little sherry spinner tied by my own two hands. It’s a special kind of satisfaction that just doesn’t exist with shop bought fluff. I have also found, however, that it sometimes has a tendency to drive me into a kind of unhealthy obsession. The most bizarre thing of all is that the obsession isn’t actually about tying flies.

Organisation. Where would we be without the simple joy found in sorting stuff out, finding a proper place for every last widget? Fly tying is an absolute class A activity for those of us with a ’sorting out’ fetish. The endless packets of dubbing, the myriad feathers and capes, the insane variety of hooks. Oh what joy! I am certain that I have a problem. I’m becoming the kind of fly tier that spends more time, a lot more time, sorting out fly tying paraphernalia than actually tying flies. Perhaps the worst thing of all though, the real bottom clencher, is that I rather suspect that I spend even more time just thinking about sorting out fly tying gear than even sorting the damn stuff out.

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Summer on Clyde
Where the sedges fly
The sky red blue
And the anglers two

Together they stand
Cheap cork in their hands
Smiles on their faces
In the river, gracious

A tumbling riffle
Flows into calm glass
Speeds up and encircles
Dry legs in the water

Wafting weed pulses
And breaks up the flow
Green hair on the rocks
Washed daily, pure water

To come and to stand
On the grassy hill bank
Is perfection removed
From a world gone mad

Summer on Clyde
Brothers, side by side
The fading light
And the anglers plight