On Fishing

SOMETIMES, when sitting out there by the river alone, especially at dusk, I begin to fold into myself and my thoughts. Then even thinking fades away. I seem to liquefy, to melt into the physical world shawled about me, to dissolve into the water’s curlings and slidings, its soft easings and crinklings, its twiddling little vortices and its washes of light. I go, though not consciously, to some other place.

Later, as if unprompted, the world takes form again, sounds separate and become distinct again and I look at my watch. Ten minutes, 15 minutes, 20 minutes, an hour. I do not know where I have been, but it has been somewhere deep down and I suspect far back, perhaps near that place where everything began.

Wherever that place is, I go there gladly. It is somewhere deep-healing and it makes me whole. It is to that place and space that I dedicate this book: to that place where the physical passes through me like ether – and to fishing, which magics me there.

Table of Contents

Cover Page

Title Page

Dedication

Introduction

One Long Morning

Which Fly, When

A Second-hand Book

A Shattered Dream

Wildlife, the Media and Us

All You Need to Know

Arthur Ransome

Coarse Fish on the Move

Buying Tackle

Dry Fly, Wet Fly, Nymph

Fun in the Grass

Arthur Oglesby

The Weakest Link

Always and Never

Barbless Hooks

Bernard Venables

The Power of the Close-up

Best Day, Worst Day

Big Noreen

Brain-boxes on Fins?

Frank Sawyer and Oliver Kite

The Man Who Dressed as a Tree

A Definition of the Impossible

The Beatrix Potter Syndrome

Fishing at Night

Flies, Hooks and Leaders

The Lady Gives it a Go

Fred Buller

Getting Stocking Levels Right

Stalking Fish on Lakes

Giving Logic a Chance

Chub, Dace, Roach, Barbel

Halford and the Dry Fly

John Goddard

Just Going Fishing

Life and Death in the Arctic

A Perfect Day

Making Fishing Too Easy

Morality Tale

Size and Relative Size

Reet Queer Trout

My Way with Carp

Need, Ego and Addiction

Grafham – and Alex Behrendt

Pig Eats Rod

Sex in Angling

Skues and the Nymph

Staying Silent and Still

Strike Indicators

Swans

Tench on a Fly

The Arte of Angling

Reading the Rise

The Boatman

The Dame and the Treatyse

The Dry Fly on Lakes

The Falklands

The Grannom and the Mayfly

The Hair Rig

The Itchy Wellie Factor

Francis Maximilian Walbran

The Otter

The Professor’s Big Trout

The Benefits of an Aquarium

Too Many Deaths

Which Fish Fights Hardest?

Promises, Promises

Champion of Champions

Yippee!

Faked Orgasms

Angling and the Future

Index

Acknowledgements

Other Books By

Copyright

About the Publisher

Introduction

AS I NOTE in the acknowledgements this book contains a mixture of new essays and writing of mine that has appeared in various publications over the years. The new pieces are in the main, the longer pieces. The shorter pieces, though not exclusively, are from The Times.

All of the latter, no matter where originally published, have been amended in some way, whether to include points that I did not have the space to include first time around, or to take account of new information, or to accommodate changes in context or circumstance. One or two have been completely reworked.

Because these pieces were individually written for publication at different times, each needed to be self-contained. One consequence is that from time to time information that appears in one article to make it complete appears in another for the same reason. I thought it better to let these very occasional, minor duplications stand than to introduce cross-references which, in my own reading, I tend to find a distraction.

In choosing what to include I have tried to convey something of the diversity of angling, its practices and its refinements; of the absorptions and passions it gives rise to, the places it takes us to, the literature it has stimulated and the threats to it that crowd in all around – many of them, it seems to me, alarmingly unnoticed by the average angler on the bank. Mostly, and perhaps unsurprisingly, the book reflects my own greatest interest – fly fishing for trout – but there are enough other subjects to justify, I think, the generic title my publisher suggested.

