We received a wonderful essay from ESF reader John Cargill that will no doubt resonate with many of us.
Dawn broke quietly this morning outside my window; low, soft buff tones of yellow merged skywards to meet the powder blue of a winter’s morning. Across the way, the roof tops glistened white in the low rays of the sun and there was, too, a muffled quietness heralding the emergence of a new day. It’s late January as I type this, seven weeks between me and the eventual start of the trout season. Year on year, I try to muster up an enthusiasm for some winter fly fishing, perhaps the glint of a silvery grayling or two to brighten up a winter’s day, but year it somehow doesn’t happen. Winter, for me, is time to tie flies, to linger over photos of warmer days, remember rising trout and sometimes to reminisce on seasons past; some in recent memory and some from much further beyond. Around a month ago, when driving conditions were more favourable, I took a run in the car to visit some of my childhood haunts.
I was around thirteen years old when I first picked up a fly rod, making my first acquaintance with a lifelong hobby, more of a passion really, which has enriched me through my lifetime. In those days, I mostly fished the three burns local to my home town of Arbroath. A bright eyed, curious and enthusiastic young lad, I could often be found looking over bridges in the town observing the behaviour of the wee trout of the Brothock Burn which wends its way through the town.
Last month, when I took the car over to visit the Lunan Burn, another of my youthful haunts, the day was cold, the landscape dominated by washed out colours. The memories it evoked were warm though, the colours somewhat more vivid. At Kirkton Bridge, I looked downstream in the direction of the pool where I caught my first ever trout on the fly. The joy and elation that I felt on that day came to mind effortlessly, in a way that only a fellow fly fisher could begin to understand.
I was to look over a few bridges during my nostalgic day trip. Memories were reclaimed - soft memories of a young lad on the way to feeding the habit of a lifetime’s passion and addiction. At Waulkmill, upstream of Kirkton, I looked over the bridge there remembering the day when I caught six trout in a wee pool upstream of that bridge, probably my first major success on the dry fly. Further upstream again, looking over the bridge at Kinnell, I remembered my first trout of a pound caught not so many yards from where I stood on that day.
For reasons, I didn’t understand on the day, I drove back to Kirkton Bridge, for a last wee look, before heading away from the area and back to my domicile, now these days in East Perthshire.
It’s some 43 years since I caught my first trout downstream of Kirkton on the Lunan Burn. My enthusiasm and love of fishing remains strong, albeit that the eyes are not so bright and the body less willing. I’ve looked over an immeasurable number of bridges during that time and crossed some long ones too, in the passage of life. I no longer fish wee burns, save for an occasional dabble on a peaty water somewhere up north where moor and hill meet wind and rain. I can often be found waving a rod around, not far from where I live, on the mighty Tay or some of its lovely tributaries. I’m much older, but feel none the wiser about the fishing that I do. I could never admit to knowing much about fishing, I could only ever admit that I hold dearly all that fishing entails. I still look over bridges.
Yesterday, I leaned my elbows on the bridge across the burn that runs through the wee town where I now live. Sometimes, in warmer months, you can watch the kids up and down the burn making way too much noise, as kids should do, wielding an assortment of battered and dilapidated rods and reels. Sometimes, you can see the kids with a bagful of wee trout, rejoicing in their success with any stranger who is kind enough to see inside the contents of their bag. Sometimes too, you can see them, elbows and wee noses on parapets, a wee bit quieter, a wee bit more pensive - looking over bridges.
Read more from John in his excellent Blog