Nick Thomas gives us a glimpse of what has shaped his fly fishing life
Every man's memory is his private literature.
Aldous Huxley
Not USB sticks or thumb drives; proper memory sticks. The ones that with care last a lifetime and have infinite capacity for storing precious memories. Fishing rods. For anglers, or at least for this one anyway, there’s something unique about their power to act as conduit to that part of the brain where memories are stored with the greatest vibrancy and clarity.
I started fishing with my Dad. He didn’t fish, he just thought it was something we could do together. I was 12 and we lived outside Glasgow with a good variety of rivers, lochs and sea lochs to fish in. My first rod was a solid fibreglass heavy spinning rod courtesy of Dad’s Green Shield petrol stamps. He’d bought a small boat and we spent many days afloat on the fjords of Long Long, Gaerloch and Loch Goil catching loads of cod and flatties. During the summer holidays we trailed the boat up to the far north and fished the sea lochs along the beautiful and dramatic coast from the Summer Isles to Kinlochbervie, bait fishing and spinning for mackerel, coalies, pollack and the occasional sea trout.
Dad’s true loves were his garden, woodworking and cine photography, which I wasn’t much interested in, but he enjoyed our days out drifting about on the sea lochs and was a dab hand at digging bait. He never did learn to tie knots though; I did all the technical stuff after studying the diagrams in an old ABU catalogue. I used to keep swivels and small stuff in his old 35mm film cans and pre-tied paternoster and leger rigs were wound on yellow Kodak super 8mm cine film spools. Nowadays I always use a Uni knot for attaching a fly to my tippet, but just occasionally I’ll tie on a nymph with a tucked blood knot and remember Dad sitting in the boat waiting for me to pass him a hook to bait. He’s been gone nearly four years now, but those memories of fishing together are some of the strongest I have of him.
When I got old enough to drive I graduated to shore fishing on my own, built a beach rod and learnt to cast a multiplier reel from reading all the fishing magazines I could get my hands on. So when I wanted to try fly fishing it seemed a natural progression to start by building my own rod.
That rod, a 9 foot fibreglass 6wt, was built from components selected after many hours of scouring mail-order catalogues for a suitable blank, rings and cork. I borrowed Dad’s woodworking lathe to turn the handle and had to suffer the subsequent wrath after dripping Araldite and varnish on my Mum’s best table cloth. My fly reel was a Rimfly modified according to an article in Angling magazine. The horrible brown paint finish was removed with paint stripper and the cast aluminium polished with a pan scourer. I tied some flies with the hooks clamped in a pair of pliers and a spool of tying thread pinched in my fingers. I didn’t have many flies, but I made a small varnished wooden box to protect my precious collection. I’ve still got the rod, reel and fly box today, although the flies that I was so proud of at the time look distinctly scruffy to now more experienced tying eyes. I taught myself to cast, after a fashion, in the back garden. Space was limited but I’d read that the trout of highland lochans are found mostly in the margins, so confidence was high.
The first trout on that rod came from a place with no name. It came from one of the many small lochans that spread like scattered shining jewels across the treeless expanse of Rannoch Moor. Some of these lochans are shallow and filled with reeds and water lilies, others lie in deep pockets between rocks and humps of glacial moraine. The shallow lochans glow amber in the sun where sand and peat stained water combine, the deeper ones are inky black and forbidding. The trout from the lochans follow the colour palette of their environment; golden brightly spotted creatures from the sun livened shallows and darker purple-black denizens from the depths of the moraine dammed waters.
In the summer of 1976 I set off to explore those wild lochans. The 2 piece rod travelled in a length of plastic drain pipe lashed to the frame of my backpack together with my tent, sleeping bag and cooking stove. I had some food but was ambitiously planning to live off the many trout I was going to catch with my new rod. I was fortunate with the weather that trip; there was enough breeze to ripple the lochans and to keep the midgies away, and no rain. It was not always so on subsequent trips. When it rains on Rannoch Moor a tent dweller will alternatively pray for calm so the wind doesn’t drive rain into the tent and then with the next breath appeal earnestly for a strong wind to drive the midgies away. Their torments really are out of all proportion to their size.
