Adam Fewtrell looks at what fishing means to him and I am sure it will resonate with many who read this piece too.
It was an impromptu walk in Grizedale Forest where the question was first posed. As we crossed a small tree-lined beck which inevitably led to me wandering off course to peer into its peaty depths, my ‘better half’ looked quizzical and said ‘Go on then, what ten things make fly fishing so special?’ I’m not sure what was more worrying, the fact that a very distinct and apparently genuine interest was being shown or that suddenly I needed to justify my obsession. Nevertheless I obliged with a somewhat cobbled together list. The walk was over 12 months ago now and despite this, it remains a question I’ve pondered on several subsequent occasions. And so, after much deliberation and in no particular order, my (admittedly narcissistic) current top ten is as follows;
1. The tranquillity
A somewhat obvious one to begin with, but in a world where work appears to continually speed up and non-urban spaces seem to shrink in size, an opportunity to cut adrift from society, forget day to day hustle and bustle and genuinely ‘chill out’ seems to be becoming a rarer and rarer feat. As something of a loner, the peace, the tranquillity and the opportunity to truly switch off is something that I crave. Whilst blissful, the time spent enjoying said tranquillity also represents something of an enigma. I’m sure that somewhere there is a clever mathematician that could come up with an equation to prove the exact ratio of my theory, maybe he/she is a fisherman too. However in the interim, my theory remains that time speeds up when spent on a river. It speeds up by around 266% which means that a full(ish) eight hour day on the river is exactly proportional to three hours in the office! If I was that way inclined, I’d complain and grumble about this being unfair! I don’t bother; I merely plan my next trip!
2. The Continual Challenge
You can spend years and years serving an apprenticeship on a single stretch of water and just when you think you’ve cracked the code, you’ve matched the hatch like a champ or you’ve located leviathan’s lair to within a couple of square feet, Mother Nature has the habit of pulling the rug from under you and cruelly changing the rules. My home water on the River Wharfe is two and a quarter miles of the middle reaches. It’s known by my kids as ‘my other wife’. I’ve fished it weekly for six or seven seasons and I’m happy to admit, I haven’t even scratched the surface.
I have never hunted but I imagine that the challenge of locating, getting close to and casting to a rising fish is very similar. The line between success and failure is tiny. One clumsy foot when wading, one cumbersome cast, or the selection of the ‘wrong’ fly, are just three examples of how we anglers can and do regularly snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. Whether a trip results in success or failure is largely immaterial. Success means that you want more. Failure means you leave the river vowing to learn from the experience and try again.
For me it’s this life-long apprenticeship that provides the continual challenge. As frustrating as this may appear to non-fishers, it’s exactly the reason why I can’t get enough. If it became easy or predictable, I honestly believe it would lose a large part of its appeal.
3. The quest for perfection
I love to cast a fly line. To me it’s a thing of beauty and watching an accomplished caster is like watching a master tradesman or a fine artist. The perfect loop unfurling effortlessly and with such grace is something that I don’t believe I’ll ever truly achieve; nevertheless I continue to try. Don’t get me wrong, I understand the mechanics and the theory of casting but understanding them and putting them into practice are most definitely two different things. As daft as this may sound, I’m as happy to stand in a local park casting a fly line on grass to hula hoops (aka imaginary trout) as I am doing the real thing.
Whilst regular practice undoubtedly improves your own ability, once actually on a river a perfectly straight fly line and leader are often the kiss of death. The fly drags on the surface like it’s attached to a tow rope and the fish - more often than not - merely watch, laugh and ignore it! On the Wharfe I can almost hear the cutting remarks of ‘You’ll have to do better than that sunshine!’ from beneath the surface in a suitably dulcet tone and Yorkshire dialect.
Basically, the variable flows and current directions mean that much of the theory practised on grass simply does not apply.
And so, having become proficient in a half decent cast, there is now a need to unlearn the basics and advance in the ability to place slack line into a cast. Such slack line deliberately placed in a desired position to counteract a current - or worse still - a number of currents, is the ultimate in casting artistry; perfection comes when the fly drifts and drifts without even a hint of the dreaded drag!
Occasionally my loops look almost acceptable and I can add slack line to present a fly in such a way that I can claim I meant to do it, and claim it as a ‘good’ cast. One ‘good’ cast to a solitary fish located in an awkward lie is enough for me to leave the river with a contented feeling of ‘job done’ regardless of whether I land it!
4. Creativity and the hobbies within a hobby
The trout season in Yorkshire runs from 25th March to 30th September. The grayling season extends this, weather permitting, until mid-March. The all-important words of the last sentence are without doubt ‘weather permitting’. All too often during the autumn and winter months, rainwater run-off in the upper-most reaches of the Wharfe valley render the river unfishable. And so, whilst we sit and wait for the river to get back within the confines of its banks, there is a very definite need for something to fill the void. For a self-confessed fly fishing junkie, the only thing that comes close to actual fishing, is thinking/talking about fishing and this is where fly tying saves the day and maintains one’s sanity. It’s a natural progression really. You begin by chasing fish with shop bought or ‘borrowed’ artificial flies. This inevitably leads to inquisitive thoughts about fooling a monster on a creation of your own!
I know people whose jobs are creative. I envy them. Whether I would have the imagination to do this for myself on a day-to-day basis I very much doubt, but as a pipe dream, it works just fine. I think everyone needs some degree of creativity in their life, particularly if the norm is a run-of-the-mill office job like mine.
This is where fly tying is the perfect hobby within a hobby. In truth, you could fill a fly box with a couple of dozen patterns and be set for 99% of all occasions. However, the wealth of both modern and ancient materials mean that a box full of hundreds of patterns is far more appealing, after all, you just never know!
Don't get me wrong, the things I 'create' aren't the things of beauty you see in books and magazines; many more closely resemble something retrieved from a belly button. However they are mine, made by my own fair hands from materials that I have selected, and tied to my own, often loose, interpretation of tried and trusted patterns (plus a few weird, wonderful and in some instances merely odd creations of my own).
My collection has increased and increased to somewhere in the region of fifteen hundred flies, many of them never even get a swim as, inevitably, laziness creeps in and I generally opt for a handful of tried and trusted 'regulars'! Nevertheless it's a modest collection of which I have become immensely proud and am equally attached to! The use of a zinger for safety provides this in a literal sense too.
The 'art' of tying a fly, (and I do subscribe to the view that this intricate form of sculpture should be classed as an art), could merely be described as connecting thread, tying on some materials and disconnecting the thread. This is a fact. But it's so much more than that.
Take, for example, the tying of the very simple but superbly effective Waterhen Bloa.
You sit down at the vice, the vice which is akin to the fly tier's one and only 'power tool'. This probably sounds ridiculous and of course they're not powered in any way, but the simple yet perfect engineering involved in their creation means that it feels entirely like the right 'power tool' for the job. And everyone loves using a good power tool right?
The hook is mounted in the vice and thread attached, wrapped around the hook shank five times. Possibly one or two too many but then five's my lucky number. The perfect feather is meticulously selected. What makes it perfect? Instinct?Experience?Whatever it is doesn't matter but you'll still know when you've found it. The soft, downy plumes of the feather are stripped to leave the bare stem. The remaining barbs of the feather are combed back to leave just enough tag with an exact number fibres on each side. The feather gets offered up to the hook-shank and trapped by further thread wrap or two. Another wrap, repeat, repeat, repeat until a perfectly uniform underbody is formed. A hint of mole fur is plucked from the skin and teased to form a minute mesh of open fibres before being ever so gently spun onto the thread. Wrap, wrap, wrap back to within a millimetre or so of the eye. A slim, pale body dressed in a wisp of fur, resembling smoke. A combination of three more turns with some added twists and the thread is drawn down to form a neat, secure head. It needs to be no more complicated than that to fool the wiliest of fish.
Of course, and inevitably, more wacky elements of creativity set in and things often get far more complicated. An idea will come to you in the middle of the night, an idea that might just solve another piece of the infinite jigsaw. Inevitably, it doesn’t and the idea becomes another one chalked off an endless list. I truly hope that I never find my ‘ultimate fly’, it would spoil things. However, that doesn’t mean that I can’t continue to look!
5. Seeing things you would not ordinarily see
Whether it be a group of wild deer wandering through the woods of the opposite bank oblivious to my presence (as happened a week or two ago) or a couple of young ladies deciding skinny dipping was the order of the day, (which allegedly happened to a friend of a friend of a friend), you undoubtedly see some interesting things when on the river bank! As an aside, whether the said young ladies were as oblivious to the fisherman’s presence as the deer were to mine is not a question I can answer!
The wildlife you see always adds more interest to days on the river. As I mentioned earlier, my home water is a length of the Wharfe not 20 minutes from the centre of Leeds and yet the contrast could not be more stark. To date I’ve seen deer, badgers, proper countryside foxes that dwarf their urban cousins, otters and otter cubs, barn owls, red kites, kingfishers and mandarin ducks, to name but a few. All of which have merely been an added bonus.
In addition you sometimes get to see the smaller mini-beasts which, if you’re lucky, can be in biblical numbers. 12 April 2009 for example saw a Grannom emergence that can only be described as a blizzard of bugs, literally millions of the little caddis emerging in the dappled sunlight to which the fish tucked in their bibs and filled their boots. For twenty minutes or so I was David Attenborough in my own little documentary!
Whether it’s the subtly sublime or the downright odd; sights encountered on the river bank often live long in the memory.
6. Collecting stuff!
Rods, reels, flies, tying materials, fishing clubs and pickled insect samples (a good friend of mine actually does this!) the choice of fishing related collectables is almost endless.
Personally, I have two main vices that fall into two distinctly different categories. Firstly, I have a penchant for a certain brand of fly rod. I’ve no idea how this started but alas, start it did, much to the annoyance of ‘She who must be obeyed’.
Secondly, I have a seemingly ever-growing collection of fly tying materials.The distinct difference being that these are born not out of a ‘want’ and most definitely out of a ‘need’! The number of times I’ve discovered a material that is now urgently ‘needed’ and which, until the point of laying eyes on it, I’d lived in happy ignorance of, is frightening!
Now I’m not suggesting for one minute that collecting everything is for everyone, however it would take a person with a willpower far greater than mine to adopt a minimalist approach to every aspect of our sport.
7. The all-important ‘take’
‘The tug is the drug’ is not a phrase I’m particularly fond of, however it does hit the nail squarely on the head. Whether it’s a rise to a dry fly, the zip of an indicator or the subtle draw of a take to a wet fly, it is undoubtedly the single most exciting part of fly fishing. Lasting nothing more than a fraction of a second, I’m fairly certain it’s another reason that many of us can’t get enough! For those non-fishing readers, the take is like the nano-second where you realise the Christmas present you’re opening is exactly the thing you’ve been hoping for. The landing of the same fish is akin to the admiring looks you give to the same present for a minute or two afterwards before putting it down and moving onto the next one.
8. The people you meet
Now don’t get me wrong, I’m more than happy to spend days on the river bank with no-one’s company other than my own, however spending time with a fishing buddy or group of like-minded and equally enthusiastic people is undoubtedly one of the most enjoyable things about our sport. Such acquaintances inevitably result in episodes of friendly competition, banter and general debate, all of which are often interspersed with long periods of solitude and comfortable silence.
Meetings range from fleeting enquiries of ‘Had owt?’ to life-long friendships. Both are equally enjoyable. And so to those whom I’ve been fortunate enough to chat with on the bank – Thank you! And to those whom I’m lucky enough to call my ‘fishing buddies’ - When are we going next?
9. The beauty of our quarry
A picture, as they say, paints a thousand words – Enough said.
10. The anticipation
Last but by no means least, for me the varying degrees of anticipation are the essence of our sport. It creeps into every aspect. Some examples are as follows;
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The wait for the start of the new season.
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The drive from home to the river which averages circa 15mph quicker than the same journey home.
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The walk from the car to the river which averages around 1.5mph quicker than the same journey back.
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The walk from one pool to the next, during which in every angler’s head there are flies hatching and fish rising all over the place.
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The expectancy that the next cast to a steadily rising fish will be ‘the one’ after the previous attempts didn’t cut the mustard.
Whichever it may be, the sense of anticipation undoubtedly plays a big part in every single one of my fishing trips.
Yorkshire is one of the few places where there is a gap between the end of the grayling (coarse) season and beginning of the trout season. I’m thankful for these two weeks of forced withdrawal. Whilst relatively short, it provides the perfect opportunity to restock fly boxes, clean lines, service reels and generally get all your ‘ducks in a row’ ready for the new season during which the excitement steadily grows.
Gladly, it also seems that this general giddiness never leaves you. The date was 20 March 2016, merely five days before the new season. The venue was a dimly lit room in an Otley pub. The purpose, one last club fly tying day. Sixteen or seventeen of us gathered to tie flies, drink beer and talk fishing. Now I’m not being unkind when I state that the combined age of the group was probably circa 1,200 years old and yet the air of anticipation was palpable and resembled a group of grey, wrinkly children in the final few days before Christmas. Maybe this is replicated in other sports or hobbies but I’m yet to find anything that comes anywhere near close. I truly hope that when I’m in my sixties, seventies and eighties, I have the same enthusiasm for the 25 March as I do now, and if I can pass the same on to others in the meantime, I’ll have done my bit.
And so there we are; my current top ten. I’d be interested to know which ones you think I’ve missed or perhaps just your own personal take on things?
Until then I can breathe easy safe in the knowledge that those of a similar disposition will have no doubt experienced the same level of funny looks, cheap jibes and general bewilderment from those that ‘aren’t in the know’. I don’t care in the slightest and it certainly doesn’t stop me from talking about ‘my other wife’ to anyone who shows any inkling that they might listen! Our sport is a varied, beautiful, artistic, elusive, ever changing and generally fantastic. It shows off the natural world where we ply our trade at both its most stunning and its most horrid. It mesmerises us and infuriates us in equal measures. Nevertheless I believe it’s a world that needs to be shared. My aim at the beginning of this article was simple, to give a non-believer a little glimpse into the mind of the mad, obsessive fisher-folk in their lives. Maybe, just maybe they may even want to join you and item 1 may never be the same again!