THE GOOD OLD DAYS!
Fishing for Rainbow trout lasts all year round and some of the best fishing comes along in the winter months. However, there are some days when it is impossible to fish because of snow, wind, rain or ice. I’m quite happy to sit at home with a bottle of whisky and a couple of cans of cold Stella and tidy out my fishing cupboard whilst reminiscing about the good old days gone by……….
The First Trout and a Good Roach
Like your first girl friend, you can clearly remember the first trout you caught. Mine was on a worm about fifty five years ago in a little Derbyshire river. A few years later I equally clearly remember the first trout that came to a fly, a little dry Iron Blue Dun fished very badly on 15th March, the first day of the season. Like the girl friend, I remember every spot on its beautiful body!
I caught my best ever roach in the same trout stream. One of our club waters had an overflow into the river and, about a hundred yards downstream there was a little weir with a fair sized pool under it. My mates all told me that there was a big brown trout in the pool and geed me up to fish for it. I thoroughly explored the pool and, eventually, had a solid pull on the fly. I thought I was snagged but eventually and gradually I brought a head shaking roach to the bank. One of my mates had a spring balance with him and it weighed 2lb and 2 ounces. I’d fished for years for just such a fish and then caught it by accident.
Ambush in France
Some years ago I was in the centre of France staying in a village called Chatillon-sur-Seine. The Seine here is in its infancy and is no more than a brook. It was also chock full of wild brown trout that nobody fished for. The proprietor of the riverside hotel knew better. He woke me up at dawn (4.30 am) and gestured me to follow him, every ten metres turning round and putting his finger to his mouth, making a loud “shushing” noise.
I followed him down the winding street and through a garden to the river’s edge. He had a rod for each of us. They were only about six feet in length with tiny reels and a three weight double taper floating line. He even had a fly tied on for me, a brownie-black dry fly tied to a tiny hook, an 18 or 20. He made sure that the trout did not see him and gently let his line roll over the banking and into the water. His fly was a mere six inches into the Seine. Bang! A good sized brown trout took the fly and he tightened quickly and powered the fish on to the bank in an instant.
He did this three times and then gestured me to try. I followed his instructions and with the merest flick sent my fly into the current at the water’s edge. Wham! I hooked my first Seine brown trout and wrestled it to the bank where ‘Monseiur’ handlined it in and whacked it with his ‘priest’, a heavy duty combination bottle opener and corkscrew. We had a marvellous hour creeping around the shrubs on hands and knees and he filled his creel with a dozen trout. What was on the menu that evening?
Speaking to him over a pernod or two after dinner I found that this was the only way he fished. It was a guerrilla campaign against a wily foe and every fish was for the pot. Perhaps as good a reason for trout fishing as any.
Irish Advice in Galway
I stayed at an hotel in Galway called the Pass Inn near Kylemore Abbey and Loch, a famous salmon fishery. I mentioned to the barman that I was a trout fisherman. “Ah well,” he drawled, ” and sure we can’t all be perfect.” What a put down! He quickly made amends and gave me directions to a loch owned by the hotel and fished rarely by anyone. “Go early in the morning and you’ll have some entertainment but come back home as soon as the sun feels warm.”
I went next morning and the loch was full of fierce little brown trout that truly gave me some ‘entertainment’. About ten thirty the sun came round one of the mountains and began to beat down on me and the trout. The trout gave up the struggle and hid away in deep cool crevices. I continued to fish ignoring the advice of the local expert. Within minutes I was totally enveloped in clouds of carnivorous black midges. It only took me three minutes to get to the car but, by God, they had their pound of flesh in that short space of time.
Later in the bar, he grinned knowingly as he accepted my offer of a drink. “You stayed too long at the water,” was his only comment. You simply cannot afford to ignore local knowledge.
Not Suffering Fools in Scotland
Fionn Loch in Sutherland is set in a beautifully austere landscape. High above sea level yet with towering mountains surrounding this huge loch. The fishing can be good but it’s mainly for small brown trout that will speed to your fly most days. So, the beauty and the half promise of something good (sounds like that first girl friend again) but it’s a long haul up a rocky pathway for four miles carrying your gear. The same on the way back, too.
I was busy fishing a very fruitful pool on the exit river and the fish were reasonably sized up to a pound and more. They had ignored my dry fly offering but became very interested in a GRHE size 14 that I allowed to bump down the stream and along the bottom of the pool. I caught small fish at first but the size improved as the GRHE was allowed to progress down the pool. I was loving it. Grand day, good fish and easy fishing. Ideal conditions. The I heard a commotion up the bank behind me and an elderly pillock was scrambling down the bank towards me calling in a suspiciously high pitched voice that struggled out of a mouth three quarters full of apple, “Are you having any luck with the fish?”
I quickly informed him that my luck had just run out and if he valued his physical health the best thing he could do would be to depart quickly. He saw the look on my face and legged it down the path but the fish had been spooked by his sudden and noisy appearance and I did not have another bite in that pool.
A couple of hours later as I approached the river bridge where the car park was situated I heard a loud and angry Scottish voice, like a very bad tempered John Laurie, using the type of language you only use as you lose a specimen fish at the last moment before netting it. It was my friendly river bank visitor but it was not his voice. The voice belonged to a very ruffled salmon fisherman who had chummy by the throat and was shaking him like a rag doll.
Not having learned from his experience with me, he had spied another angler lower down the river and sought to engage him in conversation. He jumped nimbly over the low wall and landed with both boots on the salmon fisherman’s rod, snapping the top section in half. Hence the brouhaha. Did I intervene? Not likely, I left him being shaken like a rat by a Staffordshire Bull Terrier.
It’s not always the fish that lodge in the memory but the characters that are drawn to fishing, sometimes like moths to a flame.
Tight Lines!
Eddie Caldwell.