I set up camp on a small flat ridge between two lochans, mostly because it was the only dry bit of ground I could find, but also in the hope that it might to catch the best of any breeze and keep me free of midgies. The sun shining through the tent walls woke me shortly after dawn and crawling out of the tent to water the heather I disturbed a group of red deer grazing on the hill above me. The lochans below were dimpled with rising fish; it was time to try out my lovingly crafted new gear. I set up the rod while waiting for the coffee to brew and tied on one of my scruffy spiders. It’s probably best to draw a veil over the first few hours fishing. The perfect casts that I’d made, or imagined, on the flat lawn in the garden were somewhat marred by the conspiring combinations of heather banks and rocks which seemed to move at will to snare my fly, leader or fly line. Much thrashing about scared off even the most naive and starving trout in the lochan, so I made a sweaty retreat to camp to rethink my strategy.
Looking out from the tent I could see that one of the other nearby lochans had some flat rocks leading out from a low bank. Surely that would be a place where I could get some line onto the water without troubling the surrounding landscape with errant casting. I replaced my mangled leader and set off around the banks to my chosen spot. It looked ideal with rocks in the shallow golden margins leading the way to deeper dark whisky coloured water further out. I stripped an ambitious amount of line off the reel and made my first cast. It was like my best imagined cast. The rod flexed, the fly line tugged at my fingers like all it wanted to do was to go and lay down on the golden water and then the leader turned over to drop my black and peacock spider with a plop amongst the ripples of rising fish. I’d barely had a chance to gather the slack line in my hand when there was a slash and a splash in the water, an arc of droplets shone in the sun as the line pulled taught and my first fish was on.
I discovered later that most of the fish in these moorland lochans average about six inches, with the acidic peaty water not supporting sufficient aquatic and fly life to allow most fish to get any bigger. There are however a few exceptions which grow to double that size or more; it was one of these that was making my reel sing now. The trout dived deep into the depths testing the new rod in an impressive arc with the tip jabbing down in response to every lunge and pull. More by instinct than skill I managed to retrieve enough line back onto the reel to get the fish into the shallower water where it made a series of splashy runs with the sun lighting up its brilliant colours over the peat stained sand. I don’t know which of us was more tired by the time I reached down to grasp the fish, slip out the hook and debate what to do next. The fish was beautiful, I was hungry. I looked around at the magnificent scenery. I opened my hand. I spent three fantastic days out in the wilds on that trip and caught many more fish, not all of them went back. The ones I ate tasted great, but it’s that first one that I didn’t that I remember the best.
I travelled all over Scotland with that fly rod and it caught me loads of trout, despite its endearing habit of sending the tip section into the loch on any particularly vigorous cast. Simply fixed though; simply pull in the line until the top dropper sticks in the tip ring and retrieve the errant fibreglass. I get the rod out now and then and marvel at how heavy and soft it is in comparison to my modern rods. Maybe I’ll take it fishing again one day; with some electrical tape for the spigot and a modern reel.
Today pretty well all of my fishing is done with a fly rod. The collection has grown and changed over the years to suit my variety of fishing. There’s an 8wt for saltwater, a 7wt for carp, a couple of 6wts for stillwater trout, a 5wt for the river, two short 3wt wands for dry fly fishing on lakes and small streams and a third long 3wt for river nymphing. There are a lot of memories stored in these rods. Many different fish from many special places. Bass, pollack, coalfish, mullet, turbot and other species from the rocks and surf along the coast. Trout, seatrout, grayling, chub, perch and barbel from rivers. Carp, bream, roach and rudd from lakes and ponds.
The first fish of a new species always creates a special memory. The first carp I took on a fly was no exception and hooked me for a lifetime of summer stalking. That first carp came from a somewhat less wild location than the first trout but pretty none the less, a small English lake. I’d been planning to catch a carp on the fly for some time, checking out different lakes for one that allowed fly fishing. The weather forecast had been examined in detail and the perfect combination of bright sun and no wind was firmly predicted. I took a day off work and left home before dawn for a three hour drive arriving in a high state of anticipation to find the lake looking fantastic with mist rising off the water and fish visible moving under the mirror flat surface.
Now carp lakes are not generally naturally suited to fly fishing. The banks tend to be heavily wooded and swims with room to make a decent back cast are few and far between. However I’d done my research and knew there was a place at the end of the lake where a gap in the trees would give me access to cast a line a reasonable distance. A rather nervous and self-conscious walk around the lake past the bivvied residents brought me to my planned spot. Everything I’d read told me that I’d struck the right conditions and my first carp would be on the bank in no time.
For the next five hours I didn’t catch a single fish. The others fishing either side of me were catching; tench, bream, roach, perch and carp were coming out regularly to float, waggler and bottom baits. Me, nothing; no fish feeding on the surface and my dog biscuits floated about untouched like they were carrying the plague. I tried everything. Different surface flies and some nymphs I had stuck in my fly vest were tied on and cut off. I trudged back to the car and rummaged through my spare fly boxes for a cat’s whisker and some olive damsels. I thought maybe they’d take the white cat for bread and there were some damsel flies flitting about the marginal reeds. I tried them - nothing. I put on a buzzer under an indicator to try and emulate the guy fishing a waggler next door; nothing, not a touch, not a swirl, absolutely zero. I might as well have been fishing in the car park for all the action I was getting.
Now I was hot, sweaty, and not a little pissed off. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. With all my planning, day dreaming and anticipation, I’d already mentally caught that first carp. It had seemed so real; now whatever I did I couldn’t realise that imagined catch. I was feeling like an idiot. The guys I’d passed and nodded to on the walk along the bank had looked somewhat curiously at the new bloke carrying a fly rod instead of wheeling a barrow full of gear. Nothing was said but there were a few raised eyebrows. As the day wore on it was obvious that I was getting more and more attention from those calmly fishing from their comfy chairs while I was flitting around like a blue-arsed fly casting an ever increasing range of votive offerings to non-existent fish.
Late in the afternoon, hungry, thirsty and tired and dreading the long drive home I was slumped on the ground in the shade watching the damselflies when I heard a magical sound - slurp. Over to my left was a dense stand of reeds under an overhanging tree. Along the edge of the reeds were some of the long forgotten dog biscuits that I’d chucked into the middle of the lake and which had now quietly drifted into the margins. Two carp were slowly making their way along the reeds mopping up my discarded baits. I grabbed the rod from where I’d chucked it in a bush and agitatedly untangled the line ready to cast. A few false casts extended the line while I tried to steady my nerves to place the fly. The deer hair dog biscuit landed perfectly right at the base of the reeds and I slowly straightened the leader in anticipation. The two carp were now feeding along the reed bed in opposite directions moving towards the centre; my fly was two dog biscuits away from the fish to my left. My legs were shaking as I watched the first and then the second bait disappear into a large orange mouth - the fly was next in line, would it be taken?
It was. After what seemed an age of waiting the fly was sucked under, I raised the rod, and the line pulled tight. In a perfect world that would have been it, my first carp on the fly. In adrenaline fuelled reality I’d struck too soon and a second later I was left deflated and retrieving a slack line. After hours of effort I blown it at the critical moment and disconsolately began to reel in to pack up and slope off home. I flicked the line out to straighten out some coils and just as I did so the second carp re-appeared snarfing down biscuits from the reeds. A hurried roll cast put the line back out and the fly landed with a plop about a foot away from the fish. For a moment I thought I’d spooked it. Then the carp turned towards me and I could see, as if in slow motion, the fly slide down the water sloping into a large open mouth and disappear. I raised the rod and all hell broke loose.
The carp powered off up the lake just under the surface pushing a huge bow wave and with the fly line scything through the water in a rooster tail of spray. The burning of my fingertips and the clattering in the rod rings told me that we were now firmly into previously unused backing. I leaned the rod over to apply some side strain while trying to tighten the drag with my other hand and praying that I’d tied the backing knot properly. I had. Eventually the increased drag slowed the fish and a long zig-zagging tussle followed to get the fish to the net.
I sheepishly acknowledged the waves and raised thumbs of my companion anglers and gratefully slipped the fish back into the water. The roads were crammed with holiday traffic all the way home and I spent hours shunting slowly along stuck in jams. I was grinning the entire time.
These two memories of first fish, intensified by the emotions of the moment, are 40 and 10 years old now. They are as clear, detailed and vibrant today as the moment they were created. For me picking up a fly rod and going fishing simultaneously evokes old memories and creates new ones. Sometimes catching fish creates the strongest memories, sometimes that’s just incidental and other events are what stick in my mind. Sitting in the warm sun with a cup of strong coffee from the flask just watching the river flow on by. Standing in the surf feeling the sting of cold spray hitting my face and tasting the salt on my lips. Watching insects and birds busy in their short lives while I have the luxury of time to stand and stare. Knowing I am alive, knowing I am happy, knowing I will remember for ever.
Nick Thomas lives in South Wales. He started fly fishing on Scottish hill lochs many years ago and continues to design, tie and fish flies for trout, carp, bass and anything else that’s going.