The pieces do not appear in any particular sequence: indeed, with minor tweaks I have let them run in a broadly alphabetical order. As I wrote in the introduction to my previous anthology, Trout etcetera, I dip into collections like this as though into a bran tub and I am not deceived that my own work will be treated differently by others. However, I began with ‘One Long Morning’ because I wanted to convey, at the outset, something of what the experience of fishing means to me and does for me. I have ended with ‘Angling and the Future’ because it self-evidently looks ahead.

I hope that readers will find both essays of interest – and maybe the odd paragraph that comes between them.

Brian Clarke

July, 2007

One Long Morning

THE appeal of angling is about as easy to define as beauty or truth. We might as well try to weigh what fishing does for us, or measure it with rulers, as reduce it to words – especially for someone who has not fished. To get any sense of it at all, a non-angler would have to be in the one place he cannot possibly get: inside our heads. After all, that is where the real action is.

There are not many places in Britain where the water is as bright and clean as the day God poured it, but this is one of them.

The road winds down the valley, hemmed in by hedges. Over the hedges, unseen and mostly unknown, the little stream flows scarcely casting-distance away. Looking at it over the old iron gate where I parked the car, I could see how short the fishable length is: maybe 300 yards from the wood just behind me to the place where the sedges grow out so far that they close the water off.

The meadow between the gate and the water is tussocked and flower-strewn, baked by the drought, pitted with the impressions of remembered hooves. Across it, deep within it, the stream hides. It is full of wild trout and it has never been stocked. Never. The great attraction.

Even when I was almost on top of it the water was difficult to see, the only clue it’s here at all the line of sedges and rushes, the bright heads of purple loosestrife and the lollipops of reed mace that nod and sway.

The stream’s a tiny thing, a rod’s length wide here, a rod and a half there and it is extraordinarily deep. At some point, I guess, it must have been dug with a view to draining the land but nature has used the years well. As the reeds and sedges have softened the banks, so starwort and ranunculus have softened the bed. They orchestrate the water and the light.

I’d been told about the depth and the way the rushes and high sedges make bank fishing impossible. It’s why, for all the stream’s size, I’m waist-deep in chest waders, now.

It’s not going to be easy. There’s a strong, upstream wind. From down here, deep in the water with my head at meadow height, the sedges and tussocks are rearing high overhead, flailing and thrashing, ready for every back-cast. A procession of ripples is being pushed upstream, as though by an incoming tide. The sky is leaden; the low, grey clouds as long and uniform as plumped feather bolsters, flattening the light. No, it’s not going to be easy.

Actually, it’s not just the wind and the sedges and the lack of light that are the problem, it’s the angle I’m at. This isn’t a water for speculative casts. Here, you don’t cast until you see a fish, a convention that has a practical edge because by casting blind you’d frighten unseen trout and reduce your already-slender chances still further. But to cast to sighted fish naturally means being able to see them which, if they’re not rising, means being able to see into the water.

Which today I cannot do. Not much, anyway. The light and ripples are one thing, the fact that I’m waist-deep is another. This deep in, my eyes are not far above the water and the angle between them and the surface upstream where I need to look, is shallow. It means that, looking more than two or three yards ahead, all I can see is the grey, reflected sky. It’s only when I look steeply down, close to my wadered legs, that I can see into the water.

The water is as clear as I’d been told. It’s so clear and bright it almost might not be there. It’s as clear as melted time.

On the bottom, between the dense growths of the waterplants, channels of flints and chalk gleam up. I can see the roughs and smooths of every stone, every chip and angle. They’re so sharp and fine-edged they might have been picked out with scalpels. Caddis cases cover every one. The weed’s alive with shrimps, nymphs, the larvae of this and that. This would be a fabulous place in a hatch, but there’s little likelihood of one this morning. This morning, it’s going to have to be the nymph.

The green canyons between the weed beds and the channels along the bottom will all have fish in them but, because of the angle I’m at, I’ll be on top of any trout before I realise it’s there. It’ll be on the open gravel patches that I’ll mostly be concentrating and there aren’t many of those. The gravels and chalk reflect the light and any fish on them should be visible from a distance.

I say should be.

I’ve got company. A water vole sniffle-snuffles towards me on some busy errand, realises that it has got company as well, and dives. A pair of buzzards kee-kees across the narrow strip of sky I can see between the sedges to my left and the sedges to my right. A flock of crows rises like black ashes above one bank and disappears behind the other, leaving its cacophonous caw-cawing behind.

I tuck the little 8ft three-weight under my arm, slide a hand into a pocket and grope and trace among the bottles and spools, seeking the fly-box. I’ll start small and change as I need. A size 16 nymph goes onto a 2lbs point.

I put a smear of flotant on the thick end of the leader so that it rides high on the surface, where I can see it. Normally, I’d put a sinking compound onto the leader near the fly as well, to get it off the surface, but the compound is opaque and will make the leader more visible in these conditions, so I’ll do without it today. I click the fly onto a rod-ring, loop the leader back around the cage of my reel and tighten up. Ready. The trout have my attention.

Of course, I won’t be looking for a trout because I know I won’t see one – not an outlined, clearly defined one, anyway. I’ll be looking for hints and winks of trout, for linear shades and brush-strokes, for sepia suggestions; for patches of gravel or chalk where, at some point, the stones seem curiously straight-edged. I’ll be looking for faint lateral movements, for suggestions of rhythmic pulses that might resolve into a tail. No, I’ll not be looking for fish. I’ll be looking for water, but in a firmer form.

If finding fish today’s going to be one thing, catching them is going to be another. These fish won’t only be difficult to see, they’ll be hair-triggered, as well. It’s not just the clarity of the water and the fact that they are fished for. What’s going to make them edgy is that everything else knows they’re here and wants them.

This valley’s full of otters and herons and cormorants. No-one has a problem with the otters because they’re a part of our heritage and here in natural numbers and it’s good to have them back after so long. But the herons around here come in vast numbers because of the fish farms on the streams nearby. The cormorants have a roost just a few miles away. The numbers of both birds are unnatural and they take an unnatural toll. A bright thread of tinsel like this, so difficult to see from the road, must glint and beckon from the air.

The fish I’m looking at is up there to the right. It’s lying on that patch of gravel at the foot of the little alder, a sepia brush-stroke in front of the stone. It’s a half-pounder, maybe a little more. A nice trout.

I can’t cast from here. It’s not just that the sedges will snatch at my back-cast, it’s that any line I throw will fall across that bed of starwort breaking the surface. The line will catch on the weed and the current on the far side will swing the leader around. The leader and the fly. Drag. Fatal, in this place.

That’s what I’ve got to do. I’ve got to get to the foot of the little alder on my own bank and cast from there. From there, I’ll have a diagonal of clear water between myself and the fish. I’ve got to get up there without disturbing it.

It takes an age. It’s not just the weight of weed I’ve got to push through, or the weight of the water clamped around my legs and middle, it’s the need for caution. Every step is so slow and laboured, coiled and taut. Bed my left foot down, take my weight on it, lift my right foot and ease it forward. Push against the weed, push against the water, touch down. Grope and trace over the bottom, reading it like Braille. Find a purchase. Set it down. Take the weight. Now my left foot, ditto.

It’s taken five minutes to move five yards, but I’m in position. Me here, the fish there. I’m wound up and locked on, joined to the fish by ancient choreography, by thousands of years, maybe millions.

Crouch lower. Move slowly. Turn my head slowly in case my Polaroids catch the light and semaphore a warning. Keep the rod down. Watch my backcast, watch the flailing sedges, watch the fish, watch everything. The new world fades and the old closes in. The forest and the glade enfold. I am alert for the grunt or the rustle, for the parting of the grasses and the glimpse of fur or hide.

A coot creaks. My eyes are burning through the water, burning into the fish, which still hasn’t moved. I drift the rod back, draw the bow tight, take aim along the arrow. I’m at home with this. I’ve been doing this since I first stood upright. I haven’t needed to do it for food for thousands of years but the tug of it, the old compulsion, is still deep inside. Don’t tell me this is a game or sport, this is the real thing. I am. The fish is. This is hunting, one on one.

Now! I let go the fly, flick the line into a low, controlled backcast and flick it forward again. It straightens – and the trout does an astonishing thing. It bolts. It bolts, just like that, leaving a little puff of silt drifting down on the current, as if to prove it had been there, once. I’m stunned. How could it? How could it have known? What had I done – or left undone?

I’m also not surprised. This is the way this fishing is. It’s the difficulty that’s the great attraction. I smile, say ‘well done, fish’ out loud and without embarrassment and move on.

The morning dissolves. Other patches of gravel, other sepia shades, other sudden boltings and compact dispersals. One fish, pricked and lost. More than two hours gone in a kind of limbo. I’ve come 250 yards, have maybe 50 more to go before the sedges and the rushes make progress impossible. Now I’m looking at another fish, the one that looks like a tear-drop because I’m right behind it, looking along its fuselage tail-edge on. He’s in the gap between the upstream edge of the first weed bed and the tail-end of the one just above. He’s a couple of feet down and just three rod-lengths away.

Time for another change. I’ve been ringing the changes all morning, constantly switching the size and weight of the nymph according to the fish and its depth and the speed of the current. I’ve been shortening and lengthening the leader according to how exposed I am to the wind and the place in the water where I have to put the fly down and yes, I can see I need another change, now. I take off the size 14 pheasant-tail, rummage through the fly-box and take out a size 12 shrimp, one of those tied with pale green silk, my colour-code for three turns of lead wire under the dressing.

The buzzards are back again. So are the crows. A squadron of swifts is on its way back to Africa. The high grasses thresh and the reed-mace waggles.

Being sheltered here, chest-deep behind this huge bed of starwort is like standing in an aquarium. The surface is as still as glass and the leader’s drooped across it. I can see the surface tension curving in along the nylon, exaggerating its width. It’s putting a crack in the mirror. Beneath it, far down in the deep, green cave, first two minnows, then a few, then maybe a dozen come out of the weed-wall on one side and sidle across to the other, right in front of my waders, showing no sense of my presence. It’s a God-moment, looking down like this. Such tiny, other-lived lives. They’re so separate and contained, close and towered-over, so vulnerable and unaware. So watched. Is something up there, watching me?

No need to cast. I let the shrimp fall into the water, wriggle a couple of yards of line out through the top ring and let the current to my right carry them downstream behind me. Then I bring the rod forward, the leader straightens over the fish – and the wind blasts it to one side.

The trout does nothing. I flick the shrimp again and the same thing happens, but this time the trout turns a fraction towards it before resuming its line. It may have seen the fly, the leader going down, a herringbone of drag, I don’t know what. But it certainly saw something. I change pattern, put on a little black-hackled beetle with a little more lead in it. The lead, if I get the cast right and the wind plays the game, will help the leader straighten and give me the entry I want. I pause for a while, waiting for a break between the gusts. My leader puts a crack in the mirror again. Another troupe of minnows. The buzzards and the rooks are back. Again, somewhere, the coot creaks. Creak on, coot.

This time as I cast, I check the line as the leader straightens and the momentum of the weighted nymph loops it suddenly forward and down. The little fly makes a hole in the water and it sinks at once, taking a foot of leader straight down with it. Perfect. A fast sink entry, right for line, right for depth. As the fly’s about to pass the fish I move the rod six inches and the nymph rises as though alive and trying to get away.

Again, the inexplicable. The moment I move the nymph the trout hurls itself forward, smacking the fly so hard that the fish comes clean through the surface. I glimpse its head clearly, glimpse its open mouth and its eye, see the leader stab and I tighten. No contact. Nothing at all. How? How? More questions. No more answers than before. Take my weight on my left foot, lift my right, push against the weight of the weed and the water. Move on.

Move on some more. Now I’m 20 yards from the end of the fishable water, the place where it becomes too deep to wade and where the sedges crowd in and make casting impossible. I’m also standing on a hump on the stream bed, which gives me more height and alters the angle of my view. I can see further from here.

Upstream a couple of bushes and a tree are cutting out the surface glare and there, to the right, there’s a long patch of open water, really long, the biggest clear area I’ve seen all morning. It’s maybe eight or 10 yards long and a couple wide. A shaft of sunlight, the first of the day, lights it up as if an inspiration.

Half way up, a shadow’s sidling sideways over the bottom. That’s a fish. So is that sepia brush-stroke to the right of it. Further over still, near the ranunculus, there’s a steady throb and pulse. A trout’s tail. Three fish together. Riches.

The closest fish is the biggest, maybe a pounder and he’s in a crease on the bottom, a fast little run. I’ll aim to put the fly two or three yards beyond him and on his line. First, I’ll let it sink and trundle loosely back along the bottom. If he ignores that I’ll cast again and try inducement.

I snip off the little beetle, knot on a size 12 shrimp tied with orange silk – my colour-code for eight turns of lead under the dressing – look up at the fish, look back at the shrimp and re-read the current. Hmmm. I snip the fly off again, fish a spool of nylon out and add two more feet to the leader. Now it’s maybe 11 feet long. Eight or nine have been tricky enough so far, but instinct and experience tell me this is what I need.

Left foot planted and comfortable, right foot likewise. Stay still. Don’t take my eyes off the fish. Wait for a pause in the wind. Wait. Wait. The old world creeps up again, the forest’s silence enfolds. Any second now. Now! I slow the line as it zips through my left hand and the leader begins to unfurl. The heavy nymph straightens it, dives vertically over and goes in cleanly, right again for line, right again for depth.

The trout scarcely moves. One moment he’s riding the water like a slim, tethered kite, the next he’s drifting marginally to one side, the next he’s back on line. It’s a subtle movement, scarcely perceptible, but I’m not fooled. I’ve seen that a thousand times. I didn’t see his mouth open but I know he has it, I know he has to have it and I tighten. The rod goes down, there’s a moment’s thrashing and splashing then he’s charging upstream, doubling back downstream and lodged deep in the weed to my right.

Damn. It all happened in a flash. The only fish of the day and I could lose him in seconds. I wind down, lock tight and the little rod hoops. The weed surges and heaves but he won’t come clear.

An old trick. I edge a little nearer, wind in as I go – and then let everything go slack. Sometimes, if you let everything go slack on a weeded fish, it will start to make its own way out. One minute. Two minutes. Three minutes and then, suddenly, from directly behind him, I put maximum pressure on again. The rod jags, jags again, the starwort surges and he’s out, weed on the leader, weed over his head and eyes. He stops struggling, drifts towards me on the current, heavy and limp the way an unsighted fish always does. I bend, slip my hand under him and turn him upside down as I lift. Another old trick. He lies perfectly still the moment he’s belly-up, again as they so often do. Then I peel away the weed, slip out the barbless hook and look at him.

He’s the colour of light honey and pure-white bellied. Red spots and black spots freckle his sides. Each fin is clean-edged and sun-shot and perfect. His pectoral fins are as big as paddles. His tail, for his size, is huge.

What a privilege. Here I am alone in this wild, wonderful place, holding this wonderful wild creature in my hand. I’m conscious I’m maybe the first human to touch him, conscious in that moment that in that touch, I’m taking something from him that can never be replaced.