Andrew Fergus Wilson reflects on fishing
I think it was the film The Matrix that first popularised ‘bullet time’; it’s a visual contrivance that slows on-screen action down so that the enhanced physical and perceptual capabilities of the film’s protagonists can be shown off by their ability to dodge the bullets that are generally heading for them. Hence ‘bullet time’. For me, fishing is life’s bullet time. But, unfortunately, without the enhanced physical capabilities.
Time slows when I fish. Not in any real way but my perception of it and my relationship to it. In other words, the pressures that work and family put on my shoulders – this deadline, that lift that’s needed, those bits I need to pick up from the shops – they get carried away like Autumn leaves in the stream and then it’s just me and the river. And the river’s time, its hectic pace and slow waxing and waning through the seasons.
And the river’s time is different from ours. It has carved valleys, seen species rise and fall; humans have come clustered up to its banks and may yet recede once more. A few miles downstream of where I fish most frequently, on the Derbyshire Derwent, saw the birth of the Industrial Revolution and the factory system in Arkwright’s mills. Child labour and the endless thrum of the water frame spinning machines, drawing their power from Bonsall Brook, a rhythmic baritone to the Derwent’s mezzosoprano. On a clear day, you can make out the Derwent glittering below in the view from Stanton Moor whose stone circle predates human memory. But the river was always there before us.
These thoughts all pass through my mind. In between contemplating a fly change and whether or not that riffle just upstream might be a better bet. When … I watch the line dip and feel it tighten beneath my fingers, I lift the rod and counter the fighting moves that travel down my line from the water, to my rod, to my hand. And for a short while there is nothing but the ‘now’; those instants whilst fish and man are focussed only on each other. Awareness is fully in the moment and, like breath held, time pauses in anticipation until fish evades or else is set free, a silvery pulse in the currents.
From the intensity of the now through to the languid unfolding of geography, the river flows through it all. It takes me out of human time, away from the clockface, and into Other time. Gone fishing.
Read more from Andrew at his excellent blog