Off the Log #8



 The first fishing trip after the cursed Covid’s lockdown? Just had to be a river. The peace and delightful intimacy of standing mid-stream, half immersed into that other world where our quarry lives, has no equal.

 I confess to being rusty, but it wasn’t too long before my erratic casts began to improve, although those marauding trees and rushes, etc., found me an easy target as they snuck up on me from behind. It took a while to catch the first wild, brown trout, a little shorter than my hand’s length, a glorious jewel-creature nevertheless.

Fishing size 18 and 20 barbless nymphs upstream makes it almost inevitable that I’ll drop a few off, and being out of practice meant I missed or dropped many more than I netted, but it didn’t matter one tiny jot. It was real bliss, even though I get cross at my own ineptitude at casting and tying knots, and having to re-tie my cast. I managed to lose at least seven flies, in un-noticed foliage.

 I didn’t fish the whole beat, taking the time to soak it all in as I moved slowly upstream to each likely spot or tiny pool. There were far more varmint Chub present than last year, but there were also several places where I disturbed small shoals of fry from their hidey-holes. Even if the small stuff turns out to be more Chub, the very numbers of fry bode well for water quality and conditions.

A nicer fish that took a Frenchie; in this pic its actually slipping out of my grasp!
The day was warm but overcast, apart from one or two moments when the sun broke through. A staccato of short showers kept up, and I think may have dampened the innards of the camera I take for field work, because it suddenly began to lose clarity and focus. Once home, I tried drying it out, like you do, but found the lens mechanism (when the camera was switched on), now whines like a mosquito, and starts building towards a crescendo, but I switch it off again before it blows up! Researching my options established that to have it examined would cost roughly half of what the camera cost me two years ago, furthermore that any repair work carried-out will most likely take the total cost well past what the original purchase price was! That particular model is still available, and at the same price. What to do?

 Nevertheless, despite my fishing flaws and camera malfunction, I wouldn’t have missed my first session back on the little river for anything!

When I noticed something was up; you can see the focus has gone peculiar.

Comments

Post a Comment

Comments and/or feedback are always welcome

Popular posts from this blog

Read all about it! No fake news here

Image
  The Wild Trout Trust auction is one way you can get onto first class fishing, and like today’s trip, it’s also how you can get yourself some prime time with an exceptionally knowledgeable guide! This particular Lot gave my buddy and I two day-rods on the River Yealm. This urgent, tumbling river drains off Dartmoor, and once formed into a proper river runs seven miles to the sea. A century ago it was a well-known Sea-trout and Salmon fishery, and although there still are silver visitors, most of the fishing is for truly wild Brown Trout, usually six to eight inches, with the odd bigger one turning up. I was guided by Geoff Stephens, while my buddy Brian was guided by Paul Kenyon, whose name may be familiar to you. Both of these inestimable gents have probably forgotten more about fishing wild rivers than I will ever learn, and both know the Yealm like the back of their own hands. They are also acquainted with many of the ‘top’ fly fishers, past and present, work with Snowbee from time
Read more

Summer long ago

Image
It’s a long time since I was sixteen, but one thing is still so vivid in my memory. My older brother was travelling, post uni, and my parents had taken me on a holiday to the west coast of Scotland, where they intended to tour from a base in a lonely, rented farmhouse right on the coast. Given the choice, I had elected to go fishing rather than suffer all that mileage in the back seat of the car every day. Plenty of small but obliging brown trout kept me fully occupied in the tiny pools and riffles of the burn as it cascaded down toward the sea. My supply of flies began to dwindle, but they were all scrounged from adults anyway, I still had plenty in hand for fishing the whole length of tumbling burn until I reached the first of four tidal pools down on the rocky shore, where I hoped I might encounter a sea-trout for the first time. By the third day, there I was, carefully casting my way along the first of those pools, when a soft, lilting Scottish voice nearly made me jump out
Read more

Tempest

  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 accompan
Read more