RH Fly Fishing

  What, you might quite rightly ask, is this contraption? Well, the second photo provides a bigger clue, and the third makes it clear.   Sometimes (rarely, actually) I buy a new fly line because an old one has had it, and needs to be replaced. Perhaps the new line is to go onto a newly acquired reel? That’s straightforward, however, if you are like me, that newly purchased line might be the ‘latest thing’, or even a new addition to your armoury of lines. I can’t keep buying reels every time I buy a new line, or mission control will “want to talk about this”, so there usually follows a great deal of swapping lines, from and to, an assortment of reels, until the newest one is satisfactorily spooled and at the ready. The oldest, or maybe ‘least liked’ line ends up being stashed away, in reserve or to be passed on to someone, “it’s still got plenty of life left in it”.   But, why is all this swapping around necessary you might wonder? Inevitably, your armoury of ...

This is really just a pic of my top six fly reels, arranged in no particular order, and the sole raison d'etre is that it makes for a good picture … well, to fly anglers anyway. Safe!

  This recounts a day way back, when I was even more of an incompetent fly fisher than I am now. It’s a vivid memory, and another lesson.   My daughter (bless) had organised her brothers and her mammy into arranging a Father’s Day special pour moi, thus a bright June day saw me at Avington, with a paid-up three fish ticket and a very nice packed lunch; the whole day stretched ahead of me.   The first fly I knotted on dates this account: a black & green Montana. To Lake One then; third spot I tried BANG! I was into the first Rainbow, just ten minutes after starting fishing. A four-pound Avington beauty was soon safely in the net. Next stop Lake Two, casting from the left-hand bank (when you look down the fishery). I could see some cruisers above the lush, bright green weed, sometimes dropping into the ‘holes’ which I guessed were springs. Same fly, three casts and the scene repeated with a four-plus beaut scrapping and running wildly until subdued and drawn to ...

  The lough, aided and abetted by the unpredicted, freakish weather we sometimes encounter nowadays (thank you global warming), had seemed against me for five long days. Today would be my last chance, but when I met Michael at the boat, he looked gloomier than ever. “The forecast is dreadful” he said “if you hadn’t had such a terrible, hard week, I’d have called today off. But … we can give it a bit of a go until it breaks, which is supposed to be after lunch. We’d better go now, so”.   On about the sixth drift, the overcast sky blackened, the wind strengthened, and began to whip up white horses. Michael looked anxiously about as he rowed. The rain started, heavily, and soon became almost horizontal as the wind blew even harder; we could no longer make out the mountains. Michael said “I don’t like the look of this, make this your last cast”. I did as bidden, starting to work the flies back but halfway through the retrieve there was a two-hundred-decibel roll of thunder